Medicur
Sam Aurelius Milam III
In
Bouvier's definition of property, the distinction between absolute property
and qualified property is of considerable importance. Bouvier mentioned
animals as examples of absolute property. Such absolute property
used to include the power of the owner to dispose of the property, meaning
that he could do whatever he wanted to do with it. Thus, if a horse
was ill-fed or a dog was mistreated, it wasn't the business of anybody
but the owner. However, today's meddling reformers have changed all
of that. In the pursuit of a misguided concern for the well-being
of animals, they have decided that the so-called "rights" of animals are
more important than the rights of human beings. Accordingly, they
have empowered the government to confiscate animals which are, in the opinions
of the reformers, being mistreated. They have thereby deprived the
erstwhile owners of their previous absolute property, and converted them
into mere custodians. Absolute property has been transferred from
human beings, who once had a right of ownership, to the government, which
has converted that right into a privilege. The meddling reformers
cheer every time the government seizes a mistreated animal from the man
who ought to have been its owner. The reformers fail to understand
the implications of what they have done. The definitions of ownership
and property, as documented by Bouvier, are sufficiently complex and flexible
to encompass almost any silliness. However, the sacrifice of a human
being's right of ownership in exchange for a so-called right of an animal
to be well treated is really stupid.
Not
surprisingly, the nonsense continues to escalate as the meddling reformers
try to elevate the status of animals to equality with the status of people.
We now have department stores and websites dedicated to pets, salons, doctors,
hospitals, and cemeteries for pets, special food, toys, and medicine for
pets, and God only knows what else. How often have you heard somebody
declare that the dog is "a member of the family"? The next thing
you know, in a world where human beings are brutalized, homeless, diseased,
and starving, some nitwit will be demanding universal health care and free
prescription drugs for dogs.![10x5 Page Background GIF Image](../../Images/10x5_Page_Background.gif)
PROPERTY
.... When things are fully our own, or when all others are excluded from
meddling with them or from interfering about them, it is plain that no
person besides the proprietor, who has this exclusive right, can have any
claim either to use them, or to hinder him from disposing of them as he
pleases: so that property, considered as an exclusive right to things,
contains not only a right to use those things, but a right to dispose of
them, either by exchanging them for other things, or by giving them away
to any other person without any consideration, or even throwing them away
....
....
It is also said to be, when it relates to goods and chattels, absolute
or qualified. Absolute property is that which is our own without
any qualification whatever: as, when a man is the owner of a watch,
a book, or other inanimate thing, or of a horse, a sheep, or other animal
which never had its natural liberty in a wild state.
Qualified
property consists in the right which men have over wild animals which they
have reduced to their own possession, and which are kept subject to their
power: as, a deer, a buffalo, and the like, which are his own while
he has possession of them, but as soon as his possession is lost his property
is gone, unless the animals go animo revertendi ....
But
property in personal goods may be absolute or qualified without any relation
to the nature of the subject-matter, but simply because more persons than
one, have an interest in it, or because the right of property is separated
from the possession. A bailee of goods, though not the owner, has
a qualified property in them; while the owner has the absolute property
....
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frontiersman@ida.net |
Frontiersman,
1510 North 22nd Drive, Show Low, Arizona 85901
Also see Pharos at http://www.ida.net/users/pharos/ |
March 2004
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