Constitution based Articles

By: Bill Denman

This article is an abbreviated version of one written in 1975 while the Idaho Legislature was

debating passage of the Planning and Zoning Act. The original was a thirty two page article written

as a dialog between an advocate of P & Z and another promoting the private property philosophy.

That article refuted the popular alarmist claims of P & Z advocates about pig farms moving in

next door, noisy businesses invading residential areas, junk yards causing loss of value of nearby

property, etc., etc.

In retrospect, it has become obvious that simply refuting the claims of P & Z advocates is not

effective in changing minds; a more fundamental approach is needed.

Conservatives often make the mistake of assuming that all conservatives think alike. This is a

serious error and leads to the disagreements that are so common. There are basically two reasons

for this state of affairs. First, many who consider themselves conservatives harbor socialist ideas and

don’t know it. Many are simply people who have an ax to grind for some particular government

activity, or program. Some like public education but dislike social security. Others like social

security but dislike public education. A large percentage like P & Z but dislike public education and

social security. They fail to recognize that ALL these government programs, and many more, are

simply part of an overall socialist philosophy which is self-destructive. Second, and perhaps most

important, conservatives (and liberals) fail to do their reasoning from a fundamental principles

viewpoint and allow emotions to blind them to the existence of these principles. This leads to

emotional arguments that compound the problem instead of solving it.

When people disagree on important issues that effect all of us, like P & Z, a vitally important

first step towards a solution is definition of concepts. If we disagree on the definition of concepts,

then that is where we should concentrate our efforts until the disagreements are resolved. Trying to

solve a complex problem when the debating parties attach different meanings to the same words

becomes an exercise in futility. The second step is to clearly define the basic premise from which

we do our reasoning. This is perhaps the most difficult step for conservatives and liberals alike and

failure to reason from a basic premise almost always results in heated arguments that hurt feelings

and solve nothing.

Government ----- Organized force. There are more detailed definitions but this sums it up very

succinctly.

George Washington said:

Our 27th President, Woodrow Wilson said:

The best definition of government and law was penned by Alexander Hamilton

in Federalist Paper #15; here is what he wrote:

& underlining added)

Laws ------------- Threats of violence. There is no such thing as a voluntary law. (see Hamilton’s

definition above, it’s excellent.)

Our 20th President James A. Garfield said:

There are three, and only three, reasons for passing any law:

(1) To compel people to do something they do not want to do. If people wanted

to perform the mandated action, they would already be doing it and there

would be no need for the law.

(2) To prevent people from doing something they want to do. If people did not

want to perform the prohibited act, they would not be doing it and there

would be no need for the law.

(3) To put the sheriff’s pistol behind the compulsion or prohibition. Without the

Sheriff’s pistol, people would simply ignore the law if they disagreed with it

and there would be nothing that could be done about it. (Alexander

Hamilton’s definition above explains it very well.) Without this third reason

for passing laws, the first two would simply be an exercise in futility.

Every law is an implied threat of violence. The reason for the word “implied” is

that the sheriff with a pistol strapped to his hip will not be standing on our

doorstep as long as we obey the law. However, it is his duty to arrest us if we

disobey the law. We instinctively know this and obey unjust laws to avoid

confrontation with the sheriff.

An example illustrates this principle:

Suppose you add a bedroom to your house without getting a permit from P & Z.

When the assessor examines your house he will notice the addition and notify

P & Z. Let’s assume that P & Z notifies you that you must tear down the addition

because you failed to get a permit. But you, being naive about such things, reason

with yourself that you have not violated anyone’s rights, have done nothing wrong,

and will not waste you time destroying the fruits of your previous labor. Therefore

you ignore the P & Z notice. The P & Z Commission will notify the County

Prosecuting Attorney of your violation of a P & Z ordinance and he will schedule

a court hearing for your case. Next, a court order will be issued, and served by the

Sheriff, ordering you to appear in court on a particular day at a specified time.

Again, you reason with yourself that you have done nothing wrong and ignore the

court order. Next, the Sheriff will be standing on your doorstep with a warrant for

your arrest but you have done nothing wrong so you resist arrest to the bitter end.

Your neighbors will then be referring to you as “the late Mister You”. Then a

strange thing happens. The official records show that you were killed for resisting

arrest. But the real reason is your refusal to comply with an arbitrary P & Z

ordinance, issued by an unelected commission, which violated your property

rights. It’s interesting how we deceive ourselves about the true nature of

government — it enables us to keep electing socialists to office and still sleep

good at night.

Incidently, the incident described above is not pure phantasy. Something very

similar to this happened in Bonner County except no one was killed — just fined.

It was known that there were approximately 20 cases of P & Z violations. The

County Prosecuting Attorney is an elected position and he was loath to prosecute

for obvious reasons. So the County Commissioners hired a Boise attorney to

investigate and prosecute. This got the County Prosecuting Attorney off the hook

but cost two County Commissioners their positions in the next election; the third

wisely refused to run when her term was up. The Building Department (the

enforcement arm for P & Z) was also abolished and later County Commissioners

have been afraid to re-establish it for fear of defeat at the polls. Unfortunately, the

vast majority of people are not opposed to the P & Z concept — they just don’t

like the consequences.

Protection —— Defense of life, liberty and property.

Plunder (legal or illegal) ----- Violation of the right to life liberty or property. As we shall see,

P & Z is simply legal plunder.

Humanists claim that everything is relative and subjective and this implies that there are no

absolute principles. This is utterly false and is easily disproved.

In the field of the physical science we can say without fear of contradiction that “gravity exists”.

This is not relative or subjective, it is an observable fact upon which much of scientific progress is

based.

In the field of social science we can say without fear of contradiction that “life exists”. This is

not relative or subjective, it’s an observable fact which can be used to solve many problems in the

social sciences.

From the observable fact that “life exists” we can develop a whole philosophy of government

and its proper role in society. A supplemental fact that human beings do not create other human

beings adds to the basic principles which we will use to analyze the P & Z issue. It’s true that human

beings “beget” other human beings but we do not “create” them. We do not dip our hands into the

clay, form a manikin and then breath life into it. Neither do we enter the womb and direct the uniting

of sperm and ovum cells. Thus it is an observable fact that we do not create other human beings.

Since we do not create other humans, they do not belong to us and we have no right to dictatorially

control their lives or violate their property rights.

The foregoing is simply one way of saying that every human being has a right to life.

Since all human beings have an equal right to life, they must also have an equal right to property

because life can not be sustained without property — food, clothing, shelter. In order to obtain

property, we must have the liberty to do so, even if it’s only picking an apple off the tree.

Starting with the simple observation that “life exists” we have arrived at the same conclusion

as John Locke in his essay “On Civil Government”, second edition, published 1794. (also known

as the “Second Treatise on Government”) Locke used a different approach to arrive at his

not mean we are equal in our abilities, it simply means we are equal in our right to life, liberty and

property. God wisely made us all different in our abilities and it is these differences that we

exchange with each other and thereby have a higher standard of living than we would otherwise.

Socialists want to play god and make everyone have the same standard of living. This same

philosophy carries over into the P & Z program.

Summarizing, we have:

Life exists!

Human beings do not create life and therefore have no claim on the life of others.

Liberty is necessary to obtain Property.Therefore, Life, Liberty and

two.

Property has been emphasized because there is a tremendous amount of confusion about it.

Further commentary is necessary.

THE ORIGIN OF PROPERTY

The confusion about property stems from a failure to understand the ORIGIN of property. If

there was only one lonely individual on the face of the earth, “property” would not exist. Yes, there

would be a lot of natural resources which our hermit could use at will. In other words there would

be no restriction on his use of natural resources and the word “property” would have no meaning to

becomes an issue. How much “property” does each own and what is the basis for that ownership?

The application of human energy to the conversion of natural resources into useable products

is the basis for all property ownership (we are ignoring plunder ‘legal and illegal’ at this point).

not belong to society or government and claiming that it does (as P & Z implies) is a violation of the

right to life, liberty and property (as described above). Furthermore, this right to property is

transferrable — an example will illustrate these principles:

A farmer raises alfalfa hay. However, he does not make the hay grow; sunshine, rain, natural

fertility of the soil, oxygen in the air, and a mysterious process called germination are all gifts from

God that make the hay grow. It is impossible for the farmer to assign a monetary value to these gifts

from God. There is no way he can place a monetary value on the sunshine that contributes to the

growth of hay. Even if the farmer could calculate how much of the sunshine was reflected into the

atmosphere, how much was converted into heat, how much was absorbed by the ground, etc., and

could measure the number of lumens per acre that actually contributed to the growth of hay, he

would still be stuck with the dilemma of determining how much to charge per lumen of sunshine.

Sunshine, like air, is so plentiful that no one would pay a penny for it. The same dilemma would

confront him in an attempt to charge for the rain, natural fertility of the soil, oxygen, etc. The only

thing the farmer can charge for is the human energy he contributed to raising the hay: plowing the

ground, sowing the seed, harvesting the crop and hauling it to market. Furthermore, the amount he

receives for the investment of his energy is not determined by him, it’s determined by the price

buyers are willing to pay in a competitive free market.

The main point of this example is that the hay belongs exclusively to the farmer because of the

investment of something that is exclusively his — human energy. The gifts from God are passed

along from person to person free of charge. The cattleman who buys the hay does not pay for God’s

gifts; the slaughter house that butchers the cattle does not pay for God’s gifts to raising the hay that

fed the cattle; the supermarket that buys the beef does not pay for God’s gifts to raising the cattle,

etc., etc. All that anyone ever pays for is the human energy invested in raising the hay and the cattle,

butchering the cattle, etc., etc.

When the hay farmer receives money for his hay, it represents his energy invested in raising the

government, or banks, or anyone else, because it represents human energy that does not belong to

society, or government, or banks, or anyone else. Furthermore, ownership of the hay, or the money

which represents it, is transferrable. If the farmer decides to use some of his money to buy timber,

then the timber represents the energy invested in raising the hay and belongs exclusively to the farmer

for the same reason that the hay and money did. Since the timber is exclusively his, he can cut it

down, burn it up, bulldoze it under, etc., as long as he does not violate the equal rights of anyone else.

To claim otherwise is to claim that some humans have a superior right to life and therefore the right

to dictate the use of other people’s property. I have never met anyone who could prove such a claim.

accept the fact that everyone has a right to life, liberty and property, then we can not contradict

ourselves by advocating that government has the right to make planning and zoning laws that violate

those rights. This brings us to another subject about which there is also a lot of confusion ----

government.

In a representative form of government, the people delegate to government the power to protect

their right to life, liberty and property. Without these rights, there would be no need for a government

to protect them. People can not delegate rights which they do not have. Therefore government can

not have any authority beyond that which individuals have. Since we all have a right to life, liberty

and property, we must also have the right to protect these rights. To claim on the one hand that we

have the right to life but that anyone who wants to murder us can do so without penalty is a gross selfcontradiction.

This same relationship exists between the right to liberty and property and attempts

to deprive us or them. The French political economist Frederic Bastiat described this relationship

succinctly in his essay “The Law”:

Since we all have the right to protect our life, liberty and property, we can collectively delegate

this task to a common protection agency called government. However, it should be clearly

understood that we individually, and collectively, do not give up our right to protection; we simply

cooperate to hire a common protection agency and thus get more protection for less money (provided

government is limited to its proper function).

John Locke said:

Civil Government, paragraph 135)

simply authorize someone else to perform an action for us but we still retain the right to perform it

ourselves. It’s just like hiring another person to dig a ditch for us which we can dig ourselves if we

wish. On the other hand “giving up” the power implies that we no longer have it. We can not “give

up” our right to protect our life, but we can hire someone else to help us do it.

Man’s natural tendency to avoid risk leads him into serious problems when he attempts to

transfer this tendency to government. Certainly it’s desirable to prevent crime but the methods used

must not violate the basic principles outlined above. Unfortunately this is exactly what the

advocates of P & Z do.

When laws are passed that penalize or restrict citizens’ peaceful actions they violate the right to

life, liberty or property and thus plunder the people instead of protecting them. Proactive government

always plunders people by penalizing them before a crime is committed. Theft is a violation of

property. We have laws penalizing thieves, but property must be stolen before there is a thief which

government is authorized to apprehend. This is reactive government; property has to be stolen before

government acts to apprehend the thief. The law must be severe enough to discourage theft by

instilling fear of being caught.

In proactive government, the penalty is imposed before a crime is committed based on the

P & Z advocates are notorious for their attempt to create a utopia by using threats of violence (laws)

Basing laws (ordinances) on assumptions of guilt before a crime has been committed is dangerous

in next door. But these implied threats of violence (ordinances) limit the use of private property and

therefore violate both liberty and the right to property. Once planning tzars are empowered to dictate

the use of other people’s property, there are no limits to the violations of rights. Thus we have

P & Z ordinances that dictate the use of property by limiting the ability of owners to subdivide their

property according to their own desires. For example: in Bonner County, land can not be subdivided

in less than 20 acre tracts; there can not be more than two family residences on five acres or less; a

proposed ordinance would have required a permit to dig a post hole more than two feet deep, etc., etc.

These restrictions are not related to violations of other peoples’ property rights, they are simply outof-

control masterminding of other people’s lives. Dictatorially controlling other people’s lives is

contrary to the proper function of government and is tyrannical. Furthermore, P & Z discourages

property improvements and therefore contributes to the “run down community” appearance that

P & Z advocates wring their hands about and use as an excuse for more P & Z. There are people who

try to keep their private property rights by refusing to pay the fee for a permit to improve their home.

But fear of violating a P & Z ordinance prevents them from making the needed repairs or

improvements. Thus the property deteriorates or is not improved.

The essential characteristic of ownership is control — if you don’t control it you don’t really own

it and a deed is nothing more than a licence to pay taxes on something you don’t own. If my neighbor

wants to add a bedroom to his house, do I have the right to threaten him with violence to force him

to get my permission before he can build the addition? Certainly not, yet this is exactly what P & Z

ordinances do. Where do government officials get the right to pass such laws? Certainly not from

we the people who have no such right and therefore can not delegate it to government. Then where

do State Legislators get the right to pass P & Z laws? They simply usurp power which can not be

delegated by the people. But the usurpation of power is the very essence of tyranny.

Idaho Code authorizes County Commissioners to perform the functions of a P & Z commission;

here is what it says:

No City Council or Board of County Commissioners in Idaho has opted to exercise the powers

granted by this code. The reason is obvious.

Appointing a P & Z Commission violates the basic principle of representative government. John

Locke said:

Civil Government, paragraph 141)

Locke’s statement is true, not just because he said it, but because of the fundamental principles

involved — which he did not elaborate. The fundamental principle involved is that we can not

delegate power that we do not have. We do not individually have the right to elect someone to public

office and then authorize that person to transfer the delegated power to an unelected individual, or

group, over which our fellow citizens have no control. If citizen A elects citizen B to protect his

property rights, and elected citizen B then appoints unelected citizens C, D and E to manage the

property rights of all citizens, then the rights of all citizens to have a voice in government are violated.

A committee (P & Z), over which citizens have no control, has arbitrary power over the entire

population. This is a gross violation of the concept of representative government and leads directly

to tyranny. If we do not have a right individually, we do not have it collectively. Failure to

understand this limitation on elected officials is a major contributing factor in the destruction of

democracies and representative forms of government. Thus we see that appointed P & Z

Commissions are a gross violation of the principle of representative government.

While serving as a Trustee on the Bonner County School Board, I saw many such violations of

representative government where the elected Board appointed committees to make decisions for them.

This was, and is, a very common practice because it takes the heat off those who are vested with the

responsibility of making decisions. The members of the appointed committees were invariably

selected by the local Superintendent of Schools and recommended to the Board who rubber-stamped

them. The Superintendent always stacked the deck by appointing sufficient numbers of teachers or

staff members to the “citizens’ committee” to make sure that their recommendation would be what

he wanted the Board to do but knew the decision would be unpopular with voters. However, if a

“citizens’ committee” recommended the action, how could the Board refuse? Thus the

Superintendent got what he wanted and the Board escaped the responsibility (and heat) for making

an unpopular decision — after all, they were just following the advice of a “citizens’ committee”

which in reality was dominated by a group of school system employees feathering their nest. A very

similar situation exists between County Commissioners and appointed P & Z Commissions.

It will undoubtedly be objected that the “majority” vote for these officials that violate the

principles of representative government. Unfortunately this is true, but it does not invalidate the basic

principles involved. Might does not make right whether the might is a conquering army or a fifty one

percent majority. It is this failure to understand the limitations on the actions of public officials that

destroyed democracy in Greece 2400 years ago and has destroyed what was intended to be a Republic

in the United States.

The really frightening thing about this is that people are just now becoming concerned about the

trend toward tyrannical government at the federal level yet fail to see that we already have it at the

state and local level. As they pay lip service to the right to life, liberty and property, they troop to the

polls and vote for more violations of these rights BECAUSE THEY HAVE GIVEN LITTLE, OR NO,

THOUGHT TO THE PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT.

As stated earlier, P & Z is only one of a myriad of “government” problems confronting the

American people but the false P & Z ideology is fundamental to many other problems. Thus

acceptance of this false ideology spreads to other areas and becomes A PRELUDE TO DISASTER.

There is only one solution to these problems — CHANGE THE THINKING OF THE AMERICAN

PEOPLE ABOUT GOVERNMENT. As long as people continue to believe in socialism, and voting

records prove that the vast majority do, they will continue to vote for it. As long as people vote for

socialism we will have socialism and the problems will continue to expand to disastrous proportions

until our society collapses just as the previous 21 civilizations have, and for the very same reason.

Changing the thinking of a brainwashed people is a major challenge but not as difficult as it may seem

at first. We only need approximately six percent of the population to effectuate the needed change

in government — the Founding Fathers did it with only five percent. At present, the percentage of

people who understand the proper role of government is probably less than one half of one percent

— a long way to go but not impossible.

Civilizations seem to reach a point of darkness at which the individual citizens must decide

whether to turn the lights back on or slip into a darkness in which no lights remain to be turned on.

Let’s begin lighting the candles of truth and fundamental principles.