Re “Cayetano wants Maha’ulepu for public” (TGI, Dec. 18): All individuals have an absolute, God-given right to themselves. That is, we own ourselves and by extension all we earn or create. This, altogether, is our property. We each have an
Re “Cayetano wants Maha’ulepu for public” (TGI, Dec. 18): All individuals have an absolute, God-given right to themselves. That is, we own ourselves and by extension all we earn or create. This, altogether, is our property. We each have an unalienable right to this property and a moral and ethical responsibility to protect and defend it. Life, liberty and property do not exist because we have made laws-quite the opposite, because life, liberty and property pre-exist it has caused us to make laws for their protection in the first place.
As a society our individual right to protect and defend our persons and property are embodied collectively in the Law. The sole justification for and legitimacy of the existence of laws administered by government is founded upon the individual’s right to lawfully protect his or her person and property. The law cannot logically have any other purpose.
Further, the law may not then, without contradicting itself, do what an individual has no right to do and what might indeed land an individual in jail.
How is it then that Cayetano threatens to “prohibit development of Maha’ ulepu by law, if necessary”? By law? What Cayetano proposed would use the law to destroy not protect an individual’s property rights. The essence of law would be perverted; similar threats and actions by an individual would constitute a crime. You know, extortion and theft.
What the governor proposes is nothing short of theft. That is, he would take what belongs to one person and give it to those to whom it does not belong. The only legitimate way for the state to acquire Maha’ulepu is to pay Steve Case market value as required by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.
Remember this, however: The state, which has no money of its own, must first violate your property rights by taking some of what you have earned to pay for Maha’ulepu.
R.S. Weir, Kapa’a
