Tools of peace
This subject has been discussed in this column before. The fact, as I see it, is that rights don't overlap. If you have a right to something, the right doesn't go away just because of where you are. This most often crops up in gun rights discussions, where I am in the minority with my views. There is no need for "laws" that affirm your right to not be raped while at work or at the store. So it is with your other rights. No one can claim that by hiring you or opening for business their act negates your rights in any way. That would mean you have no rights; only privileges.
A recent column by the Dallas Libertarian Examiner caused me to think about this again. The more I contemplate it, The more clearly I see it this way, and the less I am able to see the other point of view. I know that's not good. So, convince me I am wrong.
Here is my explanation of how I view the subject:
I believe we each carry with us a "me-shaped bubble" of our own personal property. That personal property bubble remains intact no matter where we are. It consists of your body, your clothing, and the space between the two. No one can claim ownership of me and eliminate my property by posting a sign. Property rights don't overlap, and no one, under any circumstance, can trump your right to your own body, and that includes what is inside your clothing, as long as it doesn't make an appearance or "leak" out (like radiation or viruses).
I am not going to, nor should I, ask every property owner if I am allowed to enter his property "whole" when the property is open to the public or if I get an invitation. Do I also need to ask if my private thoughts are acceptable? My underwear? My brand of deodorant? Not one of those things is any less dangerous to someone who is not attacking the innocent than is my gun. It is a dangerous precedent to single out guns as the only thing that we need to declare to everyone, everywhere we go, every time we step out our front door. This is what hoplophobes would like us to do: think about guns differently than any other object.
If you have no "bubble" of personal property when you leave your home, on your body or in your vehicle, then the real-world implication is that you have no property at all except when you stay home. Anywhere you go, the property owner can demand that you hand over your money, your clothing, or your life. After all, someone claims every square inch of land you must traverse as you go about your day.
This brings up the subject of employees' cars in the employer's parking lots. Your property inside your car is also in a personal property "bubble". The presence of your car itself is a different matter. No one is obligated to allow it (or your body) on their property, but once they do, they accept it ALL as a package deal. If your car is still your property while it is on someone else's property, then the space inside your car is still your property, not part yours and part someone else's, and certainly not all someone else's. To claim otherwise is what government tries to do when it claims that by using "public" roads, we are consenting to whatever they decide to do to us and our cars. it is utter authoritarian nonsense and is not consistent with liberty.
No one has the right or the authority to make a contract which trades your right to not be molested or killed in order to enter their property. They have the right to not allow you on their property at all, or they have the right to ask you to leave if for some reason they decide they do not like you or what you have on your body. Everyone has the right to be a hermit if they so choose. They also have the right to use self-defense if you attack someone on their property, and I would never second-guess their determination of "how much" force they use in the defense of life and property. So don't cross that line if you do not wish to face the consequences.
As I go about my life I "assume liberty". Obviously, if you rightly assume liberty, but are then asked to leave by a property owner who doesn't believe in allowing you to be a sovereign individual who is responsible for yourself, by all means, leave and don't go back. No one like this has your best interests at heart and this person is not your friend. The only reason anyone wouldn't want you to be armed is so they can do things to you which you would not allow if you were adequately able to stop them.
I understand that ALL rights are, at their foundation, property rights. People say: "Entering someone else's property is a privilege, not a right." I agree. And my body remains my property no matter where I am, because that is a fundamental right that can't go away. You can't enter my property without my permission. If I invite you, I will always assume you are prepared to be a fully-functional human being. Anything less is disrespectful or worse. If you don't trust someone to be armed, you don't trust them and have no business inviting them onto your property in the first place.
Comments
Interesting idea. I like it. It implies that the government has no authority to require us to be disarmed in government buildings, in courtrooms, on airplanes, or even while visiting prisons. That pushes even MY crypto-anarcho-libertarian worldview. But it's a push in the right direction. Thank you, sir.
I think you are talking about ‘inalienable rights’: those rights which cannot be denied under any circumstance, by mutual consent, ‘government decree’ or otherwise.
Whilst I agree with the sentiment, I also feel it is the right of the property owner to mandate that all those who use their property must pass a certain requirement (i.e. submit to a weapons search). It’s your choice whether or not you want to use the property (and hence fulfil the requirement).
For example, a prostitute may refuse to have unprotected sex; whether or not the client has an STD is irrelevant. Likewise, a restaurant owner might not like you wearing a gun inside the restaurant, whether you intend to use it or not. They have the right to refuse you use of/entry to their property on that basis, and you have the right to go elsewhere.
All transactions go both ways, and require mutual consent. If one party does not wish to engage in the transaction, then it should not occur.
I very much agree, Kent. My objections to some proposals made in this discussion involved entering into false contracts with those few property owners who specifically make disarming (or whatever) a condition of entering their property.
Willfully making false contracts does not increase our freedom. :)
If there are no contracts involved, the owner remains free to ask us to leave if he wants. We can always go somewhere else.
We must act on the basis of both non-aggression and integrity.
I think the mistake in thinking "real eastate rights" can trump "bodily property rights" comes from the noble desire to be "nice". But since "real estate rights" can't even exist without "bodily property rights" I think this is a false notion.
If only our society were free enough to make this an issue.
The problem with this legalistic reasoning is the assumption rights exist at all. There ain't no such animal. There is only local convention, and lines in the sand - stuff people put up with or don't.
As a practical matter, if someone who owns property publicly requires those he invites in to not have a gun, or even red hair, we really ought to conform. It's better to be honest and straightforward with others. It's better not to sneak around and make up excuses. If we don't like it, we can always avoid going into the property. AND point out the property owners wants people defenseless against crime, etc. if it bugs us that much.
I should add that, to the extent I understand this argument, I agree. Yes, "assume liberty" by all means. Don't voluntarily restrict yourself or ask permission to be armed somewhere.
Hat-tip to you Kent, you nailed it.
The whole idea of liberty in America is that we were ALL intended to be free the way that the Lord God INTENDED us to be. And, We The People ordained and established our government to SECURE that blessing of Liberty for us.
Supposed 'ownership' of dirt, rock, steel, and wood' does NOT grant one dictatorial powers over their fellow citizen. Or, at least it's not supposed to in the intended ideal of American liberty. And there is a large amount of foundational documentation which proves that fact. One of which I will post here:
James Madison
“Property,”
March 29, 1792,
This term in its particular application means “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.” ....
...In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property*.
In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the SAFETY and LIBERTY of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights....
...Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.
According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property....
...More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man's religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a NATURAL and UNALIENABLE RIGHT. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.
That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his PERSONAL SAFETY and PERSONAL LIBERTY, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest....
...A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellation proverbial of the most compleat despotism. That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favour his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the economical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!....
...A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities....
...If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their Fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States....
...If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.
* - This theme plays right along with the document that seemingly started it all concerning the American tenets of "Life, Liberty and Property":
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to LIFE; Secondly, to LIBERTY; >>>Thirdly<<<, to PROPERTY; TOGETHER with the RIGHT TO SUPPORT AND DEFEND THEM IN THE BEST MANNER THEY CAN. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”
- Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin, Nov. 20, 1772 'The Rights of the Colonists', (actual title; 'The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting').
A business that doesn't allow We The People the uninterrupted exercise of our Natural Right of Defense. Has no claim to protection from OUR government for their own "rights". "Do unto others as you would have done unto you".
My private property is my "nose". If I publicly ask you not to put your "fist" (gun) in it, and you agree as a condition of entering my property, you should be required to honor that contract.
This should NEVER apply to public streets/right of ways/etc.
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