“…power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” -Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #79

A malignant idea exists in socialistic thought that societies can have political freedom with limited economic freedom.

More precisely, this dangerous idea is that political and economic freedom are separate and distinct freedoms and that one can survive without the other.

Furthermore, in democratic socialism the theory is that wealth can be forcefully redistributed through the government, or in other words that society has a right to the economic labor of all individuals.

At the heart of this destructive ideology is that economic freedom is unnecessary and that a society can still be free without it.

Europe has embraced this ideology to a large extent, and America is not that far behind.

However, there is an inseparable connection between liberty and property, a connection that, if severed, leads to the loss of both liberty and private property.

Why It Matters

It is your unalienable right to work, to labor, and to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Freedom means the ability to control your destiny through your own effort–if the government takes the fruit of your labor (your property) for anything other than taxes to support its proper role, it reduces your ability to create the life of your choice.

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is no force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.” -John Adams

Furthermore, property is a tool to express your unique contribution to the world.

Bill Gates shares his vision and business skills by creating computers. Ray Kroc shared his drive and innovation through real estate and hamburgers.

Without private property rights, these men and others like them would have no outlet to express their individuality.

If a person wishes to pursue their happiness by creating a business, that happiness will be deterred if they do not have access to create a physical manifestation of the business through property.

John Locke wrote extensively about this topic in his Second Treatise on Government. He wrote,

“[E]very man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

“It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer; no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to….

“He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his.

“I ask then when did they begin to be his? And ’tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done: and so they become his private right.

“And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? … If such a consent as that was necessary man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him.

“We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that ’tis the taking part of what is common, and removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use.”

Without economic freedom all other freedoms are obsolete. With freedom comes the responsibility to use your hands, your mind, and your strength to care for yourself, to provide you and your family with economic necessities and desires.

With responsibility comes opportunity to create your own destiny. Unless your private property rights are protected your ability to determine your life is severely limited.

Recommended Reading:

• The Mainspring of Human Progress by H.G. Weaver
• The Virginian by Owen Wister
• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

“The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority. –Alexander Hamilton

Simply put, legitimate foundation means the will of the People at large, while legitimate authority is the express permission granted by the People to the government to perform some function.

Put together, they form the philosophical foundation of the powerful idea that man does not exist for the state, but that the state exists for man.

Legitimate Foundation

The idea that the government should exist according to the will of the People and solely to benefit the People at large was revolutionary in the 18th Century. Previously, governments primarily benefited those governing, or special interests.

The American Founders taught that the will of the People, as expressed through constitutional means, is the only solid, sustainable, and legitimate foundation of republican government.

This does not mean, however, that they were referring simply to the concept of majority rule alone, as we learn from Federalist Paper #51; the idea is to guide the nation by the will of the majority, while protecting minority rights (i.e. preventing the majority from taking private property).

Legitimate Authority

Thomas Jefferson spoke of legitimate authority in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote,

“…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

The United States Constitution was the first (and to my knowledge the only) constitution to be instigated by, or to have originated in, the People, then ratified by the People.

In other words, the People, through their colonial representatives, called for the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Representatives at the Convention represented the People within their respective territories–not the government itself.

They were authorized by the People to do the will of the People. Our Constitution was initiated and created from the bottom up, rather than dictated from the top down.

Then, after its creation by the representatives of the People, the Constitution was taken back to the People–once again through their colonial representatives–to be ratified, or accepted.

Previously, the historical norm was for the government–whether through a monarchy, aristocracy, or other form of ruler’s law–to dictate from the top down the laws and constitutional forms that the People must obey.

As David Hume wrote in 1752,

“Almost all the governments which exist at present, or of which there remains any record in story, have been founded originally either on usurpation or conquest or both, without any pretense of a fair consent or voluntary subjection of the people.”

Why It Matters

To drive the point home with these critical concepts, think of illegitimate versions of the same concepts.

For example, illegitimate foundations of government would include a government being founded by the will of a monarch or a dictator, a special interest group, one branch of government solely, etc. and primarily to protect and benefit such individuals or groups.

Illegitimate authority would include any government imposing arbitrary laws without permission from the People to do so through constitutional means, any branch of government engaging in extra-constitutional activities; a special interest group, such as a banking cartel, exercising undue influence upon the People without their consent; etc.

Any time a government, individual, institution, or special interest group imposes any law, regulation, policy, program, or procedure without the express permission of the People through constitutional means–and backs it up with force and violence–tyranny ensues.

In fact, the word “tyranny” itself originates from the Greek, meaning “illegitimate ruler.”

It’s like your in-laws meddling with your children — only much worse, since it usually involves pesky things like theft, murder, rape, and pillage.

Danger From the People

However, an even more important point must be made, which is that the greatest danger to popular governments lies with the people themselves, rather than with illegitimate rulers or laws.

With the right and ability to vote and legitimately influence public policy comes the temptation for the People to vote themselves benefits from the national treasury. As Benjamin Franklin wrote,

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

Our nation flipped this ruinous switch in 1913, with the ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments and the passing of the Federal Reserve Act. I’ll save my analysis of these for another article.

The point is that with rights and privileges come responsibilities. We are so blessed in America to enjoy a constitutional structure based on legitimate foundation and legitimate foundation. However, this also means that We the People are primarily responsible for the maintenance of our freedom.

This requires education. As Thomas Jefferson wrote,

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

Recommended Reading:

Federalist Paper #38
Federalist Paper #22

The most common–and grossly incorrect–answer to this question is that we are a democracy. The right–albeit simplistic–answer is that we are a republic. A more sophisticated answer is that we are a constitutional republic.

The most thorough answer came from James Madison, who said that our form of government is an “Extended Limited Commercial Federal Democratic Republic.”

By “extended” he was referring to geography–never before in history has there been a republic that covered so much territory.

“Limited” refers to the fact that the Constitution expressly defines what the government can and cannot do.

“Commercial” refers to our national character.

The Founders said that there were three main national characters–martial, religious, and commercial. Rome had a martial character, as does China. Ancient Israel had a religious character.

Since religious and martial-character nations tend toward tyranny, the Founders chose commercial.

By “federal,” Madison meant as much power as possible was preserved with the People, and that the federal government only existed for specific and limited purposes.

The idea of federalism is that the closer one gets to the People the more power there is, while the closer one gets to the federal government, the less power one finds.

“Democratic” refers to the idea that we are a social democracy, although not a governmental democracy.

Social democracy is the concept that intrinsic in our culture is the understanding that all men and women are created equal, that no individual is better than another, and that everyone has equal opportunity to succeed.

(As an interesting side note, Oliver DeMille gives an updated version of Madison’s lengthy label. He says that we are now an “Internationalist, Sometimes Constitutional (Except Where Prohibited By Law), Extended (Globally), Increasingly Commercial, National, Representative/Virtual/Popular Democracy, With a Technocratic Supremacist Court.” But that’s a conversation for another day…)

Why It Matters

As James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #10:

“…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

“Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”

In a pure democracy, all it takes to pass a policy is simple majority vote. But what happens if the policy encroaches upon unalienable rights? If 51% vote in favor of it, the 49% who voted against it will be tyrannized.

Furthermore, what always happens in a democracy is that very few people are even actively involved–which means that it always degenerates into some type of aristocracy or oligarchy, or rule by few.

To quote James Madison again:

“A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

“The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

“The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.

“Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.”

In other words, a republic has a much greater chance of protecting and preserving unalienable rights than does a democracy.

Democracies in history have always degenerated into “mobocracies” that tyrannize minorities, and they have always failed.

Beware of those who say we are a democracy — they are those who will encroach upon your unalienable rights in the name of equality.

According to the American Founders, the proper role of government is to protect unalienable rights.

The government cannot rightfully do anything that an individual cannot rightfully do. In other words, if it is wrong for an individual to steal another’s property, then it is wrong for the government to do the same thing.

As Cleon Skousen put it in The 5,000 Year Leap, the government should protect equal rights — not provide equal things.

Competing views include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The role of government is to distribute all things equally (communism).
• The role of the government is to take care of its subjects (democratic socialism).
• The role of the government is to expand its empire (martial societies).
• The role of the government is to “help the little guy” (democracy).
• The role of the government is to promote the interests of “big business” (capitalism).

Why It Matters

By definition, government is force. Behind every government policy is a gun to the heads of citizens saying, “You will do this, or else…”

Therefore, anything other than the philosophy that the proper role of government is to protect unalienable rights always has and always will lead to tyranny.

The more government tries to “help” society, the more tyrannical it becomes. Since the government does not produce, it can only take what others has produced to fulfill its aims.

If it wants to provide welfare, it cannot do so without taking from one person or group of people to give to another. And since government is force, this is, as Frederic Bastiat said, “legal plunder.”

Follow-Up Question: Ideally, how, or by whom, should the poor and disabled be helped, if necessary?

Unalienable.com has the following great definition of unalienable rights:

“The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property. These rights are declared to be natural, inherent, and unalienable.

“By the ‘absolute rights’ of individuals is meant those which are so in their primary and strictest sense, such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it.

“The rights of personal security, of personal liberty, and private property do not depend upon the Constitution for their existence. They existed before the Constitution was made, or the government was organized.

“These are what are termed the ‘absolute rights’ of individuals, which belong to them independently of all government, and which all governments which derive their power from the consent of the governed were instituted to protect.”

In short, unalienable rights are the rights every individual has whether in or out of society.

In other words, if you live alone in the wilderness, do you have an unalienable right to “free” health care? Obviously not.

Do you have an unalienable right to till the ground and produce food, to build a house, to pursue your own happiness? Of course.

Civil rights are rights granted by the State that are not unalienable. Civil rights include such things as the right to drive and the right to vote.

Civil rights are legitimately created (at least as long as they are aligned with Natural Law) by the society to maintain peace, order, and security.

Why It Matters

A person who believes that man’s rights come from human sources does not differentiate between unalienable and civil rights. To him or her, all rights are civil, meaning they are granted by the State.

Without this fundamental understanding, no rights are sacred and unalienable — all rights can be revoked upon a majority vote or dictate.

This is why we hear politicians claiming such things as “health care is a right.”

A person who believes that health care is a right believes that the State can give and take away rights based on a majority vote or the whims of its leaders.

Follow-Up Question: Does taxation encroach upon unalienable rights?

The Declaration of Independence states that “…all men are created equal…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”

Sir William Blackstone wrote:

“Man…must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator…This will of his Maker is called the law of nature…This law of nature…is of course superior to any other…No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force…from this original.”

Others who have taught that man’s rights come from God and/or Natural Law include Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Montesquieu, and John Locke.

The competing view(s)–that rights come from the State, or collective society, or a monarch, or a “vanguard”–have been taught by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Jean Jacques-Rousseau, and John Rawls.

Why It Matters

If our rights come from a human source, whether that be collective society, a monarch, or any other person or group of people, then they can also be taken away by human sources.

In other words, unless rights come from a Creator or Natural Law–a source that transcends humans–they are not unalienable by definition.

If your right to life is granted by collective society, or a democracy, then your life can rightfully be taken by nothing more than a majority vote.

If your property is granted by a vanguard, or a group of elite individuals in charge of the state, then it can be taken at any point by the same people.

If a king grants you your right to raise a family and grow a garden, he can legitimately take your wife, sell your kids as slaves, and pillage your garden any time he sees fit.

Our constitution was not written to grant rights — it was written to secure rights that have always existed regardless of any government.

State sex and meth offender registries are clear indications that America is progressively forgetting its constitutional heritage and choosing legalistic security over freedom and virtue.

Donna Leinwand once reported in USA Today that,

“States frustrated with the growth of toxic methamphetamine labs are creating Internet registries to publicize the names of people convicted of making or selling meth, the cheap and highly addictive stimulant plaguing communities across the nation. The registries — similar to the sex-offender registries operated by every state — have been approved within the past 18 months in Tennessee, Minnesota and Illinois.”

Although the registries are almost universally considered to be expedient, they are clearly bills of attainder, which are expressly forbidden by the Constitution, both on the federal and state levels.

In Article I, section 9 of the Constitution we read that, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Section 10 continues by dictating that, “No State shall…pass any Bill of Attainder…’

The word attainder comes from the Middle English atteindre, which is the act of attainting, staining, disgracing, or tainting, and from the Old French ataindre, meaning to touch upon, seize, accuse, or condemn.

According to St. George Tucker, in Blackstone’s Commentaries,

“Bills of attainder are legislative acts passed for the special purpose of attainting particular individuals of treason, or felony, or to inflict pains and penalties beyond, or contrary to the common law.”

Offender registries taint the individuals placed on them after they have suffered the penalties stipulated by common law.

The most common argument in favor of the registries is the high rates of recidivism of sex and meth offenders.

But this is yet another example of our contemporary tendency to hack at leaves while ignoring roots.

We have created a culture — through changes to the Constitution — that weakens the family.

The best, most durable, and most responsible method for dealing with the dangers posed by sex and meth offenders is for parents to supervise their children.

But our first tendency is to look outside of ourselves to the government and the power of law to solve societal ills, instead of turning inward and taking personal responsibility to find solutions.

Our sense of morality has been, by and large, removed from spiritual roots and is determined instead by mere legality. And, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said,

“Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.”

Sex and meth offender registries are clear signs of a society that is straying from its roots of public virtue and constitutional government.

Ironically, we are using the power of government to solve societal problems that were created by an overzealous government in the first place.

Alexander Hamilton once wrote that,

“Nothing is more common than for a free people, in times of heat and violence, to gratify momentary passions, by letting into the government, principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves.”

If America is to survive, her people must return to the two things that have made her great: virtue and strict adherence to constitutional forms.

Using the force of law to fix societal problems is a temporary solution at best, and at worst, a subtle yet powerful form of tyrannical dependence.

The Alabama Federal Court decision ordering the removal of Chief Justice Roy Moore’s monument of the ten commandments from the state judicial building is an illuminating example of the contemporary trend in America of discordant, litigious minority groups causing an alarmingly steady fragmentation of our society.

As these contentious groups advance their short-sighted agendas, they debilitate the nation as a whole by undermining those unifying principles vital to our existence.

A week after the federal court ordered the monument removed, a disturbing CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll found that 77% of Americans disapproved of the controversial decision that ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with only 400,000 members nationwide (out of a total US population of almost 300 million), who found the monument “offensive” and complained that it made them feel like “outsiders.”

Those of the overwhelming (although remarkably passive) majority have to be alarmed by the destructive factionalism exemplified by this highly propagandized case.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, noted that

“Separatism nourishes prejudices, magnifies differences, and stirs antagonisms.”

He added that

“This multiethnic dogma abandons historic purposes, replacing assimilation by fragmentation, integration by separatism. It belittles unum and glorifies pluribus.”

The ever-widening dichotomy between dissentious minority groups and the majority, contrary to unification, will inevitably cause the dissolution of a strong national identity, which is imperative for the perpetuation of a healthy society.

Fanatical dissidence of this nature diametrically conflicts with the explicit purposes of the Constitution to “form a more perfect union, establish justice, and insure domestic tranquility” and to “secure the blessings of liberty.”

The irony is that the ACLU and other similar groups are steadily eradicating the very thing they purport to be fighting for.

The self-proclaimed mission of the ACLU is to fight for civil liberties so as to “prevent the tyranny of the majority.” The only problem is that their hypocritical methodology constitutes a tyranny of the minority at the expense of the liberties of all.

Alexandar Solzhenitsyn wisely noted that,

“The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals.”

James Hitchcock, an American historian, observed that,

“Values are necessary for the functioning of any society, and if they are not consciously adopted and publicly acknowledged, they will be smuggled in surreptitiously and often unconsciously. Values are always in real or potential conflict. And the state inevitably favors some values over others.”

In this case, the Alabama judiciary has obviously shown that they support the religion of non-theistic over Judeo-Christian beliefs, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans, regardless of religious belief or affiliation, adhere to the ethic found in the Ten Commandments.

Could not this majority legitimately argue that the monument should remain using the same reasoning: That the lack of the monument is “offensive” and its absence makes them feel like “outsiders?”

Other than a few glaring yet historically rectified contradictions, the legacy of American history has been that of broad ethnic, religious, racial, and linguistic diversity united behind the political ideal of inalienable rights and a morality that acknowledges God.

And while the upsurge of many historically maltreated minorities struggling to achieve equal rights has resulted in healthy consequences (such as the abolition of slavery, civil rights, universal suffrage, etc.), the current trend in America is to denounce the idea of a melting pot and to protect, promote, and perpetuate separate and divisive ethnic, racial, and ideological communities.

Unless the trend is halted, the segregation, tribalization, and fragmentation of America are inevitable. Schlesinger wisely said,

“…as we renew our allegiance to the unifying ideals, we provide the solvent that will prevent differences from escalating into antagonism and hatred.”

Recommended Reading:
Ike Wilson wrote another great article on this subject here.