Private property is bad because "ownership" results in an unequal distribution of power, which frustrates efforts to act communally for the public good. That is the collectivist drivel being taught in a school in Seattle. The children had their Legos taken away because, in building their Legotown, they were incorporating "their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys." These assumptions "mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society -- a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive." The Legos were given back only after the children's socialist indoctrination was complete:
At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes." The teachers quote the children:
"A house is good because it is a community house."
"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."
"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building."
In case you think the writer is exaggerating or distorting what the school is doing, here are a couple of the teachers giddily explaining the whole thing. They are quite pleased that the children "gave voice to the value that collectivity is a solid, energizing way to organize a community — and that it requires power-sharing, equal access to resources, and trust in the other participants." Whew.
There are only two ways to think about the formation of government -- the individual is more important than the group, or the group is more important than the individual -- and they lead to two kinds of government. Property rights aren't just as important as other rights -- they're more important. "Civil" rights are granted by the government, which decides who gets them and who doesn't, how they will be applied and paid for. Property rights draw the line between the individual and the group, and tells the government what its limits are. But if there are Supreme Court justices who don't understand that, it's probably foolish to expect a couple of grade-school teachers to.
Oh, this is a private school, by the way, not a public one. No irony there.
Comments
>paranoia about "leftist" and democrats
>taking away guns is just plain detached >from reality.
All those readers who believe that that the Democrats and leftists will smash their party's moderates and keep on trying to take away more of Americans' guaranteed gun rights, raise your hands.
All those Americans who believe democrats have seen the light and finally repented from their obsession to infringe the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and will now be willing, if elected, to leave guns alone and roll back any unconstitutional infringements now on the books, raise your hands.
Somebody add up the count.
>Again I ask you, are there no standards
>that can limit the ownership of weapons?
NO. There aren't, if one reads the text of Article II for comprehension. Infringe and limit are kind of synonymous. And the Amendment expressly bars infringement. It's the law.
There are no tiers, levels, exceptions, or "standards" listed in the Second Amendment which would ever permit "limitations" (aka infringements) to firearm ownership and carry by the People.
Here's the thing many folks fail to understand these days, and it's a matter of law -- every law on the books, popular or unpopular, has this fact in common (and far more solidly when the law is in the Bill of Rights):
No matter what you, or I, or anyone, thinks about the 2nd Amendment -- it just isn't legal in our form of government to infringe those stated rights. The Amendment says specifically that it is and always will be illegal to infringe (that is, even nibble around the edges of) its own guarantees -- the "right of the People to keep and bear arms."
EVEN IF WE ALL HATED Article II, we'd STILL have to hold another constitutional convention to delete it from the Bill of Rights before ANYONE could LEGALLY pass, much less enforce, the laws Democrat majorities pad our books with every few years, in direct violation of the Constitution.
You can't neutralize chunks of the Constitution by simple legal decisions in the legislative or judicial or executive branches of our system of government -- no matter how radically liberal you might become.
Despite the current body of bad law, you can't infringe a documented "right of the People" that solemnly guarantees it can never be infringed.
One of these days it is likely, in legal terms, that a glut of bad law restricting the right to keep and bear arms will be set aside just as Brown V. Board of Education finally set aside the unconstitutional body of law supporting the faulty doctrine of "separate but equal." Gun control and separate but equal are about equally afoul of our explicit Constitutional guarantees.