Life, Liberty, and Property - pick any two


mordorbund
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As I was reading D&C 134 (Article of Governments and Laws in General) my curiousity got the better of me and I started thinking up a whole slew of questions, principally with the phrase "life, property, and free exercise of conscience".

 
In my history of civilizations class I remember hearing the phrase "life, liberty, and property" attributed to Locke. I've skimmed Two Treatises and don't see him actually use the phrase, but the concept is there.
 
 "Man ... hath by nature a power ... to preserve his property - that is, his life, liberty, and estate" (2:7.87).

 

 
Do you have any thoughts on why life, liberty, and property are the three basic natural rights?
 
Also, this concept influenced The Declaration of Independence ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness") as well as D&C 134 (life, "free exercise of conscience", and property (vs. 2, 5, 10)), where variations are maintained as "inalienable", or essential rights.
 
Any insights on why these documents swap out one of the rights for a different one? and are you familiar with any similar documents using the phrase "free exercise of conscience"?
 
Why do you think a list of three is always maintained? Why not build upon previous lists by including the best of both worlds? i.e. life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness, and the free exercise of conscience.
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LOL... I would suspect its because the colonies had unlimited land/ property... Just build on it, defend it, and it's yours. Heck. Montana STILL has homesteading.

Meanwhile the sum total of the UK has, at various points, been in the hands of the aristocracy. Whether the Kings land, or the hereditary Lord's the K/Q has given it to, or even in later years when estates were bought and sold... We plebs couldn't own property ourselves. We lived at the discretion of our (literal) land-lord.

Even long after those documents were written and even -to an EXTENT- today,.. Property holding in the UK proper can get pretty dicey. England/Wales/Scotland/Ireland are pretty small islands. Granted the commonwealth extends to Canada & Australia, so it's not desperate like it once was, and even when the US constitution was drawn up, feudalism had already been done away with, so it wasn't as bad as it had been.

________

I think 3 is an English (spoken language) thing. It has a certain ring. Be it friends, Romans, countrymen... Or Life, liberty, & the ___________... It sits well in our hearts & minds. The original sound byte. Longer than 3 requires music or rhyme to have the same bang.

Other languages have other number combos. Or different linguistic tricks to make them memorable/meaningful.

Even old English used a different meter. Beowulf (one of my favs!) splits lines in half, and alliterates them.

_______

So.... Yah. I suspect pragmatism & prose.

Q

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Free exercise of conscience as part of the Freedom of Religion Amendment was proposed by Madison but was voted down.  The final draft of the 1st Amendment removed the free exercise of conscience clause.

 

This made it so that Americans are free to establish a moral foundation/belief system for themselves but they are not as free to act on it.

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LOL... I would suspect its because the colonies had unlimited land/ property... Just build on it, defend it, and it's yours. Heck. Montana STILL has homesteading.

Meanwhile the sum total of the UK has, at various points, been in the hands of the aristocracy. Whether the Kings land, or the hereditary Lord's the K/Q has given it to, or even in later years when estates were bought and sold... We plebs couldn't own property ourselves. We lived at the discretion of our (literal) land-lord.

Even long after those documents were written and even -to an EXTENT- today,.. Property holding in the UK proper can get pretty dicey. England/Wales/Scotland/Ireland are pretty small islands. Granted the commonwealth extends to Canada & Australia, so it's not desperate like it once was, and even when the US constitution was drawn up, feudalism had already been done away with, so it wasn't as bad as it had been.

________

I think 3 is an English (spoken language) thing. It has a certain ring. Be it friends, Romans, countrymen... Or Life, liberty, & the ___________... It sits well in our hearts & minds. The original sound byte. Longer than 3 requires music or rhyme to have the same bang.

Other languages have other number combos. Or different linguistic tricks to make them memorable/meaningful.

Even old English used a different meter. Beowulf (one of my favs!) splits lines in half, and alliterates them.

_______

So.... Yah. I suspect pragmatism & prose.

Q

 

Ah yes, the old "rule of three" (whether it's real or not, it certainly crops up a lot - liberty, equality, fraternity). Locke was English, so where does that fit in your land-model? Also, why do you think Oliver Cowdery and other saints (the section is not a revelation) put it back in the trio? Why return to the original Locke trio instead of amending the Declaration of Independence trio?

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Free exercise of conscience as part of the Freedom of Religion Amendment was proposed by Madison but was voted down.  The final draft of the 1st Amendment removed the free exercise of conscience clause.

 

This made it so that Americans are free to establish a moral foundation/belief system for themselves but they are not as free to act on it.

 

Do you have a source for this? As it is today, the wording is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", although what that means in practice I fully agree with you (as proven in the past when the feds passed laws to reign in religions deemed immoral).

 

Where can I find the originally proposed amendments with the phrase "free exercise of conscience"?

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Do you have a source for this? As it is today, the wording is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", although what that means in practice I fully agree with you (as proven in the past when the feds passed laws to reign in religions deemed immoral).

 

Where can I find the originally proposed amendments with the phrase "free exercise of conscience"?

 

You can find them in the US Congressional Debate Papers in the Library of Congress - which, amazingly, are all in electronic form now accessible via LOC.gov... and I can now link to a forum post like this:

 

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=227

 

Isn't that soooooo cool???  It is so super amazing.

 

Anyway, I'm linking you straight to the page where Madison proposed freedom of conscience vis-a-vis freedom of religion in page 451 of that document starting with "Fourthly.".  

 

All the stuff before it is the debate in Congress for the presentation of Amendments (lots of back and forth on whether Amendments to the Constitution are needed and whether it is appropriate to present them on that session).  You can just click previous page if you want to read them.  I LOVE reading this stuff - political debates back when politicians were TRUE politicians who were inspired, dedicated, and passionate about their love for their country and the citizens of.

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I'll pick just one, property.  

 

All other rights can be extrapolated from property rights.  Before one can truly understand rights, a clear distinction must be made between legality and morality.  Legality means that a bunch of other people of the ability to forcibly deprive one of their rights.  Morality is a higher law than legality and is what one should do regardless of the legality of something.  A key distinction between morality and legality is should and must, morality is what one should do based upon either an internal conscience, religion, etc.. Legality is what a bunch of other people say one must do. 

 

The most basic property right is the question of who owns me?  Who owns my body?  And the follow-up question is what does it mean to own something.  To own something, means to do with it how one pleases.  If I own my body, and consequently everyone owns their body, then a legal framework should be set up to protect that right.  This means that anytime I do anything to another human being that they do not approve of (i.e. use of force), I should have my own property rights violated.

 

From the fact that I own myself, other property rights are defined, i.e. by extension anything that I make is an extension of me as I have mixed my body, my labor with things in the natural world that have no ownership.  Therefore, anytime that in a basic natural state (i.e. a garden of eden type scenario) anything that I form I have ownership over.  So I modify the land and create a farm, I own it.

 

The extrapolation of property rights can be used to form natural rights of life and liberty and freedom of conscience.  In a complex world, the interleaving of property rights can be very complex but IMO almost all problems in the world can be broken down to a violation of property rights.

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yJacket, since the other rights can be explained in terms of property rights, why do you think the Declaration of Independence omitted it?

Good question.  The Declaration of Independence is a fantastic document, however it is also a product of 13 almost completely independent colonies coming together in unison.  

 

At the beginning of the Continental Congress, one of the most important questions was who would say the opening prayer. The Congregationalist in the New England vs. the Baptists in the South vs. the various other religious colonies.  Unity in the colonies was a monumental task for a simple reason of religion as each colony basically had their own colonial religion.  Luckily some wise men (Sam Adams one of them) helped pick the right person to lead the opening prayer.  

 

Sam Adams was basically vital in helping foment the revolution and keeping it alive to get to the Declaration of Independence.  Without Sam Adams, there would be no revolution.  Adams was a Congregationalist and he was also poor, especially when compared to other delegates like Hancock.  Adams never cared much for wealth or property, at one point he was the tax collector for Boston and let's just say he didn't do a very good job of enforcement.  Jefferson certainly had a basis in Locke and IIRC the phrase was originally to be life, liberty and property.  The choosing of Jefferson, Franklin and John Adams (Sam's cousin) on the committee to write the declaration was important.  Being able to balance all the politics of the various colonies in order to send a completely united voice of independence was vital.

 

Ultimately, I think the phrasing was more palatable for all the representatives to sign, especially for some of the more northern colonies who's religion focused much less on the importance of property.

 

The Declaration is a fantastic document and Locke and Jefferson produced a fantastic groundwork.  But just like science has advance, the ability to extrapolate further upon natural rights has also expanded.  From Locke and Jefferson to Frederick Bastiate, Lord Acton, to Lysander Spooner and Albert Jay Nock, to Mises, Murray Rothbard and others.

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