Respect for property rights is the foundation of a free and prosperous society --- by Brian Irving

Respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society. If you can’t buy, sell or use your property as you see fit, so long as you harm no one else, then you don’t really own it.
“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort,” noted James Madison, regarded as the Father of the U.S. Constitution. “This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”
Governments today have turned this fundamental principle on its head. Municipal councils, state legislatures, and federal bureaucrats routinely issue decrees telling owners what they can and cannot do with their property. At best these rules are merely costly inconveniences. At worst, government seizes the property from the owner.
Libertarians would free property owners from these, as long as their choices don’t harm or infringe on the rights of others.
We’d repeal all zoning ordinances. In their place, we’d uphold both the rights of private owners to use and develop their property as they see fit and the rights of their neighbors to be protected from any direct harm caused by such use.
Instead of restricting freedom, Libertarians would have government encourage free people to establish private contractual relationships that promote harmonious land use and development.
The two most egregious infringements on property rights are civil asset forfeiture and eminent domain. Libertarians would end the first and severely restrict the second. Seizing private property is in direct conflict with the government’s role to protect private property. Civil asset forfeiture basically lets government take your property just for suspecting you of a crime, a practice reeking with the potential for abuse.
Eminent domain is not much better. The state constitution provides very flimsy protection for property rights. It says “No person shall be … deprived of his life, liberty or property, but by the law of land.” (Article I, Section 19 ) But this is meaningless when a small group of legislators– or even one, like the Speaker of the House – can change the law on a whim.
Libertarians propose amending the state constitution to prohibit the taking of property for private interests and to require full compensation to the owner as determined by a jury.




Brian Irving, 67 of Cary, is the
chair of the Libertarian Party
of North Carolina. he is a retired
Air Force officer  and a
freelance writer.
He’s currently a candidate for NC House 36.

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