…In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho’ from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

…If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.

From Professor David T. Koyzis’s essay:

“Under the reigning liberal worldview, North Americans increasingly tend to assume that the law should prohibit only that which obviously harms another and that individuals must be legally free to do as they please provided no one else is hurt in the process.

…

Although liberalism has claimed to expand the sphere of individual competence, it has done so by reducing the multiple communities of which we are part to mere voluntary associations, which, ironically, threatens the wellbeing of the individual herself.

…

[Punchline ending] Not only is such a pluriform society necessary for human flourishing, but it is a potent bulwark against genuine oppression by a totalistic individualism backed by a potentially expansive state.”

Imagine that. A genuine oppression by liberals which originates from a liberalism that culminates in a “totalistic individualism backed by a potentially expansive state.”