A thought struck me that I’d like to run by the group. I’m very concerned about the government’s lack of respect for our personal rights. One of these rights is ownership of personal property. I’m concerned about the push toward socialism in America. Communism completely removes property ownership while socialism and fascism severely limit property ownership and personal freedoms of using that property. The line between communism and socialism is blurry in my mind. It’s a great thing to discuss, but not really the focus here.
Our nation’s founding documents couldn’t be clearer. Or could they? John Locke said that there was a basic right to “life, liberty and property.” Everyone familiar with Locke at the time knew that Jefferson quoted him when he wrote about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The change was striking, and for an important reason. I was taught that Jefferson did not use the word property, but meant it. The change was because of slavery. He knew that slave owners would use Locke’s version of the phrase to justify their right to keep their “property” – the slaves. (Looking back on that now, it doesn’t make sense in some ways. The slaves didn’t own their lives or get their liberty, but they could be someone else’s property??? Because of that I questioned what I was taught and researched it a little. Some still give slavery as a reason for the change. I’ll use it for the sake of my argument, but I admit that if this isn’t true, the rest of my argument is wrong.)
The Constitution with the original Amendments limits the government from unnecessary search and seizure of our person and property. You’d think that would be enough, but the early progressives achieved the 16th amendment that enabled relatively large amounts of people’s property to be seized. Over a hundred years later, we’re used to it. Our government silently takes a percentage of our incoming property every paycheck.
Also, we’re not free to do a lot of things with our property that we used to historically be free to do. “Keep and bear arms” has been limited extensively. Gun free zones limit where free citizens could once exercise their rights with their property. The Federal bureaucracy has grown very large so it can intrude deeper into our lives, telling us what we can and can’t do with our property. I could go on and on, but probably don’t need to in this group.
So it appears that slavery in America may have caused Jefferson to remove the word “property” from the Declaration of Independence. Would it be fair to say that since it did not explicitly say we have the right to “life, liberty and property” that 244 years later people think it’s possible to have our Constitution AND a socialism that severely limits or abolishes our property rights? Politicians continue to limit our property rights without amending the Constitution, so I think that is precisely the case.
Tying it all together, I think one can make the case that we’re feeling a consequence of slavery in America today through Jefferson’s word change in the Declaration of Independence. That consequence is government not honoring and protecting our natural right to ownership of property.
I think our founding documents are completely incompatible with Marxism, communism, socialism and fascism. One big reason is based on property rights. The Constitution establishes the protection of our natural right to own property. Marxism and its descendant ideologies at their core deny property rights.
Do you think the rise of socialism today was boosted by the past sin of slavery in our land? How do we move forward to combat the rise of socialism in America? How can we effectively communicate to those that benefit from others losing property rights that they jeopardize their own ability to own property? (And would they care?) Have we gone too far and lost too many property rights in America to every get them back? I hope not!
9 replies on “Is Socialism In America Boosted By An Unintended Consequence Of A Sin Of The Past?”
Thank you to everyone that posted comments. I’m always impressed with the level of wisdom and thoughtfulness in the community. I learned a lot putting together the article and reading the comments.
My big takeaway was that the progressives will push their agenda regardless of what the Constitution says. A change in wording to the Declaration of Independence to bolster what the Constitution clearly says wouldn’t make any difference. They know what they want and will achieve it by any means.
My comment now posted 9/4/20 at 5:41 AM:PDT —
I originally tried posting it on 9/2/20 at 4:00PM PDT and got a “comments closed” flag or button or box. I sent a message to Contact and got a reply from Scott, which I will respond to him in a minute. I have now clearly been able to post, but I was wondering if anyone else had had issues of that type?
Or is someone hacking BWDC??
My current theory is that an update to the comment gizmo is now flagging comments for moderation that have no content issues. I’ll look into, and hope they update the plugin soon. Sorry for the inconvenience. I’d approve them sooner if I didn’t have two full-time jobs.
“Do you think the rise of socialism today was boosted by the past sin of slavery in our land? ”
No. I am not an expert on Marxism but I understand socialism is a subset of communism which derived from Marxism. Marx first published his wrong and idiot ideas around 1844 [??] or long after the subject of slavery and its abolition was rampant in the world. Also the communist proletariat were supposed to be down trodden (European) industrial workers oppressed by the rich capitalistic owners, not slaves, per se. The political and economic results of socialism and communism have been shown to be such failures (USSR etc.) that the “socialists” cannot present them as valid, and disguise their real intent via citing the democratic – socialist Scandinavian states instead. But those states (especially Sweden) gave up on government ownership of production and similar high cost welfare efforts back in the 1990’s.
So now the socialists are on this “systemic racism” kick instead, where whites are irredeemably evil just for being white. But they ignore that 1) African slaves were captured and sold into slavery by other Africans, 2) some freed US slaves themselves became slave owners of other blacks, 3) very few US citizens today have ancestors who owned slaves or were even in the US until after 1865, 4) “only” about 400,000 of the several millions of Africans brought to the America’s ended up in North America, rather than SA or the Caribbean, and 5) several millions of whites were kidnapped from the Atlantic coasts of Europe, or subjugated and taken from the Balkans by Muslim slave raiders and traders. I also understand that if the cotton gin had not been invented in the early 1800’s to improve the efficiency of harvesting cotton, that the explosion in the cotton market and its expanded cultivation to other southern states might not have occurred. Some historians suggest that the institution of slavery might have died out as not being cost effective.
Like Chris Taylor said, some people don’t care about what the Constitution says. And IT mentions property, not happiness. The Declaration of Independence is an important document, but it is not the law of the land. The Constitution is. The Declaration is like a party platform in some ways. It states what is desired in the laws enacted if elected. The Constitution is the resulting laws. Slavery it not what drives people toward socialism or communism. Indeed, those two systems ARE slavery to a degree. You have limited or no rights. You have limited or no right to property. No or limited right to liberty. No or limited right to live! Remember how many.of their own people the Nazis, USSR, and communist China have killed.
Interesting take! I hadn’t seen that assertion/argument made before regarding the omission of explicitly mentioned “property”. I wonder if in the founders’ time it was perhaps self-evident that a right to “liberty” must include the right to make use of one’s property and the fruits of one’s own labor as one sees fit.
COVID quarantine, the ever-shifting goalposts, and the resultant impact on our ability to plan for the future (work, school, etc.) has had me thinking lots about the similar impact on ability to plan that lack of a clearly protected right to property does. Two different tools that can be used to undermine our liberty and ability to thrive and prosper.
I love our Constitution dearly, but have been forced to conclude that it is flawed in the sense of being insufficiently idiot-proof (particularly with regard to willful and determined idiots). When we draw up a Constitution for the Mars colony, I mean to press for it to include the phrase “as you damn well please”. That ought to do it. You’d think.
The comments about the government being for a just or educated or moral people should probably also include a clause forbidding morons and fools.
I think the “right to property” is tied more to the Obamacare mandate than slavery. Once you own property, it is yours to do with what you wish, but you cannot a right to something that imposes an obligation on someone else.
If I have a right to own property, from where do I obtain this property? My right of speech or of the press does not obligate anyone to provide the means for disseminating my speech or provide me a press (which is where the breakup of Facebook, Twitter and such run into problems. Common carrier I think is the right tack for that). I do have a right to the fruits of my labor and to do with my fruits what I wish. Purchase of property is one of the options if I can find someone willing to sell me property.
The argument of whether you have the right to slaves should hinge on whether people can be slaves or not. We recognize people have the ability to own pets (baring certain types considered too dangerous for a populated area). If former Africans were recognized as people, they would have had a recognized right to their life and liberty and could not be considered property,
What is written in the Constitution about our Rights is generally ignored or deemed wrong or out of date by the socialists, or just not understood at even a basic level, so the wording does not really matter. Convincing someone that it is in their interest to have property rights and own the fruits of their labor doesn’t really need to hearken back 200 years. I just ask people to think about any sort of communal living they might have been in, whether that is as a student in a dorm or frat or sorority, friends in an apartment or anything similar. Were the chores always done, on time and on schedule? Were there no disagreements over who purchased and provided the food? At work perhaps, are there none stealing credit for another’s work, or another’s food in the staff fridge? Of course all of those things happen, and if they do now while there are rules in place, how do you, budding socialist, plan to eliminate some of the most core parts of human nature?
I don’t think that will ever happen until the afterlife, and is a reason why even religious communes and family situations have so much trouble with the division of labor.
“Do you think the rise of socialism today was boosted by the past sin of slavery in our land?”
No. The Commies and Commies-who-have-not-yet-gotten-a-gun don’t give a crap about what is in the constitution.