Property rights

[Griffith]

I'm interested to know what you guys think of property rights. I'd always assumed property rights were guaranteed by the government as part of your liberty but it seems many of the founding fathers had mixed ideas about them.

Benjamin Franklin

"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."

[Katt]

I had to reply to this as I have always felt strongly about property rights and feel that all other rights are tied to property rights. As we lose the rights to our property, we lose our other rights. Imminent domain and property taxes are two strong blows to our property rights and other rights which stem from them (such as the right to keep the fruits of our labor). I don't make a lot of money, so I work hard for everything I have and managed to buy a modest house with a small piece of land. Now I have to fight the taxes being raised every year.

I've always heard "If you think you own your house, try not paying the taxes (rent) on it. When they take it away from you, you'll know who really owns it." Same thing with your car and the registration fees.

Also, here in Texas we keep fighting the trans texas corridor (they've changed the name but this is still being planned) where they are cutting a 2 or 3 mile swath through the middle of the state (I-35 and at least one mile on each side) and taking people's land from them.

I had never specifically searched for founding father quotes regarding property rights but I knew they must have understood this as I did. I don't know why they didn't take care to spell it out clearly in the constitution.

Here's a few I just found :

“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: 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.” Samuel Adams

“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.” John Adams

"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.'" Thomas Jefferson

"Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would. Nor is there anything in the common law of England ... inconsistent with that right." John Adams