February 08, 2010 01:20 AM UTC

Let's Have a Party

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• by: JO

Earlier today, a poster on this site who has consistently shown himself to be one of the more sophisticated, better informed, and more articulate participants, declared that he was a member of the American Constitution Party, which describes itself as the “Colorado Affiliate of the Constitution Party.” Curious about this group, I read their platform ( http://www.americanconstitutio… ) which includes this line under the heading “Cost of Big Government”:

The only legitimate purpose of civil government is to safeguard the God-given rights of its citizens, namely: life, liberty, and property.

While I could argue with virtually every word of this party’s platform–as well as its national parent’s platform (see below), I would like to challenge this line in particular: “God-given right… property.”

In 1789, when the Constitution was drafted, all but three states (PA, MA, RI) recognized slavery. (VT also banned slavery, but it was not one of the original states signing onto the Constitution.) The Constitution specifically barred the new federal government from interfering with the slave trade for 20 years (Article I, Section 9), and one of the key institutions of the new government, the Senate, was very specifically designed to give slave states, regardless of population trends, sufficient leverage over the new government to combat the growing abolitionist movement in the North. (If you doubt this was the central issue behind the structure of the Senate, advance to the Missouri Compromise of 1820.)  Slavery meant, in turn, that human beings were someone else’s “property.”

So, my question to members of the American Constitution Party is this: Did God grant, as an unalienable right, the right to own humans who were, after all, “property”? Did government subsequently have the right to take away that “property” by abolishing slavery?

A second question: IF a free citizen of, say, Georgia grew cotton plants, spun the cotton into thread and wove it into fabric, and then sewed a shirt–did that shirt belong to the landlord who owned the property where the cotton grew? Or, in a more likely scenario, if the shirt was sold for $10, how much of that $10 was the “property” of the landlord and how much the “property” of the grower-spinner-weaver-tailor? Was this share a god-given “right” as a matter of property (my land, therefore my cotton; my cotton, therefore my thread…etc.)?

Third: Thomas Jefferson certainly had read John Locke’s formulation of “god-given” rights–life, liberty, and property–when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. But Jefferson changed that line to: Life, Libertry, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Was that a meaningful edit?

And fourth: How does the American Constitution Party come by the knowledge of what rights god did and did not create?

From the Web site of the Constitution Party http://www.constitutionparty.com/ :

Seven Principles of the Constitution Party are:

1.Life: For all human beings, from conception to natural death;

2.Liberty: Freedom of conscience and actions for the self-governed individual;

3.Family: One husband and one wife with their children as divinely instituted;

4.Property: Each individual’s right to own and steward personal property without government burden;

5.Constitution: and Bill of Rights interpreted according to the actual intent of the Founding Fathers;

6.States’ Rights: Everything not specifically delegated by the Constitution to the federal government, nor prohibited by the Constitution to the states, is reserved to the states or to the people;

7.American Sovereignty: American government committed to the protection of the borders, trade, and common defense of Americans, and not entangled in foreign alliances.

I’m astonished that one of the better informed and more articulate posters on this site, whose views I respect, would admit to being a member of the local affiliate of a political party which endorses such a list. These seven principles raise far more than seven questions. Here are just a few (numbers refer to the numbered planks of the platform):

1. Life for all human beings from conception to natural death. (a) is a zygote a human being? (b) if the mother’s life is endangered by pregnancy, does the life of the zygote-foetus supercede the mother’s right to protect her life by an abortion? (c) may we take it that the CP opposes capital punishment?

2.  “Freedom of conscience and actions for the self-governed individual”–including, may we assume, entering into a non-reproductive sexual relationship with whomever that individual chooses? Assuring that the relationship is non-reproductive by whatever actions allowed by the self-governed individual’s conscience?

4.  “right to own and steward personal property without government burden.” Does “government burden” mean “taxes”? If so, who should pay for the protection of property–or is that not a function of government?

5. “actual intent of the Founding Fathers.” As determined by whom, and by what means? Do all subsequent generations, including this one, have no right to change the Constitution as they see fit?

6. States’ rights. This slogan was long used to deny equal rights to black people in some states. Does the Constitution Party support that concept?

7. “not entangled in foreign alliances.” Sounds a bit like George Washington. Is that really relevant in the wake of German aggression in Europe in the late 1930s? Or Japanese aggression in Asia in the same period? Does freedom of international trade in any way depend upon foreign alliances?

Honestly, I cannot understand how any sophisticated person could spend more than 30-40 seconds taking the posted principles of the CP or its local affiliate even half-way seriously!