Modern Property Rights

Glory and Ignominy

The bloodless revolution--otherwise known as the Glorious Revolution--of 1688 in England has often been celebrated as one which rejected absolute government and replaced it with a government of limited and mutually balanced powers.  But it also represented much more.   Historian, Christopher Dawson has a theory:

It is true that the Revolution of 1688 was apparently a defeat for the principle of Toleration since it was directed against the Declaration of Indulgence, and demanded the reinforcement of the Test Act and the Penal Laws.  Actually, however, it marks the end of the attempt to base society on a religious foundation, and the beginning of the progressive secularization of the English state.

According to John Locke, the philosopher of the Revolutionary Settlement, the prime duty of the Government is not to defend the Christian faith, but to secure the rights of private property, "for the sake of which men enter into society."  Thus, as Lord Acton says, the English Revolution substituted "for the Divine Right of Kings the divine right of Freeholders."  For two centuries and more England was to be the Paradise of the Man of Property. [Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion: An Historical Enquiry (London: Sheed and Ward, 1945),  p. 188.]

It is arguable that Locke was one of the great apostles of secularism.  However much he and his colleagues spoke about god, in fact his deistic theology meant that the deity he was invoking was nothing more than a warranting concept, a sky-hook from which to hang his notions of freedom and property.  Deism proclaims an "absent God", Deus Abscondis : therefore, Deism is in practice, if not in principle, a thoroughly secular world-view.

But history relentlessly works out the implications of bad philosophies, because human history is a collective expression of the human heart.
  According to Locke, the absolute duty of government is to secure the rights of private property.  But what is "private property".  In one sense, it is anything which man is.  For example,  his own body can be cast as his property, thereby securing the "right" to abort unborn children [via the assertion of a woman's (property) right to her own body], and the duty of government to secure that right.

Moreover, the individual's desires, aspirations, ambitions, and goals can all be re-cast and framed as the "property" of a human being, thereby securing the right to pursue such and the duty of government to ensure that each citizen has the wherewithal and resources to pursue their ambitions and dreams.  Hence, the emergence of such doctrines as the duty and role of the state to ensure equality of opportunity, through providing healthcare, education, a minimum wage, and so forth. Gradually these have all emerged as property rights which the state has to enforce. 

Still further, one's identity and personality must also be considered one's sovereign property.  Therefore, the state has a duty to ensure that each individual gets to enjoy and express the property of his identity and, most latterly, his or her or its sexual preferences.

Locke's Deus Abscondis has proved no defence for the rights of property.  From the beginning it was implicitly secular and masked the eventual diabolical perversion and progressive enslavement of society.  Locke's doctrines have morphed into the modern secular state which disrespects, if not loathes, the commandments, "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet"--all in the name of securing and protecting the "property" of citizens. 

Since the perverse fruits of Lockean deism are now evident on every hand, those who stand up to call our secular society back to Locke's (antiquated and excessively narrow) doctrines of private property represent a quaint anachronism.  They represent neither challenge nor threat to the modern soft-despotic state.  But the Christian, on the other hand, does.  The Christian calls for the death of secularism and a return to the God of the Law, Who is infinitely angry at all lawbreakers, including those who violate and twist the Eighth and Tenth Commandments.  It is only as we repent and return to Him that the true blessedness and dignity of property can be enjoyed by all, not as owners, but as the stewards of God's good gifts, to Whom we will all give account.