As millions of Americans spend today fervently practicing commerce, we bring you these thoughts faith, property and prosperity which first ran last year on Thanksgiving.
There is much talk these days of how conservatives need “new ideas” in these troubled economic times. And as we look at our nation’s troubled landscape, there is much work that needs to be done if we are going to return economic prosperity to the country. But as we sit down to celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends and family, recalling the true story of the Pilgrims should remind us all that the core principles that have made this nation great are unchanging, and that we risk ruin if we abandon them.
Most children learn that the Pilgrims’ salvation at Plymouth Colony stemmed from the generosity of local Indians. And while there is no doubt that the American natives did help the immigrants through some early tough times, it was not until the Pilgrims rediscovered the importance of private property that the colony began to thrive and was able to give thanks for their own blessings. When the Pilgrims first arrived, they attempted a form of, in Gov. William Bradford’s words, “community” or “commonwealth.” In other words, they attempted to “spread the wealth around” by destroying private property and replacing it with a communally owned property system.
The result was disastrous. According to Bradford, this system bred “confusion and discontent” and “retarded much employment that would have been to [the settlers'] benefit and comfort.” Unable to produce their own food, some settlers “became servants to the Indians,” cutting wood and fetching water in exchange for “a capful of corn.” It was not until the colony changed course and allowed the private ownership of farmland that prosperity returned. Bradford reported, “This had very good success for it made all hands very industrious. … [M]uch more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. … Women went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn.”
A profoundly religious man, Bradford saw the hand of God in the Pilgrims’ economic recovery. Their success, he observed, “may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients and applauded by some of later times … that the taking away of property … would make [men] happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.” Bradford surmised, “God in his wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”
Amen to that.
The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney points to news from The Hartford Courant that the development project at the center of the Fifth Amendment takings clause case Kelo v. City of New London has just been abandoned by Pfizer. Watch The CATO Institute’s recitation of the case:
Click here to view the embedded video.Remember, the core of the government’s case for seizing Susette Kelo’s home, was that they could put her property to a greater “public use” by giving it Pfizer. Now it turns out that letting that land lie unused was the only use Pfizer actually had for property.
Kelo is not the only recent attack on private property. Former Heritage Scholar Andrew Grossman explains how the Obama administration has used TARP to undermine private property:
General Motors and Chrysler already carry significant loads of “senior” debt with priority over other claims, and it is a standard feature of such debt agreements that borrowers cannot subordinate this senior debt—that is, as a condition of the loan, the borrower agrees not take on additional debt that has a higher priority and would therefore imperil the senior debt.
But that’s precisely what the bailout bill purports to do.
As Randy Picker of the University of Chicago Law School explains, that may amount to a taking under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which prevents the government from taking private property for public use without “just compensation.” Without providing any compensation to senior creditors, the bailout legislation would convert their loans to junior debt, increasing the likelihood that they will not be paid, which amounts to a partial or total taking.