Far more than an "empty mantra"

"The moment that idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the Laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist."

-John Adams

Our Founding Fathers believed, with great justification, that when government is given power over the property of the citizens, all other rights belonging to them became null and void. Real property was (and is to this day) not only a place to live, but the source of the ability to survive. Farmers produced food not only for themselves but others as well. Merchants bought and sold. Manufacturers created products. And all of them provided jobs. Without the economic activity stemming from private property, people would starve.

History has proven our Founding Fathers right. Socialism, that grand experiment in denying the very existence of the right to own property, was a dismal failure in every single nation where it was tried. Whether we consider the Marxist-Leninist version of the Soviet Union and its slave states throughout Eastern and Central Europe, Maoist agricultural Communism, the National Socialism of Adolph Hitler or the social democracies of Western Europe which are in the process of moving towards true market economies, socialism has never worked. Socialism can never work. People need the incentive of getting ahead on their own labors. They need the goal of owning something significant. Without those two factors, the economy will eventually collapse.

Beyond the economic implications, giving Government the right to take away one's property or just take away the right to determine what one can do with it effectively gives Government, if taken to the extreme, the power over jobs, food and even life and death. All other rights then become meaningless.

Of course, many live in Neverland and will say, "Oh, local Government would never use its powers for anything but the benefit of the community." Really? Let's ask the property owners in New London, Connecticut whose properties were robbed from them by the municipality with the Supreme Court's blessing. Or ask Jon Dogar-Marinesco, whose exercise of free speech kept him off a Town Committee. Or ask Manuela Mihailescu who was accused of running a porn site in order to keep her off another Town Committee. Or myself, given the floor at a Town Board Meeting only to have the Town Attorney interrupt me after two sentences after which the meeting was adjourned before I (or anyone else, for that matter) had my say.

Government is, and always will be, abusive by nature unless forced to be subservient by its constituents. Government is never an instrument of service out of the goodness of the hearts of our politicians. If it serves us, it does so because it is forced to do so, no other reason. Thomas Jefferson told us that "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." That is one of the most profoundly accurate statements ever made about the nature of freedom. We will only be able to exercise our rights as long as we do not allow government to encroach upon them. We must maintain a watchful eye over every single act of government because politicians will, inevitably, try to increase their own powers at the expense of our freedom. History offers evidence of this principle being one of the few absolutes man has experienced. It is just short of being a Law of Nature.

Censorship and the trampling of our property rights are just the beginning. The Town of Rochester Town Board will be seen by future generations as one of the most repressive municipal governments in American history. The only question is, will we be known as those who fought it or the ones who let it happen.