On June 5, 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, started its ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Paul Jacob upholds property rights as the foundation of civilization:
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Colton Briggs
Nothing belongs to the dead, because the dead don’t need anything. Only the living need to possess things. The living need food, water, shelter, clothes, family, money, land. But the dead, the dead have already been tended to. Once they’re put in the ground, they have all they need. They’re not selfish. I like the dead.
The character Colton Briggs, as played by Nicolas Cage in The Old Way (2023), written by Carl W. Lucas.
Paul looks at a fundamental problem with the current course of our society: the disrespect for property rights, and upholding a rule of law.
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Arsène Houssaye
Plato did not believe any more in his republic than old Homer did in his gods.
Arsène Houssaye, Philosophers and Actresses (1886).
On June 3, 1959, Singapore adopted a constitution.
Geraldine Tyler lived long enough to see the U.S. Supreme Court rule against those who robbed her. She is 94.
On May 25, 2023, the Court determined in a 9-0 ruling that Hennepin County, Minnesota, is not constitutionally entitled to pocket the entire sale-price value of a condo in massive excess of the property taxes that Geraldine Tyler owed on the property when the government seized it for unpaid taxes.
Including penalties and interest, Tyler had owed about $15,000. But after selling the condo for $40,000, the county government seemed to think that $25,000 was a reasonable brokerage fee.
Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented Tyler in the case, argued that the county violated the Takings Clause of the Constitution by taking private property for public use “without just compensation.”
The Court agreed, saying that exploiting the debt “to confiscate more property than was due” effected “a ‘classic taking in which the government directly appropriates private property for its own use.’ ”
The ruling also rejects the county’s argument that Tyler somehow forfeited her constitutional rights by failing to pay her property taxes.
The same day, PLF also won another huge victory in the U.S. Supreme Court when the Court ruled that the EPA does not have limitless authority to block property owners from building on their own land if the agency chooses to designate a soggy part of the land a protected “wetland.”
Two for two. Not a bad batting average.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder.ai and DALL-E2
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series, quoted from the 1847 edition.
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Citizenship
On June 2, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.
Rachel Rogers and Jennifer Ferguson, employees at a Lululemon in Georgia, were fired for neglecting to stand by mutely during a robbery and for then calling 911.
“They’re just full-blown, like, running circles around you grabbing as much as they can,” Rogers told WSBTV. “So, our reaction is to scream, ‘No! Get out! Leave!’ ”
The two employees called the police. The same thieves were caught when trying to rob another Lululemon store in the area the next day, perhaps because police were on the alert.
But two weeks later, Rogers and Ferguson were fired, without severance pay, for violating the retail chain’s policy of zero tolerance for calling 911 to report a robbery.
“We are not supposed to get in the way. You kind of clear path for whatever they’re going to do,” Ferguson said. “We’ve been told not to put it in any notes, because that might scare other people. We’re not supposed to call the police, not really supposed to talk about it.”
In a post blasting the company, Jennifer’s husband, Jason Ferguson, observed: “If we, citizens of the community, allow criminal activity to go unchecked, that is tacit approval for them to continue their ways.”
And how long can we hold onto our belongings and our civilization if we meekly usher in the Visigoths and Vandals and tell them go ahead, take whatever you want, we won’t try to stop you or even call the cops after it’s all over?
A lot of people, including higher-ups at Lululemon, have forgotten that property rights are at the foundation of civilization.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney
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