The Essential of Homeownership

By Mark Fish

“I believe life, liberty and property are essential to sustain free individuals and a robust society. It is for this reason no food, water or shelter needed to sustain life should ever be taxed”

It has come to my attention that some have viewed this statement as “quite revolutionary”. Others have inquired to the point that I feel compelled to deliver my reasoning for this statement into the public domain.

Yes, this is a revolutionary statement but it is not a new concept. The concept of individual ownership of one’s own life, liberty and property has been written in the hearts of man since we first became aware of our humanity. This concept was only recently publicly acknowledged during what many consider our age of enlightenment (1688-1789). An age in, which reason, was advocated as the primary source and basis of authority. The United States of America was the first nation in Earth's history to enshrine these principals in its founding documents. This is the American Revolution. Open combat has subsided but the battle continues.

While volumes can and have been written on these principals, I will in this article, endeavor to address the issue the taxing of homes and the right of ownership.

The desire for home ownership has long been held as the core of the American dream and for good reason. A home is the direct result of an individual's labor. Once this essential of life is acquired, the fruit of an individual's labor can be utilized in other ways. Ways that have a great benefit to the individual and society at large. What business, church or civic organization does not profit by the leisure time and resources of its customers or members? When men and women are free to live their lives outside of indebtedness, they are truly free and society prospers. This is not the state of our current affairs.

Our current system of home ownership is an oppression of individuals and has lead to a state of bondage for a majority of Americans. The money changers and scribes of our day, Bankers, Realtors, Mortgage Brokers and Government Bureaucrats, all profit from this bondage of their fellow man. They have a vested interest in keeping home prices artificially high and above true market value. As this system collapses the cries to protect the perpetrators of this oppression are increasing.

The two forms of enslavement that are used against Americans are Voluntary and Involuntary servitude. While voluntary servitude is legal, involuntary servitude is not. The voluntary servitude of easy credit can be avoided by proper education and a return to a cash based economy. “If you can't pay for it don't buy it” avoids voluntary servitude. Those in commerce who want to expand markets without developing any additional resources will certainly resist this movement. Involuntary servitude happens when individual's have no choice but to expend their labor to satisfy the ever increasing demands of government simply because they are exercising their right of home ownership.

If government can confiscate your property for nonpayment of an annual fee they are in fact declaring your property rights are a government issued privilege no different than a hunting or fishing license issued for the commonly held resource. The problem is a home is not a commonly held resource.

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John Locke stated in his Two Treatises of Government (1689) that man has a right to “not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offense deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it.”

In 1763 William Pitt the Elder said: ''The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown (government). It may be frail, its roof may shake, the rain may enter, but the king of England (government) cannot enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.''

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson, no doubt a student and along with his peers in agreement with Locke, authored in America's Declaration of Independence affirming our inalienable right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”.

There is reason for the deviation from Locke's “life, liberty and estate (property)” to Jefferson's” Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The declaration of Independence preamble's first statement is that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Jefferson a Virginian was no doubt acutely aware of the issue of slavery (the treating of humans as property) and wanted no language in the declaration that implied approval of the practice to his contemporaries. The issue of people as property was left to be resolved by another generation.

Immediately after the ratification of the thirteenth Amendment to America's Constitution abolished the concept of humans as property on December 6, 1865, Congress proposed the 14^th Amendment which reaffirmed the founder’s intent to preserve property as inalienable right. As stated in the aforementioned amendment “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. It was ratified July 9, 1868. Clearly 221 years of precedent have established home ownership as a legal right to privately held property and that one’s home is not owned in common by government.

On the issue of due process the question is, when can a person be denied the ability to exercise their rights? The correct answer is only when that person is judged by a jury of his or her peers to have abused those rights to violate the rights of other humans and in other words convicted of a criminal act.

It's worth mentioning here the non-human entities such as corporations do not have rights, only privileges issued by the state. Only individuals and the state has rights. The state rights are held only with the consent of a majority of individuals. Since individuals have a right to own property paid for by the fruit of labor, the inability or even the refusal of an individual to pay property taxes is not a criminal act and should not result in property confiscation.

Our current state of affairs has left many Americans home owners servants to the government that we are supposed to be the masters of. Benjamin Franklin's generation gave us “a Republic if you can keep it.” We have not. The answer to the question asked by our national anthem “does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” Is no. Abraham Lincoln's “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished from the face or the Earth.

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American's have become beggars at the feet of a tyrannical coalition of self-interested bureaucrats, self- absorbed politicians and self-promoting business and labor interest.

The Supplication of these American Beggars?

Dear God in heaven,

Show us the way to unbind these chains we have bound ourselves with. Awaken us to the wisdom of the ages. Allow our leaders to see the enormous benefit to society of men and women living off the fruit of their own labor. Help us eliminate property taxes on homes as a way of guiding us to the lives you have intended for us, lives as free men and women in the greatest Democratic -Republic on Earth that is a shining example for all of mankind. As we again prove ourselves worthy, may America once again be blessed.

Amen