Civilization Values, Part III: Property Ownership

This is part III of a series about the values necessary for civilization. Part I was about  life, and Part II was about truth. The values of honoring God, life, family, truth, and property are a brief summary of the Ten Commandments, but also followed by any other culture that could be called civilization. Respecting property ownership comes up in “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not covet.”

Much of the material in this series comes from the Spherical Model website, written mostly between 2008 and 2010, in the Civilized vs. Savage section. In the earlier posts I’ve also added a few current comments, before, after, or within.

image from here

For today, I’ll just point out that there’s a strong connection between valuing property rights and civilization. A type of government that takes away property rights, or devalues them, deciding how or whether a worker will be allowed to spend her earnings, taking away her property if the rulers decide they know better who deserves that money—such a government is not a path to civilization. Socialism, then, is de-civilizing. It leads southward on the sphere, toward tyranny, poverty, and savagery, rather than toward the goals of freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Here’s what I wrote about respecting property ownership back in 2010.

___________________

Value Property Rights

“Thou shalt not steal” is another necessity of civilization. An economy can’t thrive without respect for individual property ownership. In a lecture I once heard by University of Houston economist Bart Smith, the surprising thing he said was, “the economy is successful where the people are good.”  He showed a number of examples. It’s one of those commonsense ideas that aren’t really so common.

The culture in Mexico, for example, periodically goes through a retrenchment where they say they are going to root out corruption. But the same people live in the culture; often the same people who took graft before hold similar positions of authority, so the same corruption quickly reappears.

People actually have to believe in being good, in choosing not to be corrupt because it is a matter of personal honor. And those who cannot acquiesce to the desire for honesty need to be removed from the civilized portion of society (the more widespread, the more difficult to isolate). Religion, caring about God’s will more than selfish will, gives a rationale for honesty that allows society to prosper, and is a basis for making the change that imposing written laws cannot do.

image from here

A few years ago my husband had a computer stolen from his car. He had a lunch meeting in a restaurant and didn’t want to deal with the computer backpack at his table, so he left it on the floor, under the back seat, unfortunately only partially hidden, and locked the door. Someone with a crowbar bashed the window, grabbed the computer, and took off. It was never recovered. That computer was the only place we had photos from the previous month, not yet printed out, including our first meeting with our future daughter-in-law and also a two-day teen camp for our homeschooling group. The pictures more than anything were a painful loss. We lost some business files, but fortunately our financial files weren’t on that computer, and many other things were either not a great loss or were replaceable. The window and the computer were insured, but not until after a $1000 deductible, at a time when we were attempting a small business and had very little income. It was financially very painful, and it was hurtful to feel that, even in a locked car, in a public parking lot, someone was savage enough to consider he had more right to our possessions than we did. When you’re going through life trying to think of society as civilized, it shocks the senses. You feel betrayed.

I’m sure our experience is so common that everyone reading this has either experienced similar theft or knows someone personally who has.

When our kids were younger, we lived in a semi-rural neighborhood near a relatively small metropolitan area (about 160,000). The kids came and went throughout the day. We locked the door when we left home, because we had grown up in bigger cities. But seldom would it have been necessary to lock the door to prevent theft. In the neighborhood where we live now, in a city of several million, we keep the front door locked, usually with a deadbolt and another key lock, even when we’re home. We have an alarm system, connected to a service that has more than once sent police officers to check out whether we were safe when the alarm went off accidentally. We carry the house key if we so much as leave for the park or the mailbox.

I should add that this is a relatively safe suburban family neighborhood. But the freedom we enjoyed in the safer rural place doesn’t exist here. We spend resources and effort on our safety that we wouldn’t have to spend if the place were so civilized that no one would dishonor themselves by taking what didn’t belong to them.

[Aside: It may be worth noting that, the more urban the area, the more crime you can expect. Urban settings in today’s world are nearly always less civilized than non-urban settings. Coincidentally, if you look at the political beliefs of the basic urban dweller, you can see that they prefer socialism and governmental control to freedom, possibly out of fear caused by the constant threat of chaos.]

It takes a truly uncivilized (savage) mind to assume you have a right to the belongings of someone else when you have neither worked for nor earned the belongings. That’s why “Thou shalt not covet” is also important. Wanting what your neighbor has is a big step downward from wanting something like your neighbor has, while rejoicing that he can enjoy it, and then setting as a goal earning something similar for yourself.

[Another aside: The lottery, and other forms of gambling, reinforce the idea that it’s a good thing to get something for nothing. The most likely to fall for this lie are the poor, who can least afford to lose the money they do get from their labors. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that gambling costs society about $2 in social programs (welfare, crime) for every dollar it brings in as supposed income for the state. The solution shouldn’t be “let’s have our own gambling so those dollars don’t leave the state”; it should be “let’s educate the people about gambling so their hard-earned dollars are put to good use in our society instead of draining out in wasted gambling elsewhere.”]

Coveting is placing your wants above the rights of your neighbor. Stealing doesn’t happen if you don’t covet first. Coveting is the thought, convincing yourself you are deserving and the neighbor isn’t; stealing is the act of taking because you have rationalized that you deserved it. In a civilized society, the urge to covet and steal are corrected at around age 2-3, and continue to be monitored by parents until a person reaches adulthood; only the uncivilized keep coveting and stealing into adulthood. If these relative few are held accountable—are removed from civilized society until and if their behavior is corrected—then society is safe from the decay. But if they’re not held accountable, if they are accepted and even sometimes considered clever, then the happy sense of living in civilization declines.

Tyranny and Terror

I’ve been going through the online course offered by Hillsdale College called Public Policy from a Constitutional Viewpoint. Last week was week six. The lecture, given by Will Morrisey, professor emeritus of politics at Hillsdale, was on “Terrorism and Foreign Policy.”

Professor Will Morrisey
screen shot

What caught my attention was how he defined terrorism, using the concepts of tyranny and civilization. There are three interrelated ideas: political freedom versus tyranny, economic freedom versus coerced or controlled economy, and civilization versus savagery. That sounds like we’re describing the Spherical Model. 

The half-hour lecture is coherent, so it’s hard to pull out quotes without missing some of the flow of the argument (which is why I spent the day transcribing the whole thing, as a starting point, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything). So I recommend the entirety. [It may require signing up for the class in order to view, but there is no fee.] 

Here’s a key: as it says in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal,” and “they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights”: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Morrisey uses the word regime to mean, “the most authoritative form of ruling in a political community.” He calls the type of regime we have in America a democratic republic—democratic because it is not based on any right by birth to rule, but all citizens are equal; republic because, rather than directly ruling ourselves, we elect representatives. He also calls us a commercial republic, a term I hadn’t heard before:

In addition to being a Democratic Republic, we’re also a Commercial Republic. And on the same natural rights foundation. Commerce, or trade, is the practice of self-government in the realm of economic life. Commerce and trade operate by persuasion, not command and coercion. In both our political life and our political economy, Americans rule themselves by consent.

Consent isn’t mere assent, or acquiescence. Consent means reasoned assent. Whether it comes to selecting a congressman or buying a house, either way we’re comparing and contrasting; we’re thinking about the choice we’re about to make.

A regime consisting of a tyrant or of an oligarchy, commanding a military and a secret police, enforcing edicts on who is to rule us and on what we buy and sell, with most of the profits going to the tyrant or the oligarchs, would leave a people with very different habits of mind and heart than a people that had established a democratic and commercial Republic.

To live in a tyranny or an oligarchy is to have a different mental and moral environment. And the founders of tyrannical and oligarchical regimes know that.

Both political and economic freedom require consent, as opposed to coercion. This is background to the “what is terrorism” question. Here’s the simple definition:

Terrorism is savagery deployed as a technique by rulers or would-be rulers.

He adds more detail later, in describing the definition that has been with us since the Declaration of Independence.

Terrorism, a form of warfare and of ruling that refuses to distinguish ages, sexes, and conditions, aims at ruling not by reason, but by fear. Terrorists attack civilians. This is true of terrorist organizations that don’t control territory—the old Irish Republican Army, Al-Qaeda, for example—and those that do control territory, and indeed control sovereign states—the Nazis in Germany, the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, the Maoists in China. 

But more than that, terrorism is anti-civilian in a much deeper sense; terrorism attacks civility itself, the habits of self-government by reasons persuasion. It seeks command with no backtalk. And it does so because, whether it’s deployed against civilians and against civility, by the Nazis and Communists of yesterday, or the jihadis of today, it denies the principle of the American founding that “all men are created equal.”

Alternatively, it may deny that all those we call men are really men, really human at all.

His definition is broader than I would have used. I would have called the Nazi and Soviet regimes unjust wars, but their attempt at gaining territory was mostly military. However, where they purposely targeted civilians, including people living in their own countries, Morrisey and I agree on definition.

So, terrorism, committed by either a state or a group, is a war crime; it attacks all ages, sexes, and conditions. It is savage, not civilized. It intends to rule, not according to the will of the people, but by coercion. It intends to impose and enforce tyranny, both political and economic tyranny.

He notes that those who claim “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” are usually Americans—and they are Americans who fail to remember what their regime is: a way of protecting life, liberty, and property. More than that, terrorists who claim to be freedom fighters or soldiers of God are nevertheless terrorists if they fail to value life—and fail, even to view all humans as human.

He tells this story from shortly after 9/11.

An Arab television station aired a film in which a three-year-old girl was asked, “What are the Jews?” “The Jews,” she answered dutifully, “are apes and pigs.”

Such a catechism of contempt flows from the rejection of natural right. It forms habits of mind and heart consistent with the regime of tyranny. Tyranny enshrines not the natural rights to life, but the right to kill.

The Islamic version of terrorism is new, but tyranny—and its refusal to value all lives as equally human—has been around all along.

Either you value all lives equally, or you don’t. In America we do. One example Morrisey shares is about the natives of the continent:

When fighting the American Indian nations during and after the Revolutionary War, George Washington and the other founders distinguished between what they understood as the savage nations and the civilized ones. For example, they referred to the Cherokee Nation, the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, the Creek, and Seminole Nations as the five civilized tribes. Civilized Indian nations that were not allied with the British Empire against us were not the enemy. Some of them even fought on our side.

The early Americans settled land for these civilized tribes, gave them farming implements, and intended to live peaceably together. Morrisey acknowledged, later in the lecture, that there were unfortunately times the nation failed to follow its own policies, as in the Trail of Tears. It isn’t, of course, a matter of race the determines who is savage, but the behavior.

Early on, during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, he faced, not terrorism, but piracy, sponsored by the Muslim states of Morroco, Algiers, and Tripoli. Jefferson was no isolationist when it came to keeping our trade lanes clear.

But Jefferson fought, not all Muslims, but those whose savage behavior was intended to ruin the democratic and commercial republic that was the fledgling United States of America.

While there were very few Muslims in America early on, we can see how the founders treated various religions in general.

There were few if any Muslims in the United States in the 1790s when he was president. But we do know the way Washington thought about religious congregations generally. Among his first acts as president were his letters to the major American religious congregations, his own Episcopalians, but also Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Quakers, and perhaps most importantly Jewish congregations in Newport, Rhode Island.

Although European regimes had reestablished one or several types of Christianity as politically privileged, Washington’s America was having none of that. The government of the United States, he told all of them, “welcomes members of any religious confession insofar as they conduct themselves as good citizens of the United States.” [from “Letter to the Hebrew Congregation,” August 18, 1790]

Although many American protestants had looked with asperity at Catholics, and peoples around the world had persecuted Jews, Washington and the other founders cared only that citizens act like citizens, obeying the laws respecting the civil and natural rights of their fellow citizens. “No set of religious practices consistent with American constitutional law will be grounds for denial of civil rights by the American federal government.”

The simple way was the best way—don’t judge the religious people on their beliefs, but look at whether they live as good citizens. They need to support our laws, and value and respect the natural rights of their fellow citizens.

The lecture was, on the whole, about developing policy, so it ends with this:

Any American foreign policy must first understand what America is, what we stand for. Confusion on that basic point can only yield confused policy.

After clarifying who we are, the next priority for American citizens who think about our foreign policy must be to identify the primary enemies of our regime and rank them in order of danger…. In dealing with the terrorists we must take care not to exhaust ourselves, leaving our country vulnerable to more formidable powers.

The third and last priority is the strategic one. Setting a strategy, choosing allies, calibrating diplomatic, economic, and military actions to weaken and eventually defeat the terrorists. No simple rule can guide us in that strategy, because it’s a matter of practical judgment on the spot.

In such judgments we should take care to guard our sovereignty, our self-government, by recurring to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which can and should both animate our actions and restrain.

So, to summarize, we need to have confidence in who we are: the people who believe in freedom, free enterprise, and civilization—because we have God-given rights to life, liberty, and property. We live in peace with those who believe those same things. Those who want to impose some other regime on us must be resisted to the fullest extent.

Review of the Proper Role of Government

This is a public service message for several presidential candidates, their supporters, and anyone else who may have forgotten (or never learned) the answer to this question: What is the proper role of government?

Choose the best answer. The proper role of government is: 

A: to redistribute wealth, provide jobs, and control wages.

B: to protect the environment, end racism, and enforce agreement with prevailing opinions.

C: to offer security, education, and health care. 

D: to protect life, liberty, and property.

Clue: the answer is in the Declaration of Independence.

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.

What does “Pursuit of Happiness” mean? because that’s the single difference from answer D. It means “property,” but more; it includes choosing how to pursue wealth—what job or profession you will choose—and it includes other pursuits that may or may not lead to gaining property, but are ways you choose to spend your life. Property is, after all, the things you accumulate by living your life in a way that exceeds subsistence. So “property” is shorthand for “how you live your life and pursue happiness,” but since “pursuit of happiness” is less concrete, for our purposes we can refer to property and be close enough.

If we turn to the Preamble of the Constitution, we can see how life, liberty, and property are applied:

 We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Protecting life, liberty, and property, then, require some security things, like common defense from external forces, peace among the states (domestic Tranquility), and a justice system for lawbreakers and settling disputes, plus “general Welfare” good practices like standardized weights and measures, and maintaining the value of money, and arguably interstate roads and bridges.

All of these things are designed to “secure the Blessings of Liberty.”

There are some more specifics within the body of the Constitution—enumerated powers. That doesn’t mean just numbered (although they are), but named, or specified. Nothing is enumerated there that isn’t designed to protect life, liberty, and property. And then comes the Bill of Rights, which spell out things that government absolutely can’t do, just in case someone comes along in a generation beyond the founders that doesn’t understand the “self-evident” truths.

There’s another truth about the role of government: 

Whenever government goes beyond its proper role, there will be unintended negative consequences—and they are likely to be exactly opposite of the stated purpose of the government action. 

For example:

·        Government interference intended to alleviate poverty increases poverty, and keeps individuals in poverty who would otherwise have worked their way out of it.

·        Government interference intended to provide jobs limits job creation, and likely increases unemployment, underemployment, and/or people giving up and leaving the workforce.

·        Government interference intended to provide minimum “living wages” limits job opportunities for the lowest qualified workers, leaving them with no wage, rather than a living wage, and leaving them without experience-building work to increase their wage-earning abilities for later.

·        Government interference intended to protect the environment damages the environment while also damaging free market solutions that would have otherwise improved the environment.

·        Government interference intended to end racism increases looking at race rather than looking at character among citizens.

·        Government interference intended to provide education ensures an inferior education than can be achieved through free market innovations, private schools, and homeschools.

·        Government interference intended to lower the cost of high education has raised the costs of higher education and student loans, making it more difficult for more worthy students to get the education they need and want and are willing to work for.

·        Government interference intended to lower healthcare costs and healthcare insurance rates raises the cost of healthcare and insurance, making paying for basic health services less affordable for more people, and prevents free market innovations and philanthropy that could solve the problems.

It’s a pattern. You can count on it. Civilized free people in a free market are unstoppable when it comes to innovation, wealth creation, and strength. And they keep thriving as long as the people live civilized lives, and as long as the citizens are diligent in limiting government.

This can be true not only in the United States, but anywhere in the world where the rules are followed:

Freedom comes from government limited to only protecting life, liberty, and property. Prosperity comes from free market, which rewards hard work and innovation. Civilization comes from living lives that value God, life, family, and truth.