In last week’s “Letters to the Editor,” Arthur London objected to characterizations of those involved in the referendum petition drive as representing a “broad cross section of the local political spectrum,” presumably because we’re all passionate supporters of property rights who don’t buy into the preposterous notion that property rights and environmental protection are inherently at odds.
Never mind that petitioners included Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals from all walks of life and all income levels. So what’s the problem, Arthur? Should we have made a better effort to involve the anti-property rights crowd in our pro-property rights petition drive? By your reasoning the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t truly broad-based because it failed to include Neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. But as long as you’ve elected to split our community into two camps along the line of property rights, let me take a moment to remind you where your side sits:
Thomas Jefferson: “A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings… The right to procure property and to use it for one’s own enjoyment is essential to the freedom of every person, and our other rights would mean little without these rights of property ownership.”
Karl Marx: “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property… In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”
Wade Major