It's About Leaving Room to Learn from our Mistakes Thing

Dear America,

"14th PRINCIPLE: 

Life and Liberty are Secure 

Only so Long as

 the Right to Property is Secure" 

from The 5000 Year Leap, 

by W. Cleon Skousen 

National Center for Constitutional Studies

from family, to the rooms we find shelter...

John Locke, an Englishman, great thinker, influenced America's founding without question -- which is kinda funny, cuz this rather not so attractive Englishman questioned everything.  But out of the many things our founding fathers appreciated, was Locke's understanding of human nature.  So much so, our founders shaped a system of government recognizing the importance of subduing our natural, less admirable, inclinations, to protect us from ourselves.

The basis for all of it came from our belief in God -- and to add a quote from Locke:

"God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it fro the best advantage of life and convenience."

If God gave man dominion over the earth, we best figure out how to care for it, and the very welfare of one another, in common.

And this led Locke on the path to understanding the value of property and subsequently, private property rights.

As Skousen points out in "The Leap"...."if property rights did not exist, four things would occur that would completely frustrate the Creator's command to multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and bring it under dominion." (See also the Book of Genesis)

continuing with Skousen's  four things:

1. One experience like the above (a story where a guy made improvements on his property and as soon as he was finished, his next door neighbor came rushing in to take it from him) would tend to completely destroy the incentive of an industrious person to develop and improve any more property
2. The industrious individual would also be deprived of the fruits of his labor
3. Marauding bands would even be tempted to go about the country confiscating by force and violence the good things which others had frugally and painstakingly provided
4. Mankind would be impelled to remain on a bare-subsistence level of hand-to-mouth survival because the accumulation of anything would invite attack

As Locke maintains, the actual fact of the matter is, property "is an extension of a person's life, energy, and ingenuity.  Therefore, to destroy or confiscate such property is, in reality, an attack on the essence of life itself."

And this is where the common man of modern day misses the mark, somewhat;  And Justice George Sutherland of the U.S. Supreme Court answers to just that, saying:

"It is not the right of property, which is protected, but the right to property. Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual -- the man -- has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference:  the right to his LIFE, the right to his LIBERTY, the right to his PROPERTY...The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right.  To give a man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living.  To give him his liberty but take away from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave."  Taken from Principle or Expedient?  Annual Address to the NY State Bar Association, 21 January 1921

And, just for the record, these three great rights, interwoven into the fabric of our lives, come from GOD, our Creator -- not government, not man.

It is mind-boggling, this absurd rise of attraction to socialism.  For its chief tenet is to allow government to have all the property, to equalize property ownership across the land, and keep everyone living in a uniformed, static state, continuously, from one generation to the next.

Where's the incentive in that?

Where's the enjoyment and satisfaction of the fruits of our labor?

Is this Bernie's answer to help the poor?

Let's keep quoting from "The Leap" shall we?

Abraham Lincoln once said this --

"Property is the fruit of labor.  Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world.  That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.  Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently to build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence....I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can.  Some will get wealthy.  I don't believe in a law to prevent man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good."

Encouragement to individual industry and enterprise....

that is how America was designed and made.

If you really consider what kind of Constitutional crisis America has found herself, Nancy Pelosi -- then we must consider how the rights of man have been usurped and played with over time, through acts unbecoming of a republic, through the constant tweaking of the law of the land, through congress!  To which end, making a total mockery of America's Constitution!  

It is precisely this series of slow usurpation's that has destroyed us!   Everyone's life, everyone's liberty, everyone's property, everyone's happiness has been hacked by congressional hacks and administrations steeped in arrogance and misguided interpretations of the law.

And in proper turn, and over time, we have eventually arrived at our current government, that which freely gives the fruits of its industrious citizens away, every day -- supporting all kinds of programs on behalf of the concern for the general welfare. This practice changed only a few generations ago, late 1930's.  Up until then, it was unlawful to transfer property, fruits of any kind, from one to another.  Up until such time, it was up to the goodness of the people's hearts, of the community, of the church congregation, to support its poor and help provide for basic needs.   And it worked well.

Helping the poor, provided another reason for industry and enterprise to succeed -- thereby allowing for a growing, private wealth, a people blessed with so much, an opportunity to drive a compassionate spirit and give back, for the benefit of the whole community.

These are dangerous times, because the fundamental changes we are constantly making, in the ways we govern and live in this land, have the power to change everything, destroying the wealth and culture America is known for.  The stuff that made America pretty great, actually.

so there you go...

in my anticipation of reaching a thousand entries --
today's blog is a tribute to vintage G, blogs of yore --
for, in the beginning, this girl quoted The 5000 Year Leap a lot!
Love that leap, love that leap.

this is  #998 signing off; see you tomorrow -- no, like, really xoxo it's part of my latest, and most enterprising, goal of mine....to show up, like, four calendar days in a row!
ah yes -- the fruits of my labor --  is simply in the joy of being the keeper of the record for you all.
you're welcome. teehee  


The thing is,  at the end of any given day, there is always room to learn from our mistakes. 
It's how we all grow up, as a people.

Make it a Good Day, G