People with property have something to defend

Every person throughout history has been born possessing property: their own lives. It matters not if a person is born into slavery or an oppressive system that attempts to deny them that selfownership by force, fraud, or coercion; only in murder can a person’s property in themselves be taken away. An extension of self-ownership is the ownership of external property, that is property outside of the self that has been acquired by an individual through various just means. There have been attempts since the dawn of civilization to curtail the right of a person to own property.

In the age of Kings, all property belonged to the sovereign and could be taken away at will, at any time, and without due process of law. In the 20th Century, oppressive regimes have asserted that all property belongs to the Party or to “all people” and the acquisition and accumulation of property is selfish and immoral. All these attempts have one thing in common: the eradication of individual identity. Nothing is more detrimental or dangerous to an established power structure than individuals asserting their own freedom and defending what is theirs from the aggression of others.

Modern day attempts to infringe the right to ownership of external property have sinister and clandestine aims to the same effect as the kings of antiquity and the dictators of last century. People without property can be told what to do; people with property will always have something to defend and a reason to defend it. — Timothy Lynch, Chico