At the founding of our nation, “liberty and property were synonymous.” However, children in today’s public schools are not taught that their rights are protected by God and they often don’t understand property rights at all. Individual rights are now routinely stripped by governmental overreach, and because of failures in the education system, citizens don’t even comprehend what they are losing.
Conservative writer John Anthony, the founder of the Sustainable Freedom Lab, says that “Today Americans believe that issues like climate change and discrimination transcend property rights. That it is selfish to think only of your rights, and that global citizens must place humankind’s good before personal rights. So divorced are we from understanding property rights that millions of Americans unquestioningly applaud their loss as insignificant, compassionate, or even necessary.”
The removal of God from schools is why much of the public was accepting of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Anthony points out how this socialized healthcare law used “hidden taxes” in the name of the common good to “snatch property of one individual and redirect it to another.”
Another way Obamacare mandates impinge on individual freedom occurs when physicians are required to ask patients about gun ownership. If the patient refuses to answer, the government won’t pay for the patient’s visit to the doctor, and doctor won’t receive payment for his work! This is both confiscation of personal property, and a way to control citizens’ behavior! Anthony reminds us that both “your doctor’s income and your personal information are each your private property.” Personal information should always be considered private property.
James Madison’s 1792 treatise warns us that property “embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right…” Madison lists as property your physical goods, money, opinions, freedom to express your opinions, personal safety, and a host of things we may not think of as “property.”
Those in power will always want more power. Anthony leaves us the warning that “for over 100 years, our government has sought to trivialize God’s role in our rights and presence in our schools [in order] to open the doorway for more power.”
