Today's look at Law and Liberty has a lot in common with the last post given that it is centered on property rights as they pertain specifically to the family. Rushdoony's contention is that one aspect of the breakdown of the modern family is "the attack on and the decline of the freedom of private property." He continues by writings that, "according to the Bible, the family is more than a spiritual unity; it is a material unity." And we know that this is true not only through many examples in the Bible in which stewardship and dominion over creation is discussed, but even in the 10 Commandments themselves which condemn the coveting of another's rightful possessions.
Although this next quote comes from an author who, no doubt, comes from a much different perspective than a Christian understanding of the individual and property rights, he obviously agrees with Rushdoony in drawing the necessary tie between family and property. ""the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: abolition of private property." Any kind of property, he noted, is power, and he denied the right of power to the person or family; it had to be social power. The family is based on capital...and he added that the family "will vanish with the vanishing of capital." The author of that paraphrase was none other than Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto, and he "saw clearly the implications of Biblical economy and of the Ten Commandments: property is power, social and personal power. Whoever controls property has liberty, and whoever surrenders power over property surrenders liberty."
I believe that our founding fathers understood and acted decisively on issues that they understood were critical to the formation and maintenance of a republic. They had a much better grasp on the sinfulness of man that is then translated into the civil government which, if left unchecked, would seize the liberty of individuals to increase the span of its control. While I believe they correctly understood the checks and balances needed between different branches of government, between the federal and state levels, and even between this different spheres of government and the family, somewhere along the way, individual responsibility and love of liberty lost out to other things such as apathy or even a love of security over freedom. Rushdoony points out later in this chapter that, "if civil government is given power over property, then that government becomes free from the control of its citizenry and controls them instead." I think that we are a lot further along this path then we would like to believe with the massive amounts of taxation and economic intervention that the civil government inflicts on the nation. As Rushdoony closes the chapter, "because the modern state controls the education, income, property and labor of all its citizens, it thus controls the totality of powers within the country."
Think for a second about this post today and then compare it to what is happening in our country. I would ask that you not worry about where these changes are coming from be it a Communist such as Karl Marx or his adherents, a Democrat, a Republican, or anyone else in civil government. The issue is not what you call yourself, it is how your beliefs and practice impact yourself and others. Without personal responsibility over family and property, we cede our freedoms and liberty without even the tiniest of effort of others. As others, such as the civil government ride in as the savior to pick up the pieces, that grip of control only tightens down more and more until what you are left with is a people without property and individuals without families. Once we hit that point, the only thing many have left to turn to will be the state that loves nothing more than a populace without oversight, a people that they can exercise control over in every facet of life. And that, my friends, is a life not of security and peace, but of totalitarianism and misery.
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