Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Property and Love for the Poor

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 23, 2014

I have written a great deal on how the framework provided by biblical ethics honors and preserves the institution of private property. The argument is not complex. Just as “thou shalt not commit adultery” presupposes and honors the institution of marriage, so also “thou shalt not steal” presupposes and honors the institution of private property.

The private property that is honored is that which comes to a man through the ordinary processes. “Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope” (1 Cor. 9:10). God is the one who gives us the power to get wealth (Dt. 8:18), and it comes up to us from the ground. It does not float down upon us from the state.

We learn the principle when learning to love the haves — but it applies even more to the have nots. When a people are being liberated from covetousness, envy, and the larceny resident in every socialist scheme, they need to learn to mortify this sin in the presence of a neighbor who has manicured lawns, a red convertible, and a beautiful wife (Ex. 20:17). Learning what love means in this instance means learning how to hate the covetousness that arises so easily under every human sternum. Love that is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:10) is a love that does no harm to its neighbor. Listed among the things that are harmful and destructive to our neighbor is covetousness (Rom. 13:9). This is why it is so necessary to elect men who fear God and hate covetousness (Ex. 18:21). And it should go without saying that you can’t hate covetousness if you don’t even know what it is.

But we must insist on something else. Mortifying covetousness is not just a blessing to the fat cats. In his magnificent book The Mystery of Capital, Hernando de Soto demonstrates how a societal refusal to recognize property rights by means of honoring and protecting clear title is one of the central reasons why poor people are locked in grinding poverty. Where property is not respected, property (whenever it is acquired) hides. And when property hides, it cannot come out into the daylight and do useful work. The useful work it could do is that of lifting the people involved out of poverty. But in order for property to be able to do this most beneficent thing, it has to be able to come out into public view and not be assaulted or confiscated. In short, property must be safe, and it cannot be safe whenever the people are envious and covetous.

This is why we must love liberty and hate every form of coercive theft. Making that coercive theft “legal” by sanctioning it society-wide only serves to make everything far worse. Legalizing activities prohibited by the Ten Commandments does not successfully whitewash the sin. If something is perfectly appalling, we do not fix it by nodding sagely and saying, “You know, the ways their laws are structured . . .”

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Stuff Inviolate

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

Sept 13, 2014

I have been arguing that property rights are human rights. I have been insisting that it is not possible to love your neighbor without respecting his stuff. I have been saying that the commandment thou shalt not steal presupposes the institution of private property in just the same way that the prohibition of adultery presupposes marriage. And in the same way, I cannot honor the command not to covet my neighbor’s wife if I cannot come up with a definition of “wife.”

But there has been some surprising pushback on this simple idea, so let us dig a little deeper.

So what do I mean by property? Within the boundaries of the law of God, property entails the authority to retain or dispose of material goods without the permission of another. If you are renting something, or leasing it, you do not have the right to dispose of it in the same way you would if you owned it. When you rent a car, you are answerable to someone else for the use. When you own a car, you can paint the passenger door turquoise if you wish.

This means that all property is ultimately God’s. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps. 50:10), and the earth is the Lord’s and all that it contains (Ex. 9:29; Dt. 10:14). So God is the only absolute owner of property, and in reference to Him, we are all stewards. We will all give an accounting to Him for what we have done with the goods He has entrusted to us.

So my argument does not neglect this relativization of property in the sight of God, but merely insists that no creature — especially including kings, parliaments, congresses, and presidents — may usurp and supplant God in this role.

This is why Jesus can tell the rich young ruler to give all his goods to the poor (Matt. 19:21), and if he did not do it, he was stealing in the eyes of God. At the same time, he would not be stealing in the eyes of man — any more than a lustful man could be charged with adultery in our courts, or a spiteful man with murder, despite the words of Jesus (Matt. 5:28; Matt. 5:21). We must, always and everywhere, maintain the distinction between sins and crimes.

“Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings” (Mal. 3:8).

Tithes went, in part, to the poor. The same thing would be true of offerings. And offerings were entirely voluntary — but a man could rob God by refusing to offer them. He would be guilty before God of the sin of theft (greed, covetousness, and so on). But he would not be guilty of the crime of theft. Consider the case of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1). Peter told them that they could have sold their land, kept all the proceeds at home, sitting on top of the pile cackling like Scrooge McDuck, and they would not have bought the farm, so to speak.

“Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God” (Acts 5:4).

After he sold it, was it not within his power? Yes — as far as the authority of fellow creatures could reach. But could he do whatever he wanted with it, and not have to answer to God? No, of course not.

And this is what I am arguing. When any creaturely entity assumes the prerogatives of the Deity, assuming the power of control over the property of others, that entity has become lawless and wicked. And the Bible does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.” The Bible does not countenance the notion that two coyotes and a sheep can form a rudimentary democracy, and then vote on what’s for lunch.

If I am walking down the street and encounter someone begging alms, and I have twenty bucks in my wallet, and I receive an unmistakable burden from the Lord to give him that twenty bucks, and I suppress the impulse and walk on, am I being disobedient? Yes. Am I robbing God? Yes. Am I robbing the beggar? No. For if I were, he would have the right to chase me down and take the twenty bucks.

If a woman had her purse snatched by a bicyclist, and fifteen minutes later she pulls into a drugstore parking lot, and that same bicycle is outside with her purse hanging on the handle bars — the thief having run inside to buy smokes with some of her dollars — is she stealing if she takes her purse back? Of course not.

We must learn to distinguish that which is sin in the eyes of God, and that which should be a crime in the eyes of man and God. Being a selfish pig is a sin, but must not be made a crime. If we outlaw “being a selfish pig,” I have ten dollars here that says that within two weeks this crime of selfish piggery will be vigorously policed (and fined) by tribunals made up entirely of selfish pigs.

When we make something a crime without scriptural justification, and penalize it, we invert the order of God. When we make property ownership a crime, and fine people heavily for being guilty of it, we have a society as corrupt and as mendacious and as greedy as . . . well, as our own.

If we love people, if we love our neighbors, we will consider their stuff inviolate. We will form governments that respect our neighbors’ property as much as we ourselves do. But as it is currently, we form the kind of government we now have because we the people have larceny in our hearts. We are governed by thieves who represent us well.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

What Became of the Witty Pirate Then

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 6, 2014

Because taxes can be a form of theft, and because taxes need not be theft at all, a reasonable question to ask is how we can tell the difference.

The baseline, the starting point, is that property belongs to the individual. He is the one that Thou shalt not steal applies to. He is the one with the house, the vineyard, the lawn mower, the wallet, the smart phone, and so on. Whenever the Bible talks about property, it always talks about it two categories. The first is God’s absolute ownership of all things (Dt. 10:14), and the second is the relative ownership that you and your neighbor enjoy (Dt. 8:18). When we talk about the state possessing things, this possession is derivative. The state extracts value from the taxpayer, the appointed steward of God’s wealth, and this extraction can also be divided into two categories. This value can be extracted lawfully, or the state can play the role of the thief. So how are we to tell the difference?

We know that taxation can be done right because the Bible talks about paying taxes to the one to whom it is due (Rom. 13:7). These are taxes that we owe, and are not to be considered theft at all. We should no more chafe at paying our legitimate taxes than we do paying our bill for satellite television. There are taxes we do not owe, but ought to pay anyway, having more important things to do. This is the meaning of what Jesus teaches Peter — we don’t owe it, but go ahead and pay it (Matt. 17:24-27). And then there are other circumstances where the illegitimate taxes have become so onerous, and the justification for them so outlandish, and tax courts have beclowned themselves to such an extent, that the Lord raises up a left-handed means for the children of Israel to pay their tribute (Judges 3:15-19).

Now I am not issuing any kind of call to action, other than the action of understanding what the heck occurreth. It is long past time for us to be sons of Issachar, understanding the times and knowing what Israel should do (1 Chron. 12:32). In our circumstance, deliverance would be ours if most of us came to the simple recognition that our ruling elites are governing unlawfully. They are illegitimate.

So this brings us back to the question raised at the top. How do we tell what kind of taxation is challenging the law of God as opposed to the taxation that is in line with the law of God? There are three basic criteria.

First, the level of taxation must not rival God (1 Sam. 8:15). God claims a tithe, and if that is all God needs, and if God is a jealous God, then we ought to see any attempt on the part of civil government to go past ten percent as an aspiration to Deity. This is the perennial temptation for fallen man (Gen. 3:5), particularly for rulers of all kinds (Is. 14:13), and so that temptation must not be funded. Cutting off the government at 9% is like refusing a third Scotch to a wobbly tavern-goer at 1 am. Shouldn’t be controversial.

Second, the taxes need to be levied, in the main, so that the rulers can perform the functions that God requires them to perform. Coercion is a big deal, and so the government must only be allowed to exercise it when they have express warrant for what they are doing. If they have express warrant to hunt down murderers, and they do, then they have express warrant to collect money to pay for the men to do this. They are God’s deacon of justice, and the deacon of justice needs to be paid just like the rest of us (Rom. 13:4). They are not allowed to collect fees to pay for activities that are prohibited to them. If they are not allowed to do it in the first place, they are not allowed to tax us to pay for it. To do so would be theft.

Third, the taxes must be lawful and in accordance with the established constitution of the people. Arbitary and capricious government, when the constitution outlaws arbitrary and capricous government is hypocritical. It sits in judgment upon us in points of law, and contrary to the law commands us to be struck. Since I have no particular person in mind, I may feel free to echo Paul’s sentiment about this without overstepping any personal boundaries — the men who do this are a whited wall (Acts 23:3).

If a tax bill originates in the Senate, nobody needs to pay it. If a resident of North Dakota receives a tax bill from the state of Maryland, he may feel free to round file it, and to do so with a serene conscience. If a man is taxed by a body in which he has no representation, then it is an illegal tax, and it doesn’t really matter how many judges or congressmen were complicit in the illegality.

So then, in summary, taxes are theft when the government is aspiring to be god in the lives of its subjects, when the government is refusing to do what the real God requires of them and is doing something else instead, usually something very expensive, and when the government is not obeying its own legitimate processes for levying taxes.

Last point. Note that I am not arguing for any action other than the simple action of recognition. Our government is a thief, but the government is a thief that cares deeply and profoundly about respectability. They not only want to pillage with immunity, they want to do it with legitimacy. Sorry. It is not as though there is a certain number of pirate ships that magically reach the quorum of a nation state.

When you get lots of pirate ships, what do you have? This is not a trick question. You have a pirate fleet. You have lots of pirates.

Augustine records a time when a pirate was captured and brought before Alexander the Great. The pirate asked why he was styled a pirate for doing to ships what Alexander was doing to countries, and, despite this, Alexander was styled a great emperor.

History is silent as to what became of the witty pirate then, but his question did have a certain resonance. Secular man, with covetous loins, hands and brains, has not yet been able to answer it. There is,  however, a stiff fine for raising it in inappropriate ways.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

On Pirate Ship Governance

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 1, 2014

I have been arguing that Christians need to learn how to stand for liberty, but in order for this to happen they must first learn what it is. And when this happens, they will find themselves saying some outrageous things, like I am about to do.

Human rights — which everyone is automatically in favor of — are nonsensical and absurd unless we have a robust understanding of property rights. Property rights are human rights. In our age, we understand that human rights are a grand and glorious thing, but we are bewildered when it comes to the crucial matter of property. We are entirely in favor a birthday cakes, but are dubious and confused about the concept of cake batter.

First, some history. In 1772, the first statement by the colonial Committees of Correspondence was released. Samuel Adams is credited with being the primary force behind that statement, and it begins by itemizing the rights of the colonists as men. The first right was the right to life, the second was liberty, and the third was property. The echo we hear in the Declaration four years later is obvious. We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness is therefore grounded in our ability to own property.

But how may a free people, whose rights of property are duly respected, fund the costs of government? We all agree that taxes are a necessity, so how may taxes be levied on a free people? The fundamental principle is that because property is an unalienable right, this means that property can only be released by the consent of the owner, either directly or by his representative in the legislature. This is why taxation without representation is tyranny. The property that the government acquires from a people without their consent is therefore theft.

The whole point of government is the protection and preservation of property. If we call life and liberty our car, property is the fuel pump.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Note that governments do not grant us these rights. Our rights are given by our Creator. Governments are created by the people in order to secure the rights we already have. Governments do not bestow rights upon anyone. Their sole duty is to recognize and protect them.

Now in order to have these rights granted to us by a Creator — follow me closely here — there has to be a Creator. One of the first steps in robbing us of our heritage of political liberty was spreading the insidious and morbid joke of Darwinism. Little bits of protoplasmic froth on the ocean of evolutionary development don’t have any rights to speak of.

Now when government becomes destructive of the central point, the telos of protecting our property, certain things follow from their destructiveness.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”

That’s a tall order, and a big responsibility. In subsequent installments, I am going to be making some very practical suggestions. But the first thing — and it is a very necessary first step — is to get our minds around what has happened to us. How is our current government funded? As Hillary Clinton once famously put it, it takes a pillage.There are many examples of this, but our staggering deficit is saddling our great grandchildren with a gargantuan debt, and our great grandchildren don’t have any representatives in Congress. They are being burdened with obligations they have not consented to. That means that our irresponsibility and prodigality are our instruments for enslaving them. Not only so, but some progressives among us have the immortal gall to say that we are doing what we are doing “for the children.”

We are currently living under a form of government that our Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent. We are told ad nauseam that we are a free people, while at the same time our administrative managers, our ruling elites, reserve to themselves the right to dictate to us pretty much anything that comes into their heads. They walk the corridors of power with the demeanor you might expect from such little gods.

When the colonists successfully faced down Parliament over the Stamp Act, and it was reluctantly  withdrawn, Parliament at the same time passed the Declaratory Act, which in effect said that while Parliament was rescinding the law, they were not rescinding the principle. Just so you know, “we reserve the right to be tyrannical at any time.”

In this context, the first lesson we have to master is the lesson of understanding what is happening to us. We cannot put any solutions into effect unless and until we understand the problem. The problem is arbitrary administrative government, which is quite a different thing than representative free government.

Obviously it is a sin to steal, and it is not a sin to be stolen from. The first part is flat prohibited in Scripture (Ex. 20:15; Eph. 4:28), and the second part is intuitively obvious. Better to be wronged than to do wrong. But when making this point that it is not a sin to be stolen from, we are talking about someone sneaking into your garage at two in the morning and taking your bicycle. It is not wrong to be wronged in this way.

Our current sin is found in the way we are being stolen from. When God prohibits stealing, this assumes the institution of private property. When God prohibits adultery, what is in the background? Unless there is such a thing as marriage, you cannot have adultery. Adultery is defined as violation of marriage vows. In the same manner, stealing is violation of someone’s right to remain in possession of their own property.

So the requirement here is to learn a little blunt force honesty with yourself. It is not a sin to write a big check to the government. It is not a sin to be stolen from. It is a sin to write that check, so that a couple dozen bureaucrats can go down and pee it into the Potomac, and you tell yourself that you are just “doing your share.” That is the sin of being delusional when God has required us to be clear-headed. It is a sin to believe that our government is anything other than a pirate ship of the thieves, by the thieves, and for the thieves. It is a sin to go on believing the lies when we have no good reason to.

In short, the first step for the Christian taxpayer is the same as what you find in addiction recovery groups. First you have to admit you have a problem.

European Progress

Breathing the Free Air

At this blog, we are all free-traders.  If Johnny Appleseed wants to sell his apples to customers in the Orange Free State, the respective states have no warrant to interfere with the property rights of Johnny nor his customers.  Secondly, free trade has a long history of demonstrating that, whilst economic dislocation might initially occur, in the longer term the population of poorer countries benefit from the opportunity to export to wealthier nations.  Free trade is one of the most effective modes of “foreign aid” ever seen–much more effective than dumping lashings of money upon less developed countries in some top-down, bureaucratic, government driven “we know best” model. Thirdly, free mutual trade is one of the most effective inoculations against the deadly virus of nationalism. 

To this end, we are heartened that finally the European Common Agricultural Policy (“CAP”) is having its last rites read.  This from the NZ Herald:

Big changes lie ahead for the international dairy trade when the European Union (EU) dismantles its 30-year-old quota system next year.  Quotas, introduced in 1984 to tackle overproduction, are due to come off next April, which will mean each of the 28 EU member states will be free to produce as much dairy product as they want.

As a result, Fonterra expects EU dairy production to increase by 1.5 to 2 per cent over time, but the co-operative’s chief financial officer Lukas Paravicini said it was a welcome move.  “We obviously welcome free trade agreements and free trade in general. Therefore we support the elimination of quotas,” said Paravicini, who joined Fonterra last year after 22 years with Nestle.

Please note: the CAP is being dismantled because it has not worked.  It has been successful, however, in wasting a huge amount of tax payers’ money, creating a wealthy redundant farmer class who were paid for doing nothing (that is, not producing).  It has also had stellar success in generating inefficient economic dislocations in Europe.

When countries liberalise their economies and remove impediments to citizens trading with the rest of the world a virtuous circle often emerges.  The economies exposed to competitive imports under de-regulation become ardent supporters of moves to encourage other nations to remove their respective restrictions on imports. Moreover, the quality their own decisions about the allocation of scarce capital become vastly improved–leading to greater wealth and economic prosperity at home. 

Agriculture,however, is usually the last sector to be thus deregulated, which is a great shame since the economies of most poorer countries rely upon agricultural production as a critical core of their economies.  The moves by the EU to liberalise and de-regulate the region’s agricultural industries will help build momentum to include agriculture in free trade agreements around the world.  Ultimately that will be a boon to poorer nations.  It is one of the most effective modes of international aid.