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By Rev. R.J. Rushdoony
 It
is important for us to face up to the growing problem of confiscation,
since it is an ever-threatening fact on the modern scene.
In London, England, a 10 year old girl was taken from her mother by a
juvenile court. According to the Santa Barbara New-Press, March 4,
1966, "The child's only offense is to wipe her knife and fork with a
table napkin before meals." Because the girl persisted, and the
head-master barred her from "the school canteen," the mother "refused to
send her to school" The child was then taken at once from the mother.
Whether the child or mother were right or wrong is irrelevant: The
central issue is the destruction by the state of a family.
The normal
procedure in such cases has been "a small fine." In this case, the state
asserted its power to declare implicitly that any resistance to its
will constitutes delinquency, and therefore the home must be broken. The
state thus becomes the "true" parent of the child. The authority of the
family is abolished by the authority of the state.
Another case: As a Los Angeles Times editorial for Wednesday
morning, March 9, 1966, noted, "Last July the Department of Interior
announced plans to offer recordable contracts to Imperial Valley farmers
served by the All American Canal under which they would be required to
dispose of holdings in excess of 160 acres. Now the department has asked
the Department of Justice to file court action to enforce that
limitation." This is the most recent development in a federal program
which began in 1902. Its legal history is a tangled one.
Even in terms
of its own laws, the federal action is illegal. The purpose of this
action is in effect "agrarian reform", the socialistic confiscation of
private lands. Supposedly, the action is to favor small holdings, but no
small farm is secure if the federal power to confiscate is admitted. If
this step is morally valid, then the federal government also has the
right to declare that a house with more than three bedrooms, or more
than six rooms, cannot receive power until it is "shared" with someone
else. The principle is exactly the same: it is theft by socialistic
confiscation. The fact that the "law" is used to steal only makes the
act more immoral.
In the Los Angeles Times for Thursday, March 1, 1966,
President Johnson's call for "gun control" is reported. This attempt is
to limit further the constitutional right to bear arms and an attack
also on the right of self-defense. It is a step towards confiscation of
rights as well as of arms.
The Whittier Daily News, March 9, L966, reports Martin
Luther King's confiscation or seizure of a building in Chicago. Assuming
that the 81-year-old landlord, John B. Bender, who has been legally
served notice to correct 23 building code violations, was in the wrong,
King's act is still immoral. To seize a building and collect its rents
is theft; what would happen if a John Birch Society leader tried to do
the same? Would he be free to continue lecturing and granting
interviews? But King has over 100 union leaders assisting him in his
programs, and the "law" today is a respecter of persons: it
discriminates against property and property owners.
The Santa Ana Register, January 22, 1966, "the federal
government has used $188,000 of the taxpayers' money to set up a
subsidized newspaper in Willow Run, Michigan, which, in the subsidized
newspapers' own words, was to provide ‘honest and true reporting (which)
the government feels of interest.'" Other plans have been announced for
a federal government press. Public funds are thus being used to further
statist control of communications. Freedom of the press is thus being
destroyed.
Taxation is increasingly becoming confiscation. Many people who own
their homes are paying what almost amounts to a rental fee in taxes. And
the end is not yet near.
Confiscation, in a variety of other ways, is a political and economic
fact or threat. It is inescapably so. Socialism offers people the
promise of paradise on earth, but socialism cannot deliver on its
promises because it is economically a bankrupt system. Instead of
plenty, it leads to poverty. The Ukraine under the tsars was "the
breadbasket of Europe"; today, Russia must import grain to avoid
starvation. Great Britain was once a center of world commerce and a
prosperous people; socialism has made the life of the average Englishman
a poor one. Socialism is a parasitic economy. It must rob, it must
confiscate, in order to give; it cannot create new wealth, but it
destroys existing wealth.
As a result, socialism steadily begins to founder and falter and move
towards total collapse. When this happens, socialism is faced with a
choice: who shall survive, the people or the state? Socialism claims to
seek the people's welfare, but, faced with the question of survival, it
sacrifices the people. For example, inflation develops, and the state
has a decision:
sacrifice socialism and its money management, or
sacrifice the people? Stop deficit spending, or control private spending
by inflation, taxation, and regulation? The socialist choice has always
been to sacrifice the people.
But no sacrifice helps to prop up socialism more than briefly. More
sacrifices are needed.
Instead of admitting gross error and, going out
of business, socialism puts the citizens out of business. It confiscates
by inflation, taxation, regulation, and finally seizure. The citizens,
private property, civil liberties, all things are steadily sacrificed to
make the continuation of socialism possible. The promise of plenty,
which seemed possible in the earlier stages of welfarism, begins to give
way to the certainties of disaster. As long as it can confiscate and
live, socialism will confiscate and live. This is socialism's historic
answer to its economic problems: progressive confiscation
According to Psalm 24:1, "The earth is the LORD's and the fullness
thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." Socialism confiscates
not only man's possessions but it strikes also at God's sovereignty over
the earth. It is an attempt of men to be gods, to be the re-creators of
man and the earth. And God is jealous of His honor and power. The law
of God's creation is thus totally against the socialist planners, and
they are therefore doomed to fail. Their "new order of the ages" is the
repeated failure of the ages and the condemned order. Because socialism
cannot confiscate God's sovereignty, it is inescapably doomed to failure
and destined to collapse... Continue> Chalcedon
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