Private Property Rights

“As a rule, private property—corporations—once shielded the individual from the State. No longer. American Big Business now gleefully enforces the State’s regulatory despotism. There is nowhere left to run.”—ILANA Mercer, “Republicans’ Main Focus: Showing Off How Black-Focused They Are,” November 18, 2021.
“As a reality-oriented conservative libertarian, I inhabit and theorize in the real world. From the conservative-libertarian’s perspective, Barry Goldwater got it right. Civil Rights law is an ass, for it infringes on property rights. But the onus is on flaccid Republican lawmakers to ensure that that ass can be ridden by all equally (with apologies to adorable, much-abused donkeys for the cruel metaphor).”—ILANA Mercer, “Centralize Liberty: The Solution To Wicked, Woke Tech (Part 3),” September 23, 2021.
January 6: “A certain kind of libertarian, the good kind, distinguishes clearly between those who, like BLM, would trash, loot and level private property—the livelihoods and businesses of private citizens—and between those who would storm the well-padded seats of state power and corruption.”—ILANA Mercer, “January 6 Committee: Menstrual America Vs. MAGA America,” July 29, 2021
“Libertarians who live by the axiom of nonaggression will always prefer the man who proceeds against the State, governed as it is by force, to the man who destroys private property, rooted as that institution is in peaceful, just, voluntary transactions.”—ILANA Mercer, “A Hardcore Libertarian Take on the Storming of the Capitol Building,” January 21, 2012.
“In defending Deep Tech, you are not defending the rights of private property to merely conduct itself as it wishes. Rather, you are marching down the pirate’s plank, on a ship of state commandeered by pirates, who’re in competition with the state.”—ILANA Mercer, “Deep Tech: Locked Down And Locked Out, First By The State, Then By Silicon Valley,” January 14, 2021.
“To go by the argument advanced in In Defense Of Looting, if looting a man’s property is morally legitimate—it ‘does little harm to those who have insurance’—why not taking his life? Doesn’t he have life insurance?”—ILANA Mercer, “Law And Order Unites Main Street America,” September 25, 2020.
“The restoration of law and order and the reverence for private property rights are the most powerful principles with which to unite main-street America, left and right. This is what Republicans must remember, before they scamper down the judicial rabbit hole of abortion.”—ILANA Mercer, “In Defense of Looting,” September 25, 2020
“Cultural supremacy is no argument for the dispossession of a Lesser Other.”—ILANA Mercer, Mises Wire, “Everyone Has Property Rights, Whether They Know it or Not,” October 11, 2017
“… the onus is on private property owners—yes, proprietors!—to turn away those who badger other customers in their rightful enjoyment of the services they bought …”—ILANA Mercer, “The New Norm: Crime, But Not Punishment,” WND.COM, November 15, 2018
“Anti-discrimination law banning the private discrimination … is inconsistent with freedom of association and the right of private property.”—ILANA (April 3, 2015)
“People with higher incomes constitute a minority, an economically dominant minority (to paraphrase Amy Chua). People with low incomes are in the majority, a politically dominant majority. The rich are politically impoverished; the poor politically rich. The rich dominate the economy, the poor dominate the polity. Come election time, the politically powerful exact their revenge against the economically powerful.”—ILANA (November 9, 2012)
“To those who imagine the death of our diplomats in Libya turns on American free-speech, I say this: You have no right to deliver your disquisition in my living room. You have only the right to request permission to so do from this (armed) private-property owner. By extension, you have no universal right to ‘free speech’ on another man’s land. More so than to America’s diplomats—Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran belong to the people of Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran.”—ILANA (September 14, 2012)
“PROPERTY ÜBER ALLES. Libertarians think of the troika of liberties—life, liberty, property—as equally weighted freedoms. However, property trumps liberty, for liberty can be variously defined. Government insists we are free so long as we can vote. We know this to be untrue. Property, moreover, is harder to redefine. If our rights to property were fully upheld, the same officials who tell us to count ourselves free (and lucky) would be unable to control huge areas of our lives—bedroom, boardroom, you name them.”—ILANA (Septmber 23, 2011)
“Arguably, a right that is not vigorously defended is as good as a right forfeited.”—ILANA (Septmber 23, 2011)
“Just as a partial pregnancy is an impossiblity, one can’t be a partial property owner with the government as the sleeping partner. If the government can claim a percentage of a man’s income as a condition of letting him live unmolested—that man owns diddly-squat. Ownership is then symbolic, subject to the whims and “wisdom” of the sovereign of the day.”—ILANA (March 28, 2008)
“The right of ownership is an extension of the right to life. If ownership is not an absolute right but is instead subject to the vagaries of majority vote, then so is the right to life.”—ILANA (November 20, 2002)
“The 16th Amendment gave government a limitless lien on a man’s property and, by extension, on his life.”—ILANA (November 20, 2002)
“If U.S. ports were private, and not state run, their proprietors would have to underwrite the endeavor and would thus be extra cautious, since it would fall to them—and not to taxpayers—to cover the costs of an attack…port owners would then express the same trepidations most Americans are now voicing over who manages—and has easy access to—their ports.”—ILANA (February 24, 2006)
“Most American ports are owned by localities—states, cities, and local port authorities. This is the American people’s backyard. They feel they own the ports, which is why they responded as cautiously as any proprietor who prizes and protect what is his.”—ILANA (March 3, 2006)
“Inherent in private property is the right to include or exclude; associate with or dissociate from. This attribute is also why we in the West are supposed to uphold private property as a civilizing institution. How better to keep the peace than to keep a distance?”—ILANA (November 18, 2005)
“Title or ownership should have been conferred originally to the degree to which homesteading, or a transformation of material goods with native labor had occurred on contested land. But the willy-nilly transfer of wealth to natives has never followed the logic of homesteading. Instead, asserting some traditional affinity over vast stretches of land is legally accepted.”—ILANA Mercer, “Treaty Process Likely to Generate Huge Costs,” July 13, 2000
“In a nationalized system there are no prices because there is no private property. Absent such knowledge, misallocation of capital is inevitable.”—ILANA Mercer, “Failure Defined As Success in Socialized Medicine ,” October 26, 2000.

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