The Importance of Property

I've always said that if I had a chance to go to school just for fun and not to have to earn a living afterwards I would take a course in Philosophy.  I don't know that I would ever have taken a course in history but I would have like to take some classes in it because I've always loved history, at least the kind where I don't have to take tests in it.  Most of the lectures that I've listened to have been either history or philosophy.  I've also listened to some of the music series and they're excellent as well.

Recently I just listened to the series "The American Mind", and I also listened once to the series "Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights."  Ok so here is the cool thing about history and making connections.  In the Civil Liberties lectures they talk about how for the first part of the American experience property was all important and the driving force of Civil Rights.  I found this especially interesting when I heard it but it really strikes home after listening to The American Mind.  John Locke said that in a state of nature people took their land and put their labor into it developed property then in an effort to protect that property they would enter into contracts with others to protect their combined property and this is how society arose.  Of course there was another great philosopher about society at that time who took a different tack and that was Hobbs, who talked about the state of nature being "nasty brutish and short".  I guess Americans seemed to see Locke as being the correct one, although I'm sure they saw plenty of Hobbs in action as well.

In the American Mind lectures the professor pointed out that Americans could see that their societies had arisen as Locke had said they would and the Americans had set up legislatures in the way Locke had said people would.  By this light you can really see why the early Americans would have emphasized the importance of property in their concepts of Civil Liberties.  Of course I think it's practically self evident that the safety of property should be something that all societies should encourage.  When people know their property is safe from confiscation they're willing to put that property at risk and invest it, or make it increase, if not the only thing they can think of is keeping their property safe, generally by hiding it.  That hurts all of society in general.  Unfortuntely we're losing that concept slowly in America, and I think that it's going to be for the worst.