Opus 2024-129: Property Is Liberty

I am thinking about the communist manifesto and it’s emphasis on property.  It does not want you to have any.  The communists have that in common with autocrats,  monarchies,  kings and any other powerful political force.  All of these have made a monopoly of owning property.  We have a record of Pharaoh bring that about.

(Gen 47:20 KJV)  And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh's.

And much of the world in order to own property you need to be either royalty, nobility, or the church.

While this is the norm for pagan culture it is antithetical for Biblical societies.  In the Bible, we have a lot of evidence that personal property was real and good.  In proverbs 31 the wife buys a field and plants a vineyard.  We have the king who had a property owner executed so he could buy his property.  Abraham bought land to bury his wife.  And so forth.  

When Israel came to the promised land, it was divided up by clans and later on by family.  We know this because they were not supposed to move boundaries.  They were not supposed to take the land from widows and orphans.  And there was a provision for returning land to his original family in the Jubilee.

(Lev 25:23 KJV)  The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.

I don’t know that this law was followed but it was the way God intended it to be.

One of the salient motives for people coming to America was the knowledge that there was land to be had.  The government did not make it impossible to own your own farm or home.  In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson did not have “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, he had “life, liberty and property”.  At the end of the Civil War the Homestead Act was passed that made it possible to claim 160 acres of land if you improved it and lived there five years.  

Property was recognized as a part of liberty.

That is why out communist overlords are determined to do away with private property.  Notice how many laws make it hard to buy your own home.  Notice the economic policies that want to force us into 15 minute cities.  Think zoning laws, environmental impact statments, wetlands regulations, building permits and the list goes on.  What we see going on in Texas now and across the country as states and the federal government grab more land is a similar movement.  In a state like Nevada the government owns almost everything.  Every year they gobble up more land to preserve for future generations, or at least their future generations.  Us peasants will only have access to the great outdoors if it is allowed.

When you hear of anything that limits your right to buy and own land or anything else that would be considered property an alarm should go off in your head.  Big Brother wants you in a tenement, without a car and dependent on your government handouts.  As the memes keep reminding us, “You will own nothing and be happy.”

homo unius libri