It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong - Andrew P. Napolitano [21]
The common usage of the word secure has been corrupted over the years to mean “to obtain” as well as “to safeguard.” When this line was penned, however, secure only meant “to protect,” so, just as Locke said men are born with certain rights, to make certain no one can take these rights away from them, men created governments. This sentence also restates the Western premise that governments can only come about, and gain just powers, through a contractual agreement between those who are governed and the government. You must take note that nowhere does Jefferson assert that a government may attain its just powers from the consent of a majority. This means that the consent to be governed must be given by every single person, which also means that if any single person does not give his or her consent to the powers the government exercises over him or her, then they may in fact be unjust powers.
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Conclusion
Wouldn’t it be in every American’s best safety and economic interests to bring an end to this madness? The stranglehold the federal government has over our everyday lives is almost impossible to escape without a complete abolition of the government. How has the government been able to gain the powers necessary to grow so large?
Having explored the history and original understanding to the Declaration of Independence, we are now in a position to delve into the Natural Laws which the Declaration sought to secure. And we shall also see that throughout our history, the principles of the Declaration have been trod upon time and time again. If we, as the colonists, continue to live under the yoke of an unjust government, then we must similarly exercise our natural right to disobey the government.
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Chapter 2
Get Off My Land:
The Right to Own Property
In 1985, Henry Weinstein bought a commercial building at 752 Pacific Street in Brooklyn, New York. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that twenty years later the government would take it away and hand it over to a private developer. Weinstein said he would have been shocked if his property was taken away for a highway, library, hospital, or bridge; however, seeing it taken to pave the way for Forest City Ratner’s (FCR) Atlantic Yards project was in his own words “the most un-American thing [he has] ever experienced.” FCR, owned by Bruce Ratner and Russian mogul Mikhail Prokhorov, then sold tax-free bonds to finance the development’s keystone venture: An 18,000-seat basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues near downtown Brooklyn. Was America supposed to be a country with a government that can just take away your property against your will and transfer it to a basketball team?
American history is riddled with stories such as this one of the government either physically taking private property or regulating the usage of the property to the extent where it is rendered useless. Many historians believe that a sovereign state has an inherent right to seize private property. This power originated from tyrannical monarchies in Europe. For example, in 1066, William the Conqueror seized practically all of the land in England. While he maintained absolute power over the land, including the right to repossess it, he granted temporary possessions, called fiefs, to landholders who served as stewards. In return for this favor, the stewards paid fees, pledged allegiance, and provided military services to the king.
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Could you imagine living in a system where you could never own your own property, but instead, you could only possess property while constantly having to pay to use it, and provide your leaders with military service in the event of war? It should not take such a wild imagination to envision this, considering that currently in the United States, we live under such a system. Individuals are forced to pay income taxes for the fruits of their labor. The product of your labor—wages—becomes your property, and when the government taxes it, the government is saying, “We have granted you the right to work. In return