According to a Wikipedia site, an endangered species is “a population of an organism which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters.”   No, you won’t find this one on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list. Substitute “organism” with “rights or freedoms,” and you can see that this new list is just being developed.

For the purposes of this article, I will just speak to one: private property. Private property is protected under our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, with the Fifth Amendment stating:  nor shall [any person] …be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. And the Fourteenth Amendment offering protection as follows: “nor shall any State deprive any person [citizen of the United States and of the State wherein they reside] of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”

Charles Montesquieu, one of the three most-influential political philosophers impacting the formation of American Law, held private property in the highest priority: “Let us therefore lay down a certain maxim: that whenever the public good happens to be the matter in question, it is not for the advantage of the public to deprive an individual of his property – or even to retrench the least part of it by a law or a political regulation.” [1]

John Adams went further to declare the outcome of a society where private property is not protected by law, when stating that “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence…” [2]

OK….I think most Americans understand that no one, including the government, can just come in and arbitrarily take your home away from you (at least, not yet). We tend to view property in terms of land, structures, something purchased that we own.   But our newly elected President is out to deprive you of your “most sacred” property….your conscience and religious beliefs.  

In December 2008, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a regulation to enforce 3 civil rights laws passed by Congress that declared American tax dollars would not fund programs in which healthcare professionals are fired, penalized or otherwise subjected to discrimination because of their ethical stance related to abortion and other morally controversial issues. In other words, doctors and other healthcare professionals would not longer be forced to violate their conscience and/or religious beliefs by having to perform abortions or other controversial procedures (such as euthanasia).

President Obama officially declared in March 2009 his plans to rescind (remove) this conscience protecting regulation.   And to what end? Is this the betterment of a free society to force its citizens to perform acts that violate their conscience or religious beliefs?

James Madison, known as as the “father of our constitution” had much to tell us about the broad spectrum of private property protected under our Founding Document.   Madison (and the framers of our Constitution concurred) viewed the term “property” to mean “That dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual…. a man’s land, or merchandise, or money…” However, Madison also held a larger and juster meaning to the term “property” to “embrace everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right, and which leaves to everyone else the like advantage. …a man has property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of particular value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.” [3]

In his June 8, 1789 speech introducing the Bill of Rights at the First Federal Congress, Madison stated “civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed.” He also added “This right is in its nature an unalienable right.” Unalienable means absolute rights of individuals that are natural and inherent. [4]

Biographer Irving Brant noted that “Madison made freedom of conscience – meaning belief or conviction about religious matters – the centerpiece of all civil liberties. …By placing freedom of conscience prior to and superior to all other rights, Madison gave it the strongtest politcal foundation possible.” [5]   There is specific meaning and intent connected to every word used in the US Constitution. Who better to define that meaning and intent than the men who wrote it.

President Obama took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." And yet within 2 short months of making this oath, he has sought to violate it by decreeing that doctors, nurses and healthcare workers no longer have the right to exercise their right of conscience and religious beliefs [private property] when asked to perform an abortion. 

Perhaps the citizenry needs to respectfully remind our newly elected President and Congressional representatives, that they serve the people. And one of the ways they are to serve the people is to protect their private property as upheld in the Constitutional. 

And as James Madision once said: “Conscience is the most sacred of all property.” [6]

[1] and [2] below from www.wallbuilders.com article Resolution Acknowleding the Inalienable Rights of Private Property

[1] Baron Charles Secondat de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (London): J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1752), p. 210

[2] John Adams, A Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United Ssates of America (Philadelphia: William Young, 1797), Vol. III, p. 216, “The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth Examined.”

[3] “Property,” March 27, 1792 (Madison, 1865, IV, page 478)

[4] Source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/madison/objects.html

[5] Source: http://www.heritage.org/Research/:PoliticalPhilosophy/EM729.cfm Article Date/Title/Author/Source: March 16, 2001 James Madison and Religious Liberty by Joseh Loconte, Executive Memorandum #729

[6] Source: http://www.heritage.org/Research/:PoliticalPhilosophy/EM729.cfm