Private property?

A responsive reading, in response to an astonishing comment by Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, as quoted by Jeff Sharlet in "Inside America's most powerful megachurch," in the May 2005 Harper's.

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need."

-- Acts 2:44-45

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"Thou shalt not turn away from him that is in want, but thou shalt share all things with thy brother, and shalt not say that they are thine own."

-- The Didache

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"Therefore all things are common; and let not the rich claim more than the rest. To say therefore 'I have more than I need, why not enjoy?' is neither human nor proper."

-- St. Clement of Alexandria

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"From those things that God gave you, take that which you need, but the rest, which to you are superfluous, are necessary to others. The superfluous goods of the rich are necessary to the poor, and when you possess the superfluous you possess what is not yours."

-- St. Augustine

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"If one who takes the clothing off another is a thief, why give any other name to one who can clothe the naked and refuses to do so? The bread that you withhold belongs to the poor; the cape that you hide in your chest belongs to the naked; the shoes rotting in your house belong to those who must go unshod."

-- St. Basil

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"The rich have that which belongs to the poor, even though they may have received it as an inheritance, no matter whence their money comes."

-- St. John Chrysostom

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"When you give to the poor, you give not of your own, but simply return what is his, for you have usurped that which is common and has been given for the common use of all. The land belongs to all, not to the rich; and yet those who are deprived of its use are many more than those who enjoy it."

-- St. Ambrose

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: 'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.'"

-- 2 Corinthians 8:13-15

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"'What should we do then?' the crowd asked. John answered, 'The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.'"

-- Luke 3:10-11

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?"

-- Matthew 6:25

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

-- 1 Timothy 6:6-10

"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

-- Pastor Ted Haggard

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter."

-- James 5:1-5

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The scripture quotes above are from the NIV. The quotes from the early fathers are mainly from Justo L. Gonzalez's invaluable book, Faith & Wealth: A history of early Christian ideas on the origin, significance and use of money. I could easily have gone on and on and on citing both the scripture and the saints in a similar vein.

Pastor Ted's embrace of "private property" as the badge. hallmark and signifier of Christianity is absurd. Christians do believe and always have believed in the right to private property, but that right has always, always been limited. And the insistence on those limits has always been just as important, or more important, than the insistence on the right itself.

Allow me to quote again from the late John Paul II's encyclical On Human Work:

The church's constant teaching on the right to private property and ownership of the means of production differs radically from the collectivism proclaimed by Marxism, but also from the capitalism practiced by liberalism and the political systems inspired by it. In the latter case the difference consists in the way the right to ownership and property is understood. Christian tradition never upheld this right as absolute and untouchable. It has always understood it as subordinated to the fact that the goods of this world are meant for all.

Christians cannot speak of being "pro-private property" without also insisting that any understanding of private property is subordinate to the common good, to what is often called "the universal destination of goods." Pastor Ted is wandering off and should take care lest he be pierced with many griefs.

N.B. Clearly, Christian thinking on wealth and property has "evolved" over the last 1,500 years. It is rather rare, these days, to hear a Christian assert or even defend the idea that "superfluity is theft" -- yet that was the consistent and universal teaching of the church during the first four centuries of Christianity. This evolution or sophistication of Christian teaching is, likely, a concession -- the gradual, frog-in-a-kettle process of accommodation to this world. Yet despite that, again, I'm willing to entertain the idea that this evolution is also in some ways reasonable and justifiable. But it is hypocrisy and nonsense when contemporary Christians who have sold off and abandoned every vestige of the traditional Christian understanding of wealth turn around and insist that the Christian understanding of sexuality is fixed, immutable and eternal. These people strain at the gnat of same-sex love while swallowing the camel of credit card usury. They are so obsessed with their mistaken belief that they live in the most promiscuous society of all time that they have failed to notice they live in the most affluent, the haughtiest, proudest and least concerned with the poor.

Comments

[burritoboy]

Most people don't know that the ancient world's preferred economic theory was either heavily regulated and controlled private property (read Aristotle's Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, Plato's Laws, Xenophon's Oeconomicus) or outright communism (Plato's Republic pre-eminently). Most of the utopias in Greco-Roman literature are explicitly communist ones. Many think the early Church's economic thinking borrows heavily from these communist utopias.

[Roxanne]

Burritoboy beat me to it.

[Karl]

Fred,

Most of those quotes don't count, cuz' those guys got "St." in front of their name, which means they're Romish Papists. We can't have any of that in Jesusland, now can we?

Secondly, I'm not completely sure how -- but I know Ted Haggard has some interesting exegetical devices to prove that those Biblical passages mean anything other than "share your wealth with the poor". Being a really sucessful Mega-Preacher means being able to make the Bible say whatever you want it to say, and still call it "God's Word", to boot!

Besides, we all know that Free-Market Capitalism (with maybe a pinch of Church-related charity) is the best way to care for the poor. I mean, just look at how well it works here in America!

[Scott1960]

Hypocrisy! The new Christianity I guess.

[Grimgrin]

I've allways wondered, if Jesus was inspired to take a whip to a few people selling doves and changing coins in the temple, what would his response be to a megachurch?

Secretly I hope for something involving flamethrowers.

[spencer]

Fred, it's posts like this that keep me coming back. Thanks for your work.

[Lance Mannion]

Two words. John. Calvin.

[Davis X. Machina]

Pastor Ted's clients possess the outward signs of Election, in abundance, and they'll be dammned if you're going to use the powers of the godless State to take them away.

That would substitute flawed human intelligence as expressed through a legislature for the will of God.

And that legislature is probably only going to turn around and give them to some one of the reprobate.

Or one of the colored.

Like that difference matters....

[mom de plume]

I wonder how Pastor Haggard deals with that business with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts....

[Erik V.]

Well, Haggard's operating from a long tradition of misunderstanding Calvin on "Election." Financial success really isn't the outward sign of Election; rather it's doing the work of good, which isn't necessarily profitable.

[Ray]

Well, yeah, but are you surprised?
"Religious people interpret their religion in ways that better suit their own beliefs and situation, and then deny they're doing any interpretation"
isn't going to be a headline any time soon, and not just because its too long.
Religions get to be as big as Christianity just because they're vague or contradictory enough for everyone to find what they like in there. The 'evolution' of Christian thought you mention is clearly what happens when people who aren't slaves join a slave religion, and/or when a religion becomes big enough for a hierarchy to develop.

[J. Michael Matkin]

Lyrics from a song by Michael Card, "Distressing Disguise"

In His distressing disguise
He waits for us to surmise
That we rob our brothers by all that we own
And that's not the way He has shown

[Mabus]

Actually, mom de plume, Ananias and Sapphira are very very easy....in fact, I was considering quoting that passage in opposition to the general opinion here. I'm not going to bother with a list--I doubt it's worth my while--but since someone has asked...

3Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God."

In other words, the property was theirs to do with as they pleased and sell for any price they could get. Their sin was in trying to look more generous by lying about the price.

[Scott]

Jesus was offered political power by Satan, with the temptation that it would allow Him to forcibly do all the good He wanted to do. Jesus, not contesting that political power was Satan's to give, refused. Complain about "private property" vs. the "common good" all you want, but don't use Jesus as an excuse to do the American Evangelical Christian thing of sticking a gun in someone's face and forcing them to adopt the external behavior you've decided Jesus has personally ordered them to do. It's no less wrong, and no less 'evangelical' to impose leftist morality on people as it is to impose right wing talibangelical morality.

An evangelical is an evangelical, I guess.

The "common good" is a wonderful rationalization for stepping all over any mere individual that gets in your way - remember, it's also the rationalization for the PATRIOT ACT (the so-called 'rights' of some damn individual pale in comparison to our 'common' need not to be killed in terrorist attacks).

[Scott]

Before it comes up, "sticking a gun in someone's face" above means sticking a government gun in his face. All laws are enforced by armed cops, which is a totally uncontroversal statement when it means that laws against rape and murder are enforced at gunpoint if necessary and if the would be rapist gets shot by a cop, that's life. However, for some reason, it's nutjob anarchist extremism when it means that taxes for 'compassionate' social programs are collected by the same armed cops with the same willingness to use violence should you resist.

Social programs look much 'compassionate' when you recognize you have to be willing to threaten to take someone's house if necessary to collect taxes to help the homeless. You have to be willing to throw a father in jail over breaking the tax laws used to collect money to help fatherless children. "Freedom from fear" is paid for by creation of an IRS that everyone is afraid of. That's govt enforced compassion.

[dave heasman]

So, Scott, it's OK that laws against rapists are enforced by armed cops, but not OK that the state should give the cops a wage? How very Christian. Though what all this has to do with Fred's topic above is beyond me.

[Fred]

Scott --

Help me out here on how we got from my saying that "the right to private property is never absolute" to my "imposing leftist morality." That's making one hell of a leap -- one that I don't think anything above justifies.

To make that leap, you'd have to argue that any moral/ethical/theological/legal limits on the right to private property were illegitimate. Is that what you mean to argue here? I mean, it's a legitimate point of view -- it's just kind of ... out there.

Anyway, I for one have never lived in fear of the IRS. "Taxation is theft" libertarianarchism, however, strikes me as really scary stuff.

[trevor]

Thanks for posting that. I've been thinking a lot recently about the right attitude to wealth, possessions etc., and the quotes you provide are very succint and profound. But my question is - are there any Christians around that are actually living out this kind of behaviour, or are they still at the 'just talking about it' stage? I won't deny that the church has lost its way in the last 1500 years, but are there any signs of it finding its way back again?

[cjmr's husband]

Trevor - ask any nun or monk.

[Scott]

To make that leap, you'd have to argue that any moral/ethical/theological/legal limits on the right to private property were illegitimate.

If you don't have property rights, you don't have any rights. I've used this example before, but your right to worship freely with others is based on the property rights associated with where it is that everyone gathers. The govt can't stop what happens in your privately owned church, but can throw your worship service out of my living room if I ask it to because I don't (hypothetically) want you there. The govt should stay out of your bedroom because it's yours. If you have sex in a public park, you can't claim a right to privacy. The govt gets to decide what gets printed on govt owned printing presses; freedom of the press means freedom of privately owned presses.

I'm as protective of property rights as you are of freedom of speech and religion. You can't have a right to privacy w/o private property.

Anyway, I for one have never lived in fear of the IRS. "Taxation is theft" libertarianarchism, however, strikes me as really scary stuff.

An IRS nobody is afraid of could never collect sufficient tax money to pay for social programs (or the huge defense budget, for that matter). Whether you live in fear of them every day isn't the point. Are you personally afraid the Bush admin is going to come get you today, or do you fear what the could do to you as an accused "unlawful combatant" if they decided to?

You may not like the phrase "taxation is theft", but nobody seems willing to contest it when I point out the absolute lack of 'compassion' required to collect the money required for compassionate govt in the first place.

[Marley]

Scott, I hope you have read Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston. Because if you're going to complain about taxes, you should be aware that the system is rigged to benefit the wealthiest 1% of the population at the expense of everyone else. The wealth is being transferred up, not down. The big hole where all the money is getting sucked out of our government? The hole is up top, not down bottom.

[Fred]

Scott --

You seem to be arguing that all governmental authority derives from "the barrel of the gun."

[West Wing]Toby: You think we should quote Mao Tse Tung?

Sam: You think a Communist never wrote an elegant phrase? How do you think they got everyone to be Communist?[/West Wing]

That is one source -- "the authority does not bear the barrel of a gun in vain" (Romans 13:4) -- but if it were the only source then democracy, or even community, would be impossible. In a liberal democracy, government primarily derives its authority from the consent of the governed. That is a part of what makes the rule of law, as opposed to the rule of Whoever Has the Biggest Gun, possible. The rule of law is also what makes your claim of private property rights binding, and not the mere assertion of your personal preference backed up by whatever guns you may have in your household arsenal.

"Taxation is theft" is only true if the consent of the governed and the rule of law are meaningless. The belief that these things are, in fact, meaningless and that the only limit on personal freedom is the threat of violence is the very definition of sociopathy.

If you really believe that taxation is theft, then you must also believe that you live under a state of perpetual Martial Law. That might explain your fear of the IRS.

(Speaking of which, while we're open to Romans 13, let's continue reading with verses 5 and 6: "... one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes ...")

[Ray]

The batshit libertarian* position makes sense if you assume that rights must be absolute to be held at all. But hardly anyone has a problem with the idea that there are some limits on freedom of speech, just with where those limits are drawn. Same goes for property rights.

Sure, working out where all those limits should be is a bit messy, but not as messy as drawing-and-quartering trespassers.

* not anarchist. Most anarchists, internationally and historically, have taken a dim view of absolute property rights.

[Ray]

You don't have to be a libertarian (or anarchist) to think Romans 13 is a pretty shitty chapter.

1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

[Scott]

Concerning Rom 13, Jesus said to turn the other cheek, that isn't justification to legalize physical assault.

In a liberal democracy, government primarily derives its authority from the consent of the governed.

A pretty phrase, but meaningless. "The consent of the governed" is just as much a just-so creation story as a 6 day literal reading of Genesis. The rule of govt is rule of the biggest gun - theirs. They aren't ruled by law, they decide what the law is. The PATRIOT Act is a law, too.

The batshit libertarian* position makes sense if you assume that rights must be absolute to be held at all.

So it's OK for Bush to curtail your rights to privacy, free speech, etc? What abortion restrictions would everyone here accept on the grounds that no rights are absolute?

[Scott]

"Pray for those who persecute you" doesn't make persecuting someone acceptable behavior. "Obey the authorities" therefore doesn't prove said authority is legit.

[Ray]

Everyone accepts some limitations on the right to privacy. Houses are routinely searched during criminal investigations, for example. We don't want this to be an everyday occurence, so we require search warrants, but the fact that we allow it to go ahead at all means we don't think privacy is absolute. Free speech is limited by the requirements for advertising to be truthful, by laws against libel and slander, etc. Again, just because we think its sometimes okay for a right to be limited doesn't mean we thinked it should be ignored entirely.

[Ray]

If you believe God exists, and is the source of moral legitimacy, then "The authorities that exist have been established by God" does pretty much mean that the authorities are legitimate.

[Scott]

Again, just because we think its sometimes okay for a right to be limited doesn't mean we thinked it should be ignored entirely.

The power to outright confiscate property (emminant domain, taxes, etc) is ignoring that right entirely. It would be considered a violation of the 1st amendment for the govt to shut down all newspapers, but if they raise taxes on newsprint so high that they all go out of business, that's OK. The power to tax is the power to destroy. Instead of 'confiscating' your house w/o compensation, can they raise your property taxes beyond your ability to pay then take the house as 'punishment'?

The WOD started w/ the govt getting around its inability to ban drugs (at the time, people cared what the Constitution said the govt could and couldn't do) by calling it a tax.

[Scott]

If you believe God exists, and is the source of moral legitimacy, then "The authorities that exist have been established by God" does pretty much mean that the authorities are legitimate.

Which, read literally, means that the worst mass-murdering tyrant is legit. If the literal reading of a verse goes off into stupidity, then I don't read it literally. To be honest, I don't really give a damn what Paul said about govt. Don't confuse me w/ the religious right.

[Pere Ubu]

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

i.e. a"state of perpetual Martial Law"

Q.E.D.

[Scott]

I've yet to see anything here about any hard restrictions on govt ability to tax. What max amount? What max percent? What is the govt forbidden to do to people who refuse to pay? Would taxation be 'theft' if it crossed those boundaries?

[trevor]

cjmr's husband -
Well yes, but I don't run into too many of them on a regular basis. And what's a family guy supposed to do? I find the whole monastic thing very interesting, I'd love to learn more about it, but what I'd like even more would be to discover a monasticism for the 21st century that proposes a lifestyle that is both radical but also feasible for people with family, kids, responsibilities etc. Has anyone figured that out yet?

[Fred]

Scott --

Top of my head, the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth and Ninth Amendments all provide such "hard restrictions." But, again, the main restrictions against the kleptocratic totalitarianism that has you worried are the rule of law and the consent of the governed (i.e., the will of the people). Citizens, by definition, regard these things as very serious, hard restrictions on the abuse of power by government, including the abuse of the power of taxation.

I think you're essentially begging the question -- all sources of authority other than brute force are illusory because brute force is the only real source of authority -- so I can't really engage that.

There's an element of self-fulfilling prophecy in that as well. If you actively deny the legitimacy of the rule of law and of a duly elected government, then eventually that government will be forced to deal with you with the credible threat of force and, ultimately, you will find yourself facing the business end of the very monopoly on imprisonment and lethal violence that you insisted on being subject(ed) to. In the non-theoretical realm, this process is sometimes called "suicide by cop."

Anyway, I still can't figure out how we got from the post above to such a conversation, but that's part of what makes this whole thing fun.

[Ray]

"The power to outright confiscate property is ignoring that right entirely."

Well no, not really. There is a difference between ignoring a right entirely and saying that a right is not absolute. Sure, if the tax rate is raised too high that can be as effective as confiscation, but that's just like saying that if search warrants are issued at the drop of a hat its destroying the right to privacy. All you're saying is that a right that is not absolutely privileged _can_ be gradually degraded. That doesn't contradict what I'm saying, which is that people can value some rights while agreeing that there must be some limits on them.

(And yeah, I did say Romans 13 was pretty shitty. I'm not a Christian)

(Jim Henley beat you to the max tax question
http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2005/05/01/4207
the answer from most people is that it depends entirely on context

[Scott]

Top of my head, the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth and Ninth Amendments all provide such "hard restrictions."

Have any of those been used to overturn a tax? The 9th and 10th (any power not explicitly given the govt is forbidden to it) would overturn Social Security if anyone actually cared what they said. If a Republican judge overturned a tax for being too high, you'd go apeshit.

We got here because talking about "the common good" is the first step conservatives and liberals take before making any individual right a hollow joke, whether it's privacy or property rights.

[Ray]

Do you have a vidscreen in your living room monitoring everything you do? No? Then the right to privacy is not a hollow joke. It may not be as strong as you (or I) might like, but that doesn't mean it offers no protection.
Are you typing these comments on a communal computer, in a state-run dorm, in your government-issue clothes....?

[Scott]

Sure, if the tax rate is raised too high that can be as effective as confiscation, but that's just like saying that if search warrants are issued at the drop of a hat its destroying the right to privacy.

Is there an explicit limit on how high taxes can go, like there is an explicit requirement for a judge to sign off on a warrant (even if the Bush admin wants to even undercut that)?

[Ray]

Is there an explicit limit on how many judges a government can create, or how much thought they have to give to issuing a warrant?

[Scott]

Are you typing these comments on a communal computer, in a state-run dorm, in your government-issue clothes....?

So the Bush admin wanting to get your library records w/o a warrant, to 'protect' you, is OK, because no books have been banned yet? Their ability to throw you in a military brig as an "unlawful combatant" is OK, because they haven't done it to enough people to make you feel personally threatened yet?

[Scott]

Is there an explicit limit on how many judges a government can create, or how much thought they have to give to issuing a warrant?

You're making my case for me - the govt can do any damn thing it wants to any individual person. They just have to gradually increase the number of people who get abused so we're all used to it instead of grabbing too many at once.

[Ray]

Just because I accept that there should be _some_ limits on a given right, doesn't mean I must agree with any and all proposed limits. You don't have to believe that a particular right is absolute to argue against any particular restriction of that right.

[Scott]

Just because I accept that there should be _some_ limits on a given right, doesn't mean I must agree with any and all proposed limits. You don't have to believe that a particular right is absolute to argue against any particular restriction of that right.

What limit would you accept on the ability of 51% of the people who show up on election day to tax everyone else?

[Ray]

"You're making my case for me - the govt can do any damn thing it wants to any individual person"

Out of curiosity, what case do you think I'm trying to make?

"What limit would you accept on the ability of 51% of the people who show up on election day to tax everyone else?"

As I implied earlier, I think its context-dependent. I'd give some weight to a person's right to keep X% of their money, and some weight to the Y the money would be spent on. So there's no fixed maximum legitimate tax, there are particular X's and Y's.
(I'm an anarchist, BTW, but the argument about fixed, absolute property rights vs competing claims moderated by democracy is as relevant to me as to liberals.)

[Scott]

As I implied earlier, I think its context-dependent. I'd give some weight to a person's right to keep X% of their money, and some weight to the Y the money would be spent on. So there's no fixed maximum legitimate tax, there are particular X's and Y's.

If there is no line that cannot be crossed (depending on 'context'), then taxpayers stop being human beings and become merely means to an end (your Y). Can Bush torture have people tortured if his 'Y' is important enough?

[J. Michael Matkin]

Trevor,

There are a lot of us involved in a discussion about what Jonathan Wilson has called "the new monasticism", which is the movement away from propping up the American empire and towards the restoration of local communities as lifeboats of civility, morality and the preservation of intellectual life. How exactly that works itself out is going to look different, in many cases very different, from the way it did the last time we descended into the Dark Ages. Check out some of these links and you'll see what I'm talking about.

New Monasticism Project
A post on new monasticism at TallSkinnyKiwi
The Lindisfarne Community is a network of folks committed to living a type of monastic life.
Certain groups have been living this out for a while now. Check out the Catholic Worker Movement, Taize in France, the Boiler Rooms of the 24-7 Prayer Movement

There are also individual congregations, like Church of the Apostles in Seattle which are beginning to think of their communities in monastic terms.

The question of common property differs from one group to another, but all are wrestling with that issue. These links should get you started.

J. Michael Matkin.

Thank you very much, this is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm aware of one or two of the communities you mentioned (in fact I hope to visit Lindisfarne next spring) and I will read the other links with interest.

[Ray]

Do you think that anyone who supports the issuing of search warrants, in any circumstances, no matter how limited, therefore feels that everyone else is no longer a human being, just a means to an end?

[Indiana Joe]

Scott, you say that I have the absolute right to use a piece of property in any manner that I see fit. What if I wish to use it as a murder weapon?

[Scott]

Do you think that anyone who supports the issuing of search warrants, in any circumstances, no matter how limited, therefore feels that everyone else is no longer a human being, just a means to an end?

You point out specific limits to the govt power to search, and have yet to call for any specific limit to the govt power to tax. You're the one thinking of other taxpayers as cattle to be bred and slaughtered.

Scott, you say that I have the absolute right to use a piece of property in any manner that I see fit. What if I wish to use it as a murder weapon?

Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. You still have to prove me as an individual guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt before acting against me, which makes accused murders more human to the govt than taxpayers are.