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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.
Tom DeWeese is the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and president of
the American Policy Center, a Warrenton, Virginia grass-roots think tank. The
Center maintains an Internet site at www.americanpolicy.org.
Published by permission.
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