OPINION:
This past week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went on The View to call over 50% of Americans “greedy” simply because we believe in less government and want Washington D.C. to keep its hands off our private property.
Here’s exactly what Mr. Schumer said in describing everyone who voted for fewer taxes and purging the Swamp of trillions of dollars of unconscionable waste this past November. “Their attitude is, ’I made my money all by myself … How dare your government tell me how I should treat … the land and water that I own?’”
Mr. Schumer concluded, “[For Republicans] government’s a barrier to people, a barrier to stop them from doing things [with their businesses, their land, and the things they own].”
Thus, in these few short words, Mr. Schumer proved something we’d known all along: He and his party have no regard for one of the key tenets of our Constitutional Republic: The right of ownership and private property.
If Mr. Schumer had read just a little bit beyond what his dearly loved government-run public schools teach, he would know that the right to acquire and keep property was not considered greedy by our Founding Fathers but was instead thought to be a cornerstone of a free society.
Here are just a few of what could be dozens of quotes:
George Washington wrote that “Freedom and Property Rights are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other.”
James Madison added, “The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.”
Samual Adams said, “First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist,” proclaimed John Adams, “Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.”
In the 1790s, Justice William Paterson ruled that “the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent, and unalienable rights of man … No man would become a member of a community in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry. The preservation of property then is a primary object of the social compact.”
Justice Joseph Story explained in 1829 that “government can scarcely be called free, where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon the will of a legislative body. The fundamental maximums of a free government seem to require, that the rights of personal liberty and private property should be held sacred.”
Justice Stephen J. Field, the most influential jurist of the Gilded Age, wrote, “It should never be forgotten that protection to property and persons cannot be separated. Where property is insecure, the rights of persons are unsafe. Protection to the one goes with protection to the other, and there can be neither prosperity nor progress where either is uncertain.”
Later, Calvin Coolidge said, “Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing.” And William Howard Taft added, “Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution.”
The repeated references by our founding fathers and those who followed them to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were predicated upon property rights and property ownership. John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson believed in the absolute value of property ownership as being hand in glove with individual purpose and fulfillment. For them, the work of your hands was inviolate. When you labor, you are compensated with property (i.e., money), which allows you to purchase more in food, clothing, houses, farms, etc.
This acquisition process brings a sense of joy and happiness in that it represents achieving your goals, dreams, and aspirations. Every man’s property is his own. It is the result of his effort and represents not only what he wants but also what he wants to be. In other words, in America, you are your own person, and your property is yours.
Our constitutional republic was founded on the principle that your property is synonymous with your liberty and security. It is said that one of George Washington’s favorite Bible verses was Micah 4:4: “Every man shall sit under his own vine and his own fig tree and shall not be afraid.”
Something the Democrats clearly don’t understand is that it’s your vine, it’s your fig tree, and it’s your farm, house, ranch, bank account, and front yard. What you have earned and acquired is not Chuck Schumer’s, and no amount of his juvenile-head-wagging mockery should make you afraid to tell him and his party to keep their hands off it.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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