Private ownership of Property is what makes a capitalistic
America more free and prosperous than a socialistic Soviet Union.
When the 14th amendment guaranteed "life,
liberty, and property,"
it was echoing a basic theme of our Founding Fathers, a secular
trinity, each of which is an essential component and guarantee
of the others. Life, liberty, and property--they
are like three pegs holding up a table. Remove one, and the
whole thing comes crashing down. It seems almost old-fashioned
to talk about property rights these days, but to our Founding
Fathers, property rights were part of the natural law, the
self-evident rights granted by God. Governments were instituted
among men to guarantee them, not to take them away. A man's home
is his castle--that is the foundation of civilized order, an
ancient statement of individual rights that comes down to us
through English common law. But in the last several decades, it
seemed that the Government saw a man's home as simply another
source of tax revenue. Marginal income tax rates soared as high
as 75 and on up--90 percent. They were, to use another
old-fashioned term, "confiscatory."
—President Ronald Reagan, Remarks at a White House Briefing
for Minority Business Owners, July 15, 1987, Public Papers of
the Presidents, 1987, p. 828.
If they could travel through time into the 21st Century, our
Founding Fathers would be shocked at the growth of government
power and the assault on Life, Liberty and Property.