All Enemies Foreign and Domestic

John Locke's Second Treatise on Government details a fundamental truth, a natural law, if you will with regard to man. He said that every man ought to own himself (not be the subject of a king or tyrant) and that he ought to own the fruit of his labor. In other words, he said that man is entitled to life, liberty and estate (property). The, I believe, divinely inspired, Thomas Jefferson, when tasked for making the case for rebellion against the crown, tapped Locke's wisdom as well as that of another Scotsman, Hutcheson, who fleshed out the concept of unalienable 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." Is there any American that argues that this isn't the essence of what separates us from the rest of the world? On the steps of the Washington Mall, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called these "magnificent words."

To reinforce the significance of Locke's and Hutcheson's thoughts and Jefferson's recognition of their centrality to the American ethos, our founding charter, The Constitution contains the words, more closely resembling Locke's concept. This concept is so important that is contained within our Bill of Rights. The 5th amendment's "due process clause" contains these words, "nor shall any person...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The 14th amendment was intended to secure the rights of former slaves. Again, in section 1 of the 14th amendment in the due process clause these words are written "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." I think our framers made their point, life, liberty and property are sacred to Americans and central to who we are. On another thread, I will tell you how and why those words are responsible for the greatest economic juggernaut in history if you don't understand already but we have more urgent business now.

In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels summed up what they hoped to accomplish in the Communist Manifesto in one phrase, the elimination of private property. Private property rights in this country, that which makes us distinctly American, have been under assault since then. Private property rights secure freedom and liberty from the tyranny of government. The Lochner decision, Williamson vs. Lee Optical and others have eroded the concept of property rights to replace them with the nebulous concept of "economic rights." Economic rights erode property rights. Education, health care and social security are not unalienable rights. Unemployment compensation and food stamps are not unalienable rights.

Patriots threw tea from the struggling British East India Company, a monopoly granted by the crown to enforce its right to impose the Stamp Act, into Boston Harbor for the equivalent of today what would be less than a dime. From that time until 1913, there was no tax on income in America. In 1848, Marx and Engels urged "heavy progressive taxation of income."

Thanks for the history lesson Bardo, so friggin' what?

Along comes the 44th President of the United States, having explained in clear terms that what he wants to do is to dismantle what makes us distinctly American and he is doing it with alacrity. In the audio above, Obama describes what he thinks is America's fundamental flaw, the Constitution ought to list what government's obligations are to its citizens, including the redistribution of wealth. If the recording was a little too professorial for you, he told "Joe the Plumber" that he wanted to spread the wealth around. Has he spread some wealth?

The American concept, post civil war, post Wilson and FDR, has never been under more threat than it is today. Barack Obama is an intelligent man who has just pulled off a coup on the American way of life without a shot being fired. Why should I fear islamo fascists when the person at the helm of my government wants to destroy what I hold dear faster than they and apparently with our permission?