values


Understanding the Real Issue W


Private Property, the Foundation of Freedom


hen we think about real estate most of us ponder what we should have bought or sold and if this most significant of investments will hold its value. There is however a “value” inherent in the ability to own property that is a crucial link to personal freedom and our most basic liberties. As Ayn Rand once said, “Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.” Or Walter Lippmann who wrote, “Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.” Yet even in America, this fundamental right is steadily eroding.


by Eric Wright


A respected author and speaker, Eric Wright


is the assignment and copy editor for Spacecoast Business magazine and the founder and pastor of Journey Church in Suntree.


Crock Pot Not Microwave Like the constant force of waves washing away a beach, the assault on private property has been relentless and made by the most articulate of social engineers. Hiram Stafford wrote in The Liberator in 1844, “Individual possession is the great wedge, which has split society into millions of fragments ... It practically and theoretically denies the brotherhood of man.” I thought “Thou shalt not steal” or “Thou shalt not covet” helped promote the brotherhood of man, but that command assumes that the individual is responsible for his desires and his destiny. Or the always clever Oscar Wilde who


said in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, “It is the recognition of private property that has really harmed Individualism, by confusing a man with what he possesses. So that man thought that the important thing is to have, and did not know that


the important thing is to be.” Pretty noble coming from the man who said, “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” Speaking of imagining, John Lennon described his utopia as a place where we, “Imagine no possessions”, but neither he nor Wilde ever liquidated their estates for this cause.


Same Idea but


Different Means This concept that owning property is the root of all evil or as Sigmund Freud said, “By abolishing private property one takes away the human love of aggression,” is finding new momentum in the most troubling of places. I hesitate to even mention it, as it’s almost like questioning the virtue of the Virgin Mother in the Middle Ages. It isn’t to rid man of avarice that private property must be eliminated; it is to save our planet! Have you noticed… That the latest Hollywood villains are


not fanatical terrorists, especially in films targeting children? Rather they are a much more despicable and diabolical group… developers! That for centuries, Western Civilization


saw the earth as a stewardship, to be preserved and protected, just like our families? Today we are told we aren’t stewards; in fact the idea that land is “ours” at all is a cultural misconception. The land doesn’t belong to us, “we belong to the land.” And who do you suppose is the “voice,” the “prophet” of the earth, to whom we belong? Well that is the scary part. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t


THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT of owning property is steadily eroding.


believe in environmental responsibility. What concerns many is that, under that banner, Big Brother is assuming dictatorial powers to seize and control all land. Thus, the basis of freedom, since the Israelites trekked out of Egypt so each person “could sit under his own vine and fig tree,” is disappearing and Marx’s dream of all property being owned by the state is becoming a reality.u


96]JULY2010 spacecoastbusiness.com


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