January 27, 2003
By Tom DeWeese
While Americans focus on the prospect of war with Iraq, one to liberate
the citizens of that nation from a terrible dictator, other Americans are
organizing to protect essential Constitutional rights that are being
eroded and destroyed.
There is outrage over the manipulation of election laws to thwart the
will of the voters. There is the effort to defeat a bill in Congress that
would impose a National Identity Card on everyone. Others are raising
their voices in protest against a Sustainable Development agenda being
driven by the United Nations and the worldwide environmental movement. It
is an agenda designed to attack property rights.
For nearly 227 years America has prospered because this nation has
operated under a rule of law that was designed to protect the individual’s
right to pursue his own life in the way he chooses. To work, to play, to
invest, to own property and to use it in the way that best suits his or
her needs. Yet, today, we are witnessing corrupt courts that toss aside
election laws, that take over whole school systems and then demand taxes
be imposed to implement their rulings, a function of legislatures and
local communities.
The Founding Fathers, particularly James Madison, took those ideas of
limited government to heart and put them in the Fifth Amendment of the
Constitution. It limits government taking of private property, saying no
American shall "be deprived of life, liberty or property without due
process; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just
compensation." This is a guarantee to Americans that they are safe
and free to pursue their own lives without interference from government.
It says it is the government’s job to protect those liberties. Without
that guarantee there can be no society. Chaos and tyranny would replace
order and prosperity.
Guaranteed by those protections, Americans began to work their land.
With their free minds they invented new approaches, and created new jobs,
and found new ways to prosper. As a result, our standard of living
improved. Science improved health care. Life expectancy increased. And
wealth followed. Americans have created an incredible society out of a
barren wilderness.
Liberty became our birthright and visions of freedom became our legacy
to much of the world’s people still yearning to be free. Today, as we
are under attack by terrorists, the nation rallies around our belief in
freedom. Flags fly from our homes and car antennas. Bumper stickers
declare "God Bless America." Banners shout "Let Freedom
Ring."
The question must be asked; do we still have those freedoms or is our
pride in America now based mostly on propaganda and memories from another
era? The answer is that today, an army of bureaucrats care nothing about
those rights and the politicians, the ones who seek our votes every few
years, don’t care either. They keep passing laws to give the bureaucrats
the power to run roughshod over our rights.
Their only true concern is that you are verbally appeased until
Election Day while they wink at the radical environmentalists who slip
money in their pockets. Step by step, American liberty is disappearing.
Americans are being ruled, regulated, restricted, licensed, registered,
directed, checked, inspected, measured, numbered, counted, rated, stamped,
censured, authorized, admonished, refused, prevented, drilled,
indoctrinated, monopolized, extorted, robbed, hoaxed, fined, harassed,
disarmed, dishonored, fleeced, exploited, assessed, and taxed to the point
of suffocation and desperation.
We lost the wisdom of the need for individuals to have the right to own
and control private property. The fact is no other rights can exist
without property rights. How can you have free speech if you aren’t
allowed to control your own property? Step by step, property rights are
being eliminated in America and that means we are eliminating freedom.
Too many people in America have accepted the idea that they have the
right to tell other people what to do with their private lives and their
private property. And they believe there is nothing wrong with using the
power of government to enforce those ideas. They have become the
Sustainable Development lynch mob.
Ask yourself these questions. Do you support zoning laws? Do you
support land-development plans and restrictions? Do you support
restrictions on where businesses can be placed? Do you support how
waterways are used? Do you support historic preservation? Do you support
restrictions on building designs to create uniformity? Do you support
community growth management? Are you an active member of a homeowners
association?
In every case, you are licensing the government to infringe on someone
else’s property rights. And what happens if a bigger mob
doesn’t like what you are doing with your land? Once the precedent has
been established the monster is out of the bag. There is no turning back.
If and when Sustainable Development is implemented and imposed, every
one of these things are to be controlled by decisions made for you
by government bureaucrats, members of private, non-government
organizations in partnership with private businesses and elected
representatives, working together in specially organized councils with
names like sustainability councils, stakeholder councils.
John Adams said, "The moment the idea is admitted into society
that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and there is not a force
of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny
commence."
We keep electing politicians who offer the best argument on how to use
government power. We select our leaders today based on which ones have the
best plan for collecting taxes; the best plan for restricting land use;
the best plan for providing government-restricted medical care and drug
prescription and soon, if some get their way, the best plan to even
control what we eat.
We seem to have one property right left. The right to keep paying taxes
and the mortgage payments as we live by the permission of the government.
We have been losing our freedoms because we have lost the knowledge of why
this nation was founded.
