We establish governments to protect our rights, and delegate to them the exclusive use of force in the resolution of conflict when our rights are violated.

Rights are based in property. Your rights to the ownership of your property (including your own body, your labor, and the things you acquire through lawful exchange with another) are absolute and inalienable.

So now this government, which we established to protect our life, liberty, and property… taxes our property. And if we don’t pay the state its ransom, it uses the force we delegated it to take our property away.

Something has gone horribly wrong here. This does not sound like a right to ownership to me, it sounds like we are privileged to hold land so long as we’re paying tribute to the state – a privilege that will be revoked and the land taken away from us if we don’t pay.

I got involved today in helping a family member understand the foreclosure process. Take a look at the wording of this FAQ from the Clinton County, MI web site:

Q. If I don’t pay my taxes, will I really lose my house and property?

A. YES. Property owners who had delinquent taxes under the old law could lose their property, but they had more time to pay and more “second chances”. Under the new law, if your taxes are delinquent for three years, that’s it. You’ve lost the property.

Q. What happens after my property is Foreclosed? How do I get it back?

A. FORECLOSURE IS FINAL. YOU CANNOT GET YOUR PROPERTY BACK AFTER IT HAS BEEN FORECLOSED. PROPERTY THAT HAS BEEN FORECLOSED WILL BE SOLD AT PUBLIC AUCTION.

That reads like an owner extending privileges to me. It also reads like an overbearing parent threatening punishment on a misbehaving child – “That’s it, you lose!” and “WE’LL YELL AT YOU IN CAPS TO ASSURE THAT YOU UNDERSTAND.”

You don’t own your property, you lease it from the state. The parasite that is government has grown into a full-scale disease, with complete control over the host.

When people submit themselves to a legislature of their own making, it is obvious that they cannot let that legislature destroy that which they had hoped to secure in entering into society. Whenever the legislature tries to take away or destroy the property of the people, or reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, it puts itself into a state of war against the people, who are then immediately justified in rejecting it.

– John Locke