Saving the ownership society.

• Author: Arnn, Larry P.
• Position: American Thought

BEFORE HURRICANE KATRINA flooded the tear ducts of our politicians and the vaults of our Treasury, Pres. George W. Bush had us talking about America's "ownership society." This is one of the best things he has done. He did it prominently in his reelection campaign. He did it bravely in relation to Social Security, risking the outrage of the media and the votes of older people. If he did it in some ways foolishly, never mind. It showed promise because it had us talking about something central for a change. This question of ownership is at the heart of the U.S. It always has been.

"No taxation without representation" echoed in the hearts and spirits of our Founding Fathers because it called up the ideas they held most dear. If you may not tax me except as my representative, then, for the same reason, you may not govern me except by my consent. If you cannot take my property except by law and with difficulty, then my title to my property is real. It truly is mine. I own it. If James Madison is to be believed, my ownership of my property stands on just the same footing as my entitlement to speak my mind or to say my prayers or to vote my conscience.

It therefore is no accident that the Virginia Declaration of Rights, when it lists our inherent fights, mentions the "means of acquiring and possessing property" alongside life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and safety. This document was adopted on June 12, 1776, less than a month before the Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson turned to it in the writing of the Declaration. Several people voted for ratification of both documents.

So, it is no accident that the Bill of Rights (in regard to the Federal government) and the 14th Amendment (in regard to the states) protect against the deprivation of our "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law.

It follows that the idea of one man owning another man was condemned by our Founders, some of them slaveholders themselves who were--and who knew they were--condemning themselves. Our fight to our property, by their principles, stems from the same source as our fight to all things that naturally belong to us, including our bodies, conscience, and relationship with our Maker. One man, said Pres. Abraham Lincoln famously, has no right to eat the bread wrong from the sweat of other men's faces.

If this question of the ownership society is controversial today, it is another among many signs that we are in a time of fundamental dispute. If it has been engulfed for a moment by the Gulf of Mexico, it will come back nonetheless for two reasons: first, because it is engraved upon us by our first coming together, and second, because it is in jeopardy today. This jeopardy is plain in several facts of direct relation to the right to property, and in several indirectly related--through their implications for constitutional government.

Start with the direct. The right to property stands now, after a generation of court rulings and political practices, upon a different footing. This is true at every level of government from all three branches of the Federal government down to the tiniest tribunal in the smallest hamlet. Which property owner, wishing to build a house or expand a factory, does not fear exactions, delays, and denials that may ensue anywhere and are bound to ensue wherever land is dear?

Right here in southern Michigan, some local officials oppose in principle the "conversion of public land to private," as when a property owner might take control of the unused alley behind his or her house. These officials have forgotten if they ever knew in the first...