By Kelly O'Connell ——Bio and Archives--August 1, 2010
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If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute. (Rights of Man)Founders saw tax money as being just another part of a larger group -- Property. James Madison, the main author of the US Constitution, wrote a compelling article on the larger notion of Property:
This term (property) in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual." In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandise, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, whichimpartially secures to every man, whatever is his own. (The Papers of James Madison 29 Mar. 1792 Papers 14:266--68 )We note a fascinating development of Revolutionary thinking expanding the notion of Property, by such Enlightenment philosophers as John Locke, Adam Smith and David Hume. The Founders believed the defense of private property was a foundation of liberty. Richard Pipes, perhaps the world's greatest authority on communism and socialism, claims freedom itself is impossible without a defense of private property. He writes in Property and Freedom,
In medieval Europe, and especially the seventeenth century, when the modern ideas of liberty were born, "property" came to be conceived as "propriety," the sum total of rights to possession as well as personal rights with which man is endowed by nature and of which he cannot be deprived except by his consent and not even always then (as, for instance, in the denial of the "right" to sell oneself into slavery). The notion of "inalienable rights," which has played an increasing role in the political thought and practice of the West since the seventeenth century, grows out of the right to property, the most elementary of rights. One of its aspects is the principle that the sovereign rules but does not own and hence must not appropriate the belongings of his subjects or violate their persons -- a principle that erected a powerful barrier to political authority and permitted the evolution of the first civil and then political rights.
But of all the intellectual problems the colonists faced, one was absolutely crucial: in the last analysis it was over this issue that the Revolution was fought. On the pivotal question of the nature and location of the ultimate power in the state, American thinkers attempted to depart sharply from one of the most firmly fixed points in eighteenth-century political thought; and though they failed to gain acceptance for their strange and awkward views, they succeeded nevertheless in opening this fundamental issue to critical discussion, preparing the way for a new departure in the organization of power.Definitions of British sovereignty evolved for decades, morphing to a tyranny of Parliament, according to Bailyn. Ultimately, Americans could not accept the British theory that all sovereignty resided in the English Parliament.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...This battle over Anglican establishment resembled the medieval Church's struggle that released so much violent energy in Europe the previous centuries. We cannot today understand the extent colonial life was intertwined into the life of the Protestant churches. It was the work of Madison and Jefferson in Virginia's constitution to articulate a well-expressed defense of religious freedom of choice. Other scholars have revealed how the strata of American political theory could not exist but for Jewish and Christian teachings. It's already been shown in this journal how the US Constitution was based upon the Puritan notion of Covenant, as shown by the work of Donald Lutz; whereas the federal theory of power sharing owes its conception to the ancient Jewish federal government, seen in Daniel Elazar's many works. And Michael Novak argues in a compelling essay titled "Sacred Honor: Religious Principle In The American Founding" (in The Enduring Principles of the American Founding) that much of American political theory comes from an Old Testament understanding of God. Even more intriguing is Ellis Sandoz's description, in his A Government of Laws, Political Theory, Religion and the American Founding, that the entire undertaking of 17th century political writing -- such as John Locke's Second Treatise on Government -- is a type of civil theology. The Founders regarded such as a "Divine Science of Politics." In 1646, John Winthrop recited the Lockean formula that government primarily existed to protect ... "lives, liberties, and estates, etc., according to their due natural rights as freeborn English." In Locke's understanding of Property, reiterated by James Madison and all Founders, "Property" properly understood contained one's Natural Rights, including all species of Freedoms and beliefs. Here we see the inseparable connection between the Founders religious ideas and their theory and defense of civil rights.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 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 to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
This shows that the end and design of civil government cannot be to deprive men of their liberty or take away their freedom; but, on the contrary, the true design of civil government is to protect men in the enjoyment of liberty. From hence it follows tyranny and arbitrary power are utterly inconsistent with and subversive...of civil government, and directly contrary to natural law, the true foundation of civil government and all politic law. Consequently, the authority of a tyrant is of itself null and void... Our obligation to promote the public good extends to the opposing every exertion of arbitrary power injurious to the state...No man can be a good member of the community that is not as zealous to oppose tyranny as he is ready to obey magistracy. A slavish submission to tyranny is a proof of a very sordid and base mind...when rulers become oppressive to the subject and injurious to the state, their authority, their respect, their maintenance, and the duty of submitting to them, must immediately cease; they are then to be considered as the ministers of Satan, and, as such, it becomes our indispensable duty to resist and oppose them.If we are still under the same Constitution, don't we yet have a patriotic duty, divine or not, to oppose all tyrants?
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Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.