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PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS: FOUNDATION OF FREEDOM Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. --Frederic Bastiat See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. --Frederic Bastiat |
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SOCIALISTS STATED: In 1932 William Z. Foster, then National Chairman of the Communist Party, USA, restated point one of the Communist Manifesto; The abolition of private property. Then in terms specifically applicable to the U.S., Foster said, The establishment of an American Soviet government will involve the confiscation of large landed estates in town and country, and also, the whole body of forests, mineral deposits, lakes, rivers.... USA Communist Party Chief Gus Hall stated, ...The battle will be lost, not when freedom of speech is finally taken away, but when Americans become so 'adjusted or conditioned' to getting along with the 'group' that when they finally see the threat, they say, 'I can't afford to be controversial'. This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture....By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men. -- Adolf Hitler -- Oct. 7, 1933 |
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AYN RAND STATED: The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. PROPERTY RIGHTS: The right to life is the source of all rights--and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that human rights are superior to property rights simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of human. If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor. Any alleged right of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as the right to enslave. |
