Government Owns Our Castle

We can no longer use our property or do to it what we would like. Our homes are being micro managed by our government. No, while we were sleeping the government did not decree the end to private property, at least not yet.

We still own our homes and have to pay the mortgage and taxes. Private contracts such as house and land deeds are honored although the government has begun to enlarge its power to take away our rights as homeowners. Eminent domain was for the public good to build schools, roads and other community improvements. It now includes increasing the tax revenue for the government’s good as well as greedy pick-pocketing developers.

Americans have always felt that their “homes were their castles.” The home was a sanctuary under their control. They may not have had great material wealth but they knew a free man could do whatever he chose on his land.

Times have changed. Putting a shed up on your property means you now have to get permission and actually pay a permitting fee, “tithe,” to the local government. Changing your front door or merely painting a room, or upgrading your air conditioner or just changing a large appliance can require a permit. Our freedom to do what we want with our homes has been radically reduced.

Greedy bureaucrats are salivating realizing technological advances can be used to increase their invasion into our homes. Rural wells are being identified and recorded to have the information necessary to impose an unexpected tax on homeowners. These country residents, not the government, drill and maintain their own wells at their own expense to tap into God’s waters. Officials in some California counties want to control the air conditioning and heat temperatures in homes by the use of advanced electronic monitoring. In some urban areas smoking has even been outlawed in people’s own dwellings. The list of government intrusions into our homes is growing rapidly.

There are two main rationales the government uses for stealing our civil rights. According to local government any home improvement has to be inspected by government officials to insure it meets the current building code. This is supposedly to protect the owner and the potential next owner of the house from shoddy work by contractors. In reality it is just another way of controlling and taxing us. Even with “government inspections” any buyer with any brains would inspect the house himself or hire a professional before making a major commitment to buy a home.

The other is a socialistic rationale that the government must limit our rights for “the common good.” This translates into: “you cannot use this item according to your own needs” like air and water since other people in the world may need them more. The government arbitrarily determines a formula that charges you for carbon emissions or water. It is hard to argue for personal freedom when “city hall” is claiming they do this for our children’s future unless you realize all of this rationale is another bunch of bunk to take our hard earned money to expand government further into our pocketbook and lives.

We Americans are at the breaking point and need to draw a line in the sand. We must start somewhere. It is best to begin as close to home as possible. The loss of our rights in our own homes should be a wake up call. If we cannot stand up for our own liberty on our own property, we do not deserve to be free.

Doers are being penalized for being productive. The disincentives to industrious people will lead to totalitarianism but incentives to these same people will create a free, vibrant country. We should leave the good US citizens free to do things necessary to improve their lot in life, not tax them into poverty.

To begin we need to take back our castle:

• Question instead of sheepishly accepting any time the government is demanding money from us for improving our homes or consuming God’s gifts to man like water and air.
• Associate with other like-minded people to run candidates for office who want to protect our rights to be free. (Citizen’s cumulative decisions are more efficient and effective than government’s short sighted ones.)
• Call, email and speak directly to our representatives to enlarge, not restrict our freedoms.

We need to take back our castles or accept the all -powerful government’s approach to restricting rights and housing. Remaining oblivious to government’s erosion of our rights will leave us with no choice but dull, drab state built and run projects like other communist countries. America will deserve whatever happens: we fight for our freedoms or lose them.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.