Property Rights and Rosa Parks

Sometimes the greatest courage is shown by doing the simplest things. Sometimes we don’t recognize the larger issues. The most perfect recent example is Rosa Parks who refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in the colored-section of a Montgomery, Alabama bus in December 1955. Civil rights activists enshrined Rosa Parks for her social defiance and simple courage. After her death in 2005, she was accorded an unusual honor. Her body lay in state under the Capital Dome in Washington, D.C.

What has everybody missed with regard to the original incident that propelled Rosa Parks to fame? What has been overlooked? After all, what was she asked to give up? A seat? Subway riders from London to Tokyo stand all the time. Real men stand up, or used to stand up and offer their seats to women at the nod of a head. Giving up one's seat and standing in a public conveyance is no big deal. So why was this act of defiance such a big deal?

The only explanation most people express is one of racism. If it was no big deal to have to stand, then why did the caucasian man demand to be seated? His action asserted a societal convention of racial superiority prevalent in the old South nearly a century after the end of a civil war, a convention that said no black person had ‘any right’ that a white man was bound by law or courtesy to respect, even in inconsequential things such as standing or sitting on a bus.

Most would argue that the man who was demanding Rosa Parks’ seat in the so-called colored-section of the bus, and the bus company that acceding to it, proved that the doctrine of "separate but equal" (that had existed before being outlawed by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954) was a lie. The demand for separation in itself created an entitlement of one race over another that violated basic notions of fundamental fairness and fundamental rights, as equal opportunity policies today shamefully do (with your acquiescence) in reverse. Do you understand the point?

Setting aside the emotional notions of race, what was the fundamental right, by staying seated in the face of a threat of arrest and jail, that Rosa Parks was asserting? As she told National Public Radio in a 1992 interview, "I did not want to be mistreated; I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for."

“I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for."

In short, Rosa Parks was asserting a fundamental property right. Rosa had purchased her ticket, and paid for it by the fruits of her own labor. She had boarded the bus first. She even sat in the section designated for her. Since she had purchased that seat and the bus company had sold it to her, nobody had a right to take her seat away from her. Rosa Parks' simple act of defiance was as profound a declaration of property rights and of freedom - as any in American history.

In her auto biography, "My Story," Rosa Parks wrote:

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

As far back as the Magna Carte in the 13th Century, it was established that "[n]o freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised [i.e. dispossessed of property] ... except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of land."

Rosa Parks’ rejection of the bus system's attempt to dispossess her of her seat was in line with what John Locke in his Social Contract theory would argue was the right to object by any individual denied his basic property rights, which governments are originated to defend, not offend.

Or, as Adam Smith in Lectures on Jurisprudence, declared:

"The first and chief design of every system of government is to maintain justice: to prevent the members of society from encroaching on one another's property, or seizing what is not their own (including earned wealth). The design here is to give each one the secure and peaceable possession of his own property."

Our most basic founding documents state, "all men are created equal, endowed by their creators with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." What happiness can be pursued if government can simply take away anything that by "right" is supposed to be yours and yours alone? Maybe the government is telling you that what you think is your property is not yours, but belongs to the government.

Who will be the Rosa Parks of Eminent Domain property rights? Who will refuse to give up their seat on the bus that they have paid for and are entitled to keep, free from interference or seizure by the state, local municipality or corporate pirates? When that day comes, the whole nation will be in the bleachers cheering for the private property owner.

Who will be the Rosa Parks of gun ownership and refuse confiscation or registration of their privately owned and constitutionally safeguarded guns and ammunition?

Who will be the Rosa Parks of freedom of speech, the first to refuse political correctness? Don Imus had the opportunity but failed to rise to the occasion.

For that matter, who will be the next Rosa Parks? Are you willing to defend your property rights?

While you're thinking about it, keep in mind that everything is 'property rights,' at least in a free society with "liberty and justice for all." Conversely, whatever property it may be, if the State taxes it, the State owns it and rents to you the privilage of possession, transfer and/or personal use. If the State can take "your" property from you by any artifice for failure to pay taxes, then you never owned it.

The Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Those amendments were adopted between 1789 and 1791, and while many scholars attribute their intention to limiting the power of the federal government, the fact is that they were intended to protect your private property rights. They were added in response to criticisms of the Constitution by the state ratification conventions and by prominent individuals such as Thomas Jefferson (who was not a delegate to the Constitutional Convention). These critics argued that without further restraints, a strong central government would eventually become tyrannical. The amendments were proposed by Congress as part of a block of twelve in September 1789. By December 1791 a sufficient number of states had ratified ten of the twelve proposals, and the Bill of (property) Rights became part of the Constitution.

An "Amendment" is a change to the U.S. Constitution as it was originally written and ratified. The Constitution provides for several mechanisms for change, none of which include a judicial fiat, congressional legislation, or executive disdain for the rule of law.

A general interpretation of inapplicability to the states remained until 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, which stated, in part, that:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. ” The Supreme Court has interpreted this clause to extend most, but not all, parts of the Bill of Rights to the states. Nevertheless, the balance of state and federal power has remained a battle in the Supreme Court.

The amendments that became your Bill of Rights in 1789 were:

First (property right) Amendment: addresses the rights of freedom of religion (prohibiting the Congress' establishment of any religion over another religion through Law and protecting the right to free exercise of religion), freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, and freedom of petition.

Second (property right) Amendment: declares "a well regulated militia" as "necessary to the security of a free State", and as explanation for prohibiting infringement of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

Third (property right) Amendment: prohibits the government from using private homes as quarters for soldiers without the consent of the owners.

Fourth (property right) Amendment: guards against searches, arrests, and seizures of property without a specific warrant or a "probable cause" to believe a crime has been committed. Some rights to privacy (another property right) have been inferred from this amendment and others by the Supreme Court.

Fifth (property right) Amendment: forbids trial for a major crime except after indictment by a grand jury; prohibits double jeopardy (repeated trials), except in certain very limited circumstances; forbids punishment without due process of law; and provides that an accused person may not be compelled to testify against himself (this is also known as "Taking the fifth" or "Pleading the fifth"). This is regarded as the "rights of the accused" amendment. It also prohibits government from taking private property without "just compensation," the basis of eminent domain in the United States.

Sixth (property right) Amendment: guarantees a speedy public trial for criminal offenses. It requires trial by a jury (of peers), guarantees the right to legal counsel for the accused, and guarantees that the accused may require witnesses to attend the trial and testify in the presence of the accused. It also guarantees the accused a right to know the charges against him. The Sixth Amendment has several court cases associated with it, including Powell v. Alabama, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, Gideon v. Wainwright, and Crawford v. Washington. In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled that the fifth amendment prohibition on forced self incrimination and the sixth amendment clause on right to counsel were to be made known to all persons placed under arrest, and these clauses have become known as the Miranda rights.

Seventh (property right) Amendment: assures trial by jury in civil cases involving anything valued at more than 20 United States dollars at the time, which is currently worth $300, when accounting for inflation.

Eighth (property right) Amendment: forbids excessive bail or fines, and cruel and unusual punishment.

Ninth (property right) Amendment: declares that the listing of individual rights in the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not meant to be comprehensive; and that the other rights not specifically mentioned are retained elsewhere by the people.

Tenth (property right) Amendment: provides that powers that the Constitution does not delegate to the United States and does not prohibit the states from exercising, are "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Your life is your property, as is every other form of your "property;" even your job is a form of property. Property rights are guaranteed to you by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights (first 10 Amendments). If you think the State, or your state, has extended their control to some aspect of your life in contravention of the Bill of Rights, then the State has diminished or seized (taken from you) some aspect your private property.

What specifically do you think you still own as private property that the State has not already seized (evidenced by the imposition of taxes) or regulated in some fashion? Do you even have freedom of speech?

Red State Patriot

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Posted July 15, 2007 12:03 PM
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