Why Property Rights Matter

"You have something I want" is the overarching theme of today's progressivism, and is at the core of the envy classes' thinking and demands. It's never presented that way, of course. It's usually masked with highfalutin rationalizations and peppered with woke-lexicon terms like "fairness," "justice," "equity," and "inclusion." But, really, at its core, modern progressivism is about taking. Where that taking cannot be cajoled, the demands are that it be coerced.

The taking is always from the successful, of course, because that's how envy works. This requires a rejection of the fundamental principle of property rights.

Understanding this mindset goes a long way to understanding the behavior of the pro-Hamas protestors at Columbia University and elsewhere.

Those protestors would have us believe that their on-campus occupations, their interference with other students' pursuit of education, their blockades and other forms of access-denial, and their vandalism are all "free speech," and therefore their right.

They are wrong.

The only way free speech can work in an egalitarian society is via the "my right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose" precept. That means that slander, libel, perjury, intimidation, and incitement are not protected. "Hate speech" that does not rise to the level of any of these is protected, no matter how vile. As are any opinion one might have regarding Hamas and Israel.

But, concurrent with the right to free speech are other rights, including association, assembly, and property.

Association and assembly are also "tip of your nose" matters, in that I do not have the right to prevent others from associating or from gathering in a public space. Or, in a space whose owners/controllers have granted them the privilege of doing so.

Yes, I wrote "privilege," not "right," because the legitimacy and legality of your presence on someone else's property is up to them.

Columbia's trustees, dean, and other officials have the ultimate say as to who is allowed on the campus, and what anyone can do on that campus. It being private property, whoever is in charge of that property gets to set the rules of conduct within its borders.

In short, the people who are chanting the equivalent of "kill all the Jews" are there only by permission, and that permission can be rescinded at any time. They cannot argue First Amendment or more generalized free speech rights as a defense, and their denial of others' rights and liberties further undermines whatever case they might claim to have.

Broaden their lack of respect for property rights to the Israel matter itself. Israelis (whether they be Jew, Arab, or something else) turned a barren and resource-free strip of desert into a prosperous and thriving nation, and out-progressed their oil-rich neighbors in the process. They did this despite multiple foreign aggressions, despite their being viscerally despised by hundreds of millions of inculcated Islamists, and despite millennia-old bigotries.

Israel's per-capita GDP is forty times Gaza's. It is also thirteen times Egypt's, thirteen times Jordan's, thirteen times Lebanon's, eight times Libya's, and almost twice that of oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

See "taking is always from the successful."

Now, look at who gets championed by the Woke. Ever wonder why East Asian and South Asian People of Color are never "white-knighted" by progressives? Why, instead, their children are held to tougher college admission standards than white people, and far tougher standards than blacks?

See "taking is always from the successful."

The essence of this "politics of envy" is the mindset born of a disregard for property rights. To them, the stuff you own - the fruit of your labor - isn't really yours, so any other "fruit of your labor" such as success isn't yours either. Your success is theirs for the taking.

This "taking" culture is why progressives embrace socialism, despite its universal failure, universal misery, and horrific death toll. That it has been inculcated into the brains of so many of our young Best-and-Brightest is a national tragedy and one that carries grave consequences for the nation's future.

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As far as Columbia et al go, the university brass have the right to tell protestors "you are trespassing, now leave." If they fail to go, they can have them removed, arrested, and prosecuted, and they can impose whatever academic penalties they want, including suspension and expulsion. That they have so far refused to do so tells its own tale. As of my writing this, protestors have broken into a building and barricaded themselves in. In response, Columbia shut the campus down, meaning that many thousands of students paying shelling out near-six-figures for their Ivy League educations are being denied those educations and the college experiences that go with them. This is the heckler’s veto elevated to vandalism, violence, and the worst sort of bigotry.

Columbia’s brass, by allowing all this to persist and escalate, is complicit in all of it. These are the people that tell us silence is violence, that failure to speak or act condones injustice, and that anti-racism is the only cure for racism. If we put Jews into the category of “race,” then by their rules these elite-est of the elites are as bad as any white-sheet cross-burner. Shame on them.