Are Voters Schizophrenic?
Inside Liberty Watch Today - November 13, 2006

By Doug French

Voters proved to be their old schizophrenic selves last week; voting in favor of PISTOL, which will, if voters collectively say "yes" again in two years, make it harder and more expensive for governments to seize private land via eminent domain actions. But then the majority voted in favor of regulating what bar owners can do with their private property with a "yes" to Question 5, voted to take away a person's right to work for a wage less than what the government deems to be the minimum, and against people being able to ingest what they want in their own bodies by voting down Question 7.

It's mystifying that the average voter cannot connect these dots. This isn't a political issue, this isn't shades of gray, there's nothing to argue about. A person is either for property rights or they are not. And it is irrational for a person to not be in favor of property rights. The rational person voted in favor of PISTOL, and in turn, that voter surely, if that person were a consistent, logical thinker should have voted against Question 5, against raising the minimum wage, and for legalizing marijuana use.

But while over 330,000 people voted for PISTOL, only 250,000 voted against Question 5, only 170,000 voted against the increase in the minimum wage, and just short of 241,000 voted in favor of Question 7.

Property rights theorist John Locke wrote, "…every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself." What that means is property rights start with a person's own body. And a person can decide what he or she wants to put into his or her body, because we each own and control our own bodies. The state has no business deciding, and damn sure our busy-body neighbors do not have rights to our bodies, and the right to decide what we put in our bodies or don't put in our bodies, because it's our property.

Continuing Locke's quote: "The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we shall say, are properly his." What this means is what a man or woman creates is his or her property. Thus, if a person wants to sell labor for less than $6.15 per hour they should be able to because the labor they produce is their property. It is not for the government to decide or 330,000 voters to decide what a person can sell their property for.

Locke continues: "Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined it to something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men." Your neighborhood bar/tavern/restaurant has been removed from nature through the investment and labor of the owner of that property. Thus, the owner has control over that property and what patrons can engage in while on the owner's property. If the owner is fine with his patrons smoking, then they should be able to smoke. The government and 295,000 voters should not be able to dictate what customers can do while on a business owners private property.

Of course most people don't know of John Locke, and don't think about the implications of their voting actions. People, who never go near a bar, voted against smoking because they don't like smoking and getting a whiff of the second-hand variety offends them-especially if they are ex-smokers. People voting for the minimum wage hold the fantasy that they are helping the hard working down-on-his-luck adult minimum-wage earner who is struggling to support a family. Instead they are preventing the sweet, earnest but probably-a-little slow kid down the block from getting that first job, because his output does not reach the economic level required due to the government-set wage being too high. Voters who shot down marijuana legalization must not have ever smoked the stuff; otherwise they'd know it's no big deal.

But at what point do people understand the implications of this tyranny of the masses known as democracy? When the voters, in their collective wisdom, decide the minimum wage should be $100 per hour? When smoking is banned in private homes? When ingestion of trans fats is made a crime?

All rights begin with property rights. Normally, politicians work overtime to destroy our rights: last week it was the amateurs' turn.

Doug French, Liberty Watch Columnist 


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