We've legalized theft in America

I have been looking through a new study, released by an organization called the Property Rights Alliance, called the International Property Rights Index. The study examines 115 nations worldwide and examines the correspondence between prosperity in a country and how secure private property is there.

It shows a practically perfect correlation. The more secure private property is in a given country, the more prosperous it is. Countries rated in the top 25 percent in secure and safe private property have on average nine times more income per person than those in the bottom 25 percent.

It's one of those things that makes so much sense that you wonder why you have to do a study to show it. The easier it is to steal in any given country the less likely the economy will function well there.

Yet, basic truths such as this are becoming increasingly lost in our country and this is what should be driving our outrage. That we now live in a country where our private property is no longer safe and the very government that supposedly exists to protect it has become the thief we have to worry about.

President Obama went on Jay Leno's popular Tonight Show and talked about the current crisis. Listening to him, there seems little doubt that everything started on Wall Street.

"The problem is ... people were able to take huge, excessive risks with other people's money."

But, Mr. President, half the mortgages in this country are owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which were and are backed up with the money of us taxpayers. An easy flowing mortgage credit market built by politicians, by setting us taxpayers up to guarantee it all, which is what we wound up doing, is what started this whole thing... [snip]

Or we can re-direct our attention from symptoms to causes.

We can recall that the founders of our country intended the role of government to protect our lives and property, not violate them. And that in times when we have respected that proper use of government, our country has prospered.

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