Property Rights Bodily Autonomy and the Medical Priesthood

By Pete Kelly

Recently, bodily autonomy has come under attack. The debate over whether individuals have the right to make decisions when it comes to their own bodies has been raging at the dinner table, online, and in the workplace. Government mandates requiring social distancing, masking, and vaccinations have caused deep divisions in society, forcing millions of people to understand and explain how these mandates violate their inalienable rights.

Since the beginning of recorded history, two great pillars of every thriving society have been bodily autonomy and the ability to own property. Revering human life and private property as sacred blessings of divine origin, ancient societies arranged their systems of governance for their protection. As our minds and souls inhabit our physical bodies, the ancients believed that our bodies were intended to inhabit physical territory enabling security, prosperity, and virtue. With the assurance of these immovable pillars which would eventually become known as natural rights, individuals would be incentivized to make public contributions of increasing value through land ownership. However, the failure of governments to protect either of these rights has always been accompanied by the loss of both.

This book will equip readers with the Moral, Religious, and Constitutional origins of bodily autonomy by exploring how inalienable rights have related to religious and government authority throughout history from the earliest civilizations to the present day, through the lens of property ownership. This book will also explain how to apply the principles of Protestant Resistance Theory in the 21st century with the understanding that our bodies are not property of governments, kings, or human institutions, but of the Living God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350904345

Book preview

Chapter 1

Theft and Ownership

Theft without ownership

is like weather without the sky.

– Unknown

Theft

The marginalization and blatant denial of objective reality has occurred throughout history, especially when it is oppositional to an agenda. A tactic used to diminish the authority of reality is to label phenomena as social constructs, allowing empirical truth to be approached with the presumption of good faith with while maintaining impunity from underlying ambivalence, prejudice, and malevolence. Considering the notion of theft, we could deem it a social construct which would thus be subject to deconstruction. Theft could be construed as Not-Theft if a prosecutor argued with effective wordsmithing. But could the concept of theft be completely removed from human consciousness if a lawyer successfully persuaded a judge?

Theft is not created by laws, nor is it something that emerges from a social agreement. Theft existed before intellectual property law. It existed before every toddler was able to tearfully express their loss when a favorite toy was commandeered by an older sibling. It’s what compels us to declare, That was my idea and, That’s my toy, without any knowledge of legality. Theft isn’t a social construct; It’s an objective moral reality. When we have been unjustly deprived of something that is ours, we don’t need revised statutes to tell us. We know it. We know it, first, because we feel it. When have you felt a sense of loss? Not the kind of loss you feel when you drop your wedding ring over the side of the boat into the lake. Or the kind you feel when your 30-year-old car finally breaks down for the last time. Not the feeling of being defeated by an athlete who was truly better than you. Or the feeling of losing the 1980 presidential election to a Hollywood actor-turned-politician who decidedly outwits, out-debates, and out-jokes you into a humiliating defeat.

I mean, the feeling you get when your wedding ring gets pulled off your finger in a crowded market. The kind of loss you feel when you walk out of the concert venue and your car windows are broken out, the tires have been removed, and the stereo is gone. The feeling you have when your womens’ swimming competition is won by a man pretending to be a woman. Or the feeling of waking up on November 5th after seeing your commanding electoral lead paused late in the evening only to be followed by sudden deliveries of mass-produced ballots, partisan-fueled denial of access to polling places, vote switching, and vote duplicating under the pretenses of social distancing to prevent the transmission of a well-timed novel corona virus.

These are different feelings of loss. One is a sense of sadness accompanied by an understanding that things wear out, accidents happen, and sometimes you get outperformed. And the other kind of loss includes a sense of righteous indignation from being deprived of something that rightly belongs to you. But is feeling the sense of being deprived of a possession enough to validate the existence of theft? If theft was only a social construct fabricated without absolute and objective principles of justice, our feelings of violation and impulses to complain would not be objectively justifiable. At most, we would simply possess things only for as long as we needed them, then give them to someone else who needs it. But even then, imagine how would we feel if something we possessed was taken by someone else before we were done using or – heaven forbid – enjoying it. Would we still call that theft? Or would we give it a bigger, fancier name like, Collectivization. Would calling it something else make it feel different? Would a name make it Not-Theft?

Let’s try this thought experiment with other actions. Rape, for example. Would the victim feel better about it if we called it Affirmative Affection? Let’s try with murder: Accelerated Lifespan. Better yet, Terminated Pregnancy. How about kidnapping: Custodialization. Yes, I made all of those up, except one. Regardless of what we call things, they are what they are. And theft exists regardless of the name we give it or the rationalization we use to excuse it. Theft is an objective moral reality which has been identified and whose prohibition has been codified by nearly every human society. Proof of its existence can be found in a wealth of documentation prohibiting its occurrence and establishing penalties for it. Hammurabi’s Code pronounces:

If anyone breaks into a house to steal, he will be put to death before that point of entry and be buried there.

If anyone is caught while committing a robbery, then he or she shall be put to death.

If the robber is not caught, then shall the one who was robbed claim under oath the amount of his loss; then shall the community on whose ground and territory and in whose domain the robbery occurred compensate him for the goods stolen.

Ancient Hebrew law took a clear position on theft and trespassing:

You shall not steal.

Do not move the ancient boundary or go into the fields of the fatherless.

Islamic Law prohibits theft in the Quran:

O Prophet, when the believing women come to you pledging to you that they will not associate anything with Allah, nor will they steal.

Habachy states:

It is no mere coincidence that the Arabic word for boundaries is Hudud, which is precisely the term the Qur’an uses to define the rights of God (Hudud Allah), the trespass of which constitutes what the old French criminal law termed Crimes de Lese Majeste Divine. According to the commandments of the Qur’an, severe punishments must be administered by the Imam for five of these crimes. Highway robbery and theft are two of them. The penalty for the first is death. A thief is punished for the first offense by amputation of the right hand; for the second offense, the left leg is cut off. In the event of further recidivism, the punishment is death.

The Etruscan law, speaking in the name of religion says:

He who shall have touched or displaced a bound shall be condemned by the gods; his house shall disappear; his race shall be extinguished; his land shall no longer produce fruits; hail, rust, and the fires of the dog-star shall destroy his harvests; the limbs of the guilty shall become covered with ulcers, and shall waste away.

From the start, we see ancient law invoking divine sovereignty to prohibit theft. For the ancients, theft was not a social construct, but rather an offense to the gods. In some tribes such as the Naga of Myanmar, theft was punishable by fines, beating, and even death. A cynic might say that there are many examples of ancient peoples who didn’t perceive theft as a moral transgression. The ancient Egyptians, for a time, established an organized system of theft under authorities who would duly restore the property to the owner on payment of a portion of its value. But most people would see this as a system of extortion. If the civil authorities received economic benefit through the recovery of an individual’s property, what incentive would there be to prevent theft from happening in the first place? A similar de-incentivization presently occurs within the modern pharmaceutical industry. If members of the medical establishment make money from sick people who continually need medicine, there is no incentive for the establishment to discover cures for disease whose perpetual management is highly profitable.

But even in ancient Egypt, as in other societies, theft was largely seen as a delinquency that individuals would treat with vengeance, but authorities treated with justice. Groups understood that the owner, surprising the thief in the act of carrying off his goods, would naturally attack, and very likely kill him. Thus, societies also understood that law had to be established so that, if the owner did not find the thief, he ought to be thankful if custom allows him to get restitution, with perhaps something more, for his suffering.

When we combine the universal feelings of unjust deprivation with penalties grounded in the moral framework of religion to prohibit their occurrence, we can see humankind agreeing to the existence of theft, not only a civil offense, but as a moral transgression against the divine origin of Ownership. The only way theft can occur as a moral transgression is for property ownership to also have an objective moral justification. Simply put, theft offends God.

Ownership

In Roman religion, Terminus was the god who protected boundary markers. His name was the Latin word for Marker. Terminus guarded the limit of the field and watched over it. A neighbor dared not approach too near it: For then, says Ovid, the god who felt himself struck by the ploughshare, or mattock, cried, ‘Stop: this is my field; there is yours’. To encroach upon the field of a family it was necessary to overturn or displace a boundary mark which was the manifestation of a deity. Equivocating the violation of property with an offense towards the gods illustrated the sacred nature of ownership. In Kuyperian terms – which we will discuss later – the sphere of sovereignty under which the right to land was endowed and protected was that of the gods. The institution of private property held an intrinsic moral value which, if violated, would cause harm in the spiritual realm, as well as the temporal.

Since humans are prone to justify their offenses towards the gods, distinguishing the permissible and illegitimate methods of acquiring property helps us to stay between the moral guardrails. While jurisprudence varies across societies, as in the case with Islamic Shad’ah which details six specific ways of acquiring private property, there are five basic ways Westerners are all familiar with. Possession, Finding Lost or Misplaced Property, Gifting, Accession, and Confusion.

Possession

It is often said that Possession is nine-tenths of the law. There is an element of truth to this, but not the whole truth. Possession is understood as the power to exclude others from using the object. For example, imagine a giant inflatable Santa Claus being blown across your neighbor’s boundary line into your carport. You might not even want the gaudy holiday decoration. Consider the scenario of letting your sister borrow your new stand mixer. She wouldn’t have possession, but she would have custody of the mixer, because you both understand who the real owner is. Or in the instance of leaving your bike with a buddy who can true the wheels for you. He would be responsible for making sure it wasn’t damaged or stolen while in his custody. This would be an example of a bailor/bailee relationship.

Finding Lost or Misplaced Property:

There is a technical distinction between lost and misplaced property. An object is lost if the owner inadvertently and unknowingly lets it out of his possession. It is misplaced if the owner intentionally puts it down, intending to recover it, even if he subsequently forgets to retrieve it. If you can recall the smarmy saying, Finders keepers, loser’s weepers, the following hierarchy of ownership claims determines the rights of finders and losers.

First, the owner who leaves her Samsung Galaxy on the window ledge in the classroom, for example, is entitled to the return of the phone unless she has intentionally abandoned it. The classmate who found it is said to be a quasi-bailee for the true owner. This would only apply, though, if he knew who the phone belonged to. If he had reasonable means of discovering who the owner was and did not return it, he would be guilty of larceny.

Gift:

A gift is a voluntary transfer of property without consideration or compensation. It is distinguished from a sale, which requires consideration. It is distinguished from a promise to give, which is a declaration of an intention to give in the future rather than a present transfer. An inter vivos gift is made between living persons without conditions attached. Examples can be seen regularly on birthdays and Christmas. A causa mortis gift is made by someone contemplating death in the near future. This usually requires proof of the giver’s and receiver’s intentions and approval of transfer.

Accession:

An accession is something that is added to what one already possesses. In general, the rule is that the owner of the thing owns the additional thing that comes attached to it, sometimes. For example, the owner of a cow owns her calves when she gives birth. This can change in other circumstances. For example, if a carpenter goes onto a woodland property, cuts down trees, takes them to his mill, and turns them into usable lumber, the owner of the woodland property is entitled to the full value of the lumber, since he is the owner of the principal property, i.e., the trees. However, in general, courts would award the excess value added in the production process to the carpenter.

Confusion:

In accession, the goods of one owner are transformed into a more valuable commodity or are inextricably united with the goods of another to form a constituent part. Confusion, however, occurs when goods of different owners are commingled. For example, the grain of two farmers might pour both of their grain into a silo. Another example would be that of two herds of cattle, each bearing the brand of their owner, are commingled in a field. The difference is that the grain is identical goods, and the cows are not because they are distinguished by their brands. To retrieve his due amount of grain, the farmer would be allowed to take the quantity he had contributed to the whole whereas, the cattlemen would have to separate their cows from each other according to their brands because the property is not identical.

The reason I present these different forms of acquiring property is to show that the acquisition and preservation of property ownership is serious business. It is serious because, not only can it offend the gods, but owning property can enhance the quality of one’s life. If a person owns a bucket of paint and a brush, they can become a painter and charge money for their services. If they own a bow and arrow, they can hunt a deer, prepare it, and sell the meat for money to someone who’s hungry. If someone owns a house, they can make improvements and sell the house for a profit, or refinance to lower their payments, or take cash out. The overarching purpose for owning property is to increase quality of life with it. This is the reason people get jobs. Because we currently live in a currency economy instead of a barter system, we provide labor for money instead of trading goods.

In a capitalistic system like the United States, people work at jobs and are paid money in order to buy things. The amount of money people are paid is based on the value the employer perceives the employee to produce. Typically, this is measured in revenue created by the employee. Recently, critics of capitalism have used the term meritocracy with derogatory implications. Countries who use the system of communism, claim that meritocracy creates societal and economic inequity. They believe that by removing economic merit and paying every worker the same wage, every worker will produce the same value. They also believe that by prohibiting ownership of private property, people will be more satisfied because everyone has equal resources. The problem with this system is manifold. An incomplete list of fundamental problems with communism includes 1) lacking a financial mechanism to motivate people, 2) assuming that people will be happy with the resources they are allowed to have, and 3) assuming that an uncredentialed majority must be controlled while an unquestioned minority must do the controlling. As we will see later, this ideology was promulgated by the early-modern philosopher Thomas Hobbes who argued for absolute monarchy in which the king was to be given complete power to rule his subjects. But unlimited power has consequences. The extent to which government is limited invariably determines the freedom with which an economy can perform.

A stark example of this flaw was provided by the failure of The Great Leap Forward, a Chinese program conceived by Mao Zedong that ended in disaster in 1961. After private farms were collectivized, millions of people were rounded up, trained in agriculture, and assigned to work in communes. In short order, crop and industrial production plummeted, and a famine resulted, causing millions of deaths. Finally, the worsening situation forced the government to reduce the size of the communes, restore family farm plots, and put into place work bonuses and other incentives. The moral of the story is, money talks.

This failure demonstrated the mistake of thinking that people will be motivated to work, produce, or add additional value if they are compensated equally. Humans are meritocratic, by nature. Why do see Olympians compete on a world stage? How does an athlete behave when they win a game? Why do salespeople work on a commission basis? How do they respond to receiving an annual bonus? Why did the Chinese government offer work bonuses? The answers to these questions are the same: because people are motivated by rewards that improve the quality of their own lives.

If you’re skeptical of meritocracy and say that collective incentivization can motivate the same level of production for individuals, I would ask you to remember a time when you were assigned to a group project either in school, or at work, for which you would receive a collective score, and one or more of the members did not do as much work as you. How did it make you feel that you had to work harder to ensure that you got the grade you wanted? Having to do more research, write better papers, present better projects, sew more textiles, dig more ditches, or harvest more grain because your classmates, coworkers, or comrades are lazy, is frustrating. And knowing that they will receive the same recognition as you without contributing the same effort, is even more frustrating. If the lazy classmate had been responsible for earning their own passing grade, they likely would have contributed more effort. This basic reality underlies how suffering the consequences for not creating value naturally incentivizes people to add more of it.

In a free market, employees are frequently used to create value for the business owner. And now that we know what the different methods of acquiring property are, we can determine if any of them apply to the employer/employee relationship. We can easily say that the worker himself does not become the property of the employer either by Possession, Finding Lost or Misplaced Property, Gifting, Accession, or Confusion. The only way a person could be considered the property of another is through enslavement. Slavery has been practiced by nearly every people group on every continent in the world which has taken different forms. Chattel slavery has been practiced by ancient empires, Europeans, Arabs, Asians, and Africans. It is an immoral and oppressive institution that should be denounced and extinguished. While critics falsely accuse the Bible for supporting slavery, it explicitly condemns chattel slavery and slave-traders:

Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.

The sanctity of human life was ensconced in ancient Hebrew law. Slavery which deprived a person of their dignity and natural rights was never condoned. However, the authors of the Bible confront the reality of temporary servitude honestly and redemptively by applying spiritual truths to temporal realities. Bondservants - or indentured servants - were individuals who pledged themselves to the service of those they owed money to. The terms of their service were agreed upon and terminated when the debt was paid. This institution was common in the ancient world and has been practiced less frequently – and viewed with disdain – in the modern era.

The conditions and requirements of bondservants are addressed in the Bible:

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.

Those engaged in service were exhorted to serve their debtors, or masters, so that their commitment to fulfill debt obligations would demonstrate their Christian faith. While the bondservant was not the property of their masters, sometimes these slaves could extend their contract – even permanently – if they enjoyed the work, lifestyle, and opportunities their debtor provided. Pledging oneself permanently to the service of