Why do you have the right to say whatever you want? Where does it come from? Can words actually be considered violence? It’s been weeks since Charlie Kirk’s assassination and questions like this are still splitting the country. But there’s an even deeper divide here than I think most people realize. Because it brings up a question at the core of our system of government: What is the foundation that all rights rest upon? And here’s an argument I haven’t heard being argued anywhere else. But it’s something that philosophers like John Locke, Murray Rothbard, and even the Founding Fathers understood very well: Property Rights Are The Essential Right In fact, in my view they are the only fundamental right there is. You see, there is no such thing as a “human right” floating out there on its own. Think about it: - The “right to life”? That’s just the right to have your body – your property – remain unviolated. - The “right to free speech”? That’s the right to use your voice – your property – to express yourself. - Even the “right to bear arms”? That’s the right to own and use weapons – your property – to defend your body and home. Every real right ultimately boils down to property rights. That means every violation of rights are actually violations of property rights. Just like any other property, your right to use it ends the moment you cross into someone else’s. As the saying goes – your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. I have the right to swing my fist anywhere I want. But the second it connects with your face, I’ve crossed the line. Up until that moment, I was using my property – my body – as I pleased. The instant I struck you, I violated your property – your body. The same thing applies to free speech. If I shout “fire” in a crowded theater and there really is a fire, I’ve helped people protect their property – their lives. But if I shout “fire” and there’s no fire? I’ve committed fraud. I’ve stolen the show from the audience, and I may have damaged the theater owner’s business (their property). This means the line in the sand isn’t some vague debate about which words are too mean or too offensive. The line is simple: have you violated someone else’s property rights? And this is exactly why the whole idea of “incitement of violence” falls apart. Because once you accept that rights are property rights, the distinction is clear: Words cannot be violence. Only actions can be. If someone hears a speech, reads a tweet, or sits in a crowd and then chooses to hurt another person – that choice is theirs and theirs alone. They chose to violate someone else’s property – their body or possessions. To shift the blame onto the speaker is to pretend words have some kind of mystical “mind control” power. But that doesn’t exist. People remain responsible for their own actions. The moment we start treating words as violence, we erase personal responsibility and hand the state a blank check to police speech (just look at what’s happening in the U.K. right now). And when that happens, no property is truly safe – not your body, not your voice, not your home. That’s why the Founding Fathers placed such a heavy emphasis on property. James Madison said that protection of property rights was one of the only reasons for a government to exist… “It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.​ These rights cannot well be separated. The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.”​ -James Madison John Adams believed that "property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.” And Gouverneur Morris, a member of the Convention of 1787, said that: “Life and liberty are generally said to be more valuable than property. An accurate view of the matter, however, would nevertheless prove that property is the main object of society.”​ -Gouverneur Morris The Founders understood very well that property rights are the cornerstone of every other liberty… Which is why I believe they would have been disgusted by the state of our nation today. The slow erosion of our foundational right Since the New Deal and the “constitutional revolution”, America has strayed further and further from what the Founders intended. The Supreme Court has permitted government actions that would have horrified them: - Farmers banned from growing wheat on their own land for their own families (Wickard v. Filburn). - Citizens forced to obtain licenses just to work in occupations that pose no risk to public health or safety (Ferguson v. Skrupa). - Homes seized under eminent domain and handed to another private owner, simply because the state claimed the new use might generate more tax revenue (Kelo v. City of New London). Now people want to control what we do with our voices? Our words? California's Senate introduced a bill (SB 771) which will target platforms that “amplify” hate speech (whatever that means) with $1 million fines per infraction. That bill is sitting on Gavin Newsom’s desk as we speak. Just in August this year, the White House announced it would “prosecute” citizens for burning the American flag – partially on the grounds that such expression “may incite violence.” And even though they danced around what that means - and exactly what would be prosecuted in the executive order - the implication was clear… Don’t do it, or else. Our right to our own voice - our ability to express ourselves - is our most foundational property right of all. Because it’s the exercise of this right that makes us individuals. It’s what makes us human. As economist Murray Rothbard put it: "If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, interchangeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died?​ The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the fact that every person, though similar in many ways to others, possesses a completely individuated personality of his own.​ It is the fact of each person’s uniqueness — the fact that no two people can be wholly interchangeable — that makes each and every man irreplaceable and that makes us care whether he lives or dies, whether he is happy or oppressed.​ And, finally, it is the fact that these unique personalities need freedom for their full development that constitutes one of the major arguments for a free society…​ Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices, for any sort of development of his own personality to take place. He must, in short, be free in order that he may be fully human.​" -Murray Rothbard That’s why it’s impossible to accept any idea that words can be violence. As Murray Rothbard said… We need our words in order that we may fully be human. Until next time, Joe Brown

According to Karl Marx, the USA is a communist country: 1. Abolition of private land ownership - accomplished through property taxes (stop paying your "rent" (taxes) to the government and they take their property back) 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax - top 1% pays 40% of all taxes, bottom 40% pays zero 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance - accomplished partially with estate taxes 4. Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels - civil asset forfeiture 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state - central banking with the Federal Reserve 6. Centralization of the means of communications and transport in the hands of the state - state control over communication frequencies, internet, censorship, and public transportation 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state - seizing the means of production by taking ownership stakes in private companies 8. Equal obligation to work - the Federal Reserve's dual mandate of "Maximum Employment" means manipulation of the currency to ensure most people can never stop working 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of distinction between town and country - regulations and subsidies to control agriculture, crop choice, and centralization of food production into a few large easy-to-control corporations 10. Free education of all children in public schools. Abolition of child factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production. - Public schools are free and child labor is illegal