Letter to the editor: Property rights should be considered human rights – The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, said that property has divine rights and the moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, anarchy and tyranny begin.

People today would not be ready to equate property rights with the laws of God, yet it is still true that the founding fathers held no doubt as to the supreme importance of private property rights.

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution expresses that right quite simply and directly by providing that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. This means that private property is not to be subjected to the whims and caprices of the majority, or of the government.

Today, supposedly educated leaders speak only in favor of human rights not property rights as if the two are in some way inconsistent or mutually exclusive. But the right to own property is a valuable human right. Private property rights are the soil in which our concept of human rights grows and matures.

Of all the precious freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights, none has become so weakened as the right of private ownership of property. Layer upon layer of governmental bureaucracy has been enacted to take this right away. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in McCullough v. Maryland: The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

Hence, so does the power to regulate involve the power to take away the right to own private property?

We the People must help to retain the fabric of our capitalistic republican form of government by electing only those politicians who believe in retaining private property rights as human rights.

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Letter to the editor: Property rights should be considered human rights - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle