The Third Right

While looking at my TTLB ranking (quite obsessively, I may add!) I found this guy right next to me. Looks like a smart fellow, except he may have gotten his wires crossed on one assertion:

The problem today between the religious and non-religious in Israel today is one that cannot be understated. It is the cause of continual strife, and it has a most obvious cause that everyone overlooks -- democracy. Yes, democracy, that god that failed, as Hoppe called it, is the root cause of much of the hatred that brews among brethren today in Israel, because the political process in the Israeli government is inherently designed to force people into a continual string of fighting to get what they want at the expense of the losers.

End the democracy and socialism in Israel, and replace it with a free market economy, and there will be peace among the Jews there.

I didn't know that democracy and a free market economy were mutually exclusive. Nor did I know that democracy and socialism always occurred together. Granted, pure democracy leads to infringement on liberties, but it also works to protect rights. Just look at Classical Athens: free enough to have Socrates, but harsh enough to kill him. In modern times, we have curbed these democratic excesses. America is unique, it split the atom, with the limitations on the powers of government, even that of democratic majority against a minority.

Let suppose that Man has three expressions of his person: his body, his mind, and his property. Modern politics has developed so that, in succession, each is protected. Beginning in English common law, the people limited government’s power to seize, detain, and imprison a person. Beginning in America, the people limited government’s power to infringe on opinion and expression. Yet the third element of man has never been fully secured. Our constitution prohibits non-reimbursed "takings", but that prohibition is vitiated by our governments unlimited taxation power. In terms of property right's protection, we are on the same level as the colonists were with protection of bodily rights. The colonists had some small requirements of habeas corpus and fair trial, but still allowed slavery and huge civil rights violations. Now, we have some pro-forma laws protecting property, but do not anything resembling full protection of that property against government disposal.

To fix the problem, I would propose a law or amendment that goes something like this:

Neither Congress, nor the states, nor any governmental entity under this Constitution shall make any law infringing on the people's rights of ownership, use, or disposal of their individual property, unless such law shall directly and proximately prevent the use of force or fraud against said property rights.

A pipe dream? Not necessarily. In some states, it is quite easy, by referendum, to propose and pass a constitutional amendment. Such states could serve as an example of what happens when you take the handcuffs off of people's industriousness enlightened self-interest.