How Far Do Private Property Rights Go?

Many see Thomas Jefferson’s iconic “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as having derived directly from Aristotle’s “Life, Liberty, and Eudaimonia.” For those of you not familiar with Greek, eudaimonia literally translates to the state or condition of “good spirit.” It represents the combination of the eu (meaning good) with daimon (meaning spirit).

Aristotle used the term in his Nicomachean Ethics, his tome devoted to the “science of happiness.” As a result, we commonly equate eudaimonia with happiness. Aristotle was all about living the good life, and by “good life” Aristotle alludes to a morality of higher purpose, not one of hedonism. Think of it as a form of ethics (or, more appropriately, a civic virtue) that inspires one to undertake a never-ending pursuit of excellence.

In their paper “Eudaimonia and its distinction from hedonia: Developing a classification and terminology for understanding conceptual and operational definitions” (Journal of Happiness Studies: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being, 15(6), 1425–1456), Veronika Huta and Alan S. Waterman suggest eudaimonia therefore represents the “pursuit of virtue, excellence, and the best within us.” But Huta and Waterman might be cheating a bit since they wrote this in 2014. It’s not impossible that Jefferson’s wording may have influenced their own choice of words.

Of course, the Founding Father wasn’t the first to invoke this Aristotelian trilogy. John Locke most famously used it (albeit anonymously at first) in his 1689 Two Treatises on Government. Locke, however, added his own twist when he declared that it is the responsibility of government to guarantee the protection of “life, liberty, and property” of its citizens.

A year later, Locke published his essay Concerning Human Understanding. Here, he not only introduces the sense and importance of pursuing happiness in a manner consistent with Aristotle, but his also offers the critical connection to what Jefferson will pen less than a century later.

Here’s what Locke wrote:

…the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty.

In order to attain liberty, citizens must be free to pursue happiness. Such a pursuit is not merely a private right, but a private decision. Thus, within the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, and later woven throughout the United States Constitution, the idea and mandate of private property becomes the foundation of our own liberty.

Anything that threatens that axiom threatens our nation, our culture, and the very nature of the social contract forged by our Founding Fathers. This threat can never be taken lightly.

So it was, when the New York State Legislature granted Governor Cuomo unilateral executive privileges, many thought it an unwise if not un-American move. It certainly ran counter to the concept of a representative republic upon which our nation was founded (and which our State agreed to).

Does it surprise you that, when the Covid Declaration of Emergency shut down private businesses and organizations, so many citizens complained? They felt the government, and especially via edict from the governor, had no legal authority to revoke private rights. Courts would later agree. That conservatives led these successful efforts against the State should be noted.

Now comes the twist.

Counties throughout New York State are declaring States of Emergency to prevent New York City from transporting illegal aliens/asylum refugees outside their “Sanctuary City” into the wilds of upstate and western New York. There are almost too many ironies here to mention, but I’ll give it a shot.

First, both sides on this issue have referred to these illegal aliens/asylum refugees as “migrant families” in what can only be described as an effort to be politically correct. Unfortunately, in doing so, they are factually incorrect. These people are not “migrants,” and they are not “families’ (for the most part). They are either illegal aliens or refugees seeking asylum.

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics for January 2023, only 25% of the border crossers were family and nearly 70% were single adults (mostly male). The rest were unaccompanied children. Nearly all of them sought refugee status. So, to categorize the entire lot of them as “migrant families” is not only false, it’s misleading.

Second, have the chickens come home to roost? Have all these cities who declared themselves to be “Sanctuary Cities” met their comeuppance? It was OK to nullify the constitution when Trump was President to protest his border policy. But now that Biden has unleashed the masses and the red border states have decided to give these deep blue cities a taste of their own medicine, the tune has changed.

When New York City, with the blessing of Governor Hochul, one-sidedly decided to ship those “refuge seekers” out of Manhattan, upstate and western New York counties began declaring States of Emergencies to counter the move.

On the face of it, this makes sense. It’s telling the Big Apple, “Hey, you can do whatever you want within your own city limits, but don’t go trying to export your mistaken policies beyond your own borders.” That would be spoken from a conservative voice.

The roles have now reversed.

During Covid, the conservative counties challenged the progressive State’s emergency declaration. Now, it’s the progressives leading the charge against the conservative’s declared states of emergency.

This ironic twist has led to the following situation.

New York City and the State ignored the State of Emergency in Orange County and negotiated directly with the owners of Crossroads Hotel and Ramada by Wyndham in the Town of Newburgh to house foreign refugee seekers sent to New York City. Orange County has now sued those owners as well as New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Not to be outdone, a group of Hudson Valley hotel owners have sued several upstate and western New York counties and towns to overturn executive orders forbidding the housing of foreign refugee seekers. Monroe, Livingston, and Ontario counties were not on that list.

Here’s the question: How far do private property rights go? Ideally, everyone should be free to pursue their own happiness in any way they desire without any government imposition. On the other hand, any representative government has a right to determine its own local rules without usurpation by the State government.

What we’re seeing here is the inherent paradox of private property rights. Does one’s private rights allow him to interfere with another’s private rights? Libertarians believe you should be permitted to make your own choices as long as they do not impede other’s ability to make their own choices. But this can be a vast grey area that even libertarians argue over.

The issue of housing foreign refugee seekers grows more complicated because it involves both public and private interests. For example, while a private individual may have free reign, the same does not apply to government entities. One government (in this case New York State) may not ignore another government (in this case the towns and counties) unless specifically permitted by legislative action. This is the very definition of New York’s so-called Home Rule Law.

While private property owners should be free to make their own decisions, our civil ethics does not permit anyone to make a decision in violation of the law (until that law is overturned via due process). Furthermore, individual governments have more stringent restrictions when it comes to violating the laws of other municipalities.

The border issue remains a national issue. Idealistic blue cities tried to circumvent national policy by becoming Sanctuary Cities when that national policy ran against their progressive politics. Red states decided to payback those cities when national policy ran against their conservative senses.

Now that Sanctuary Cities like New York City have found that, yes, they simply can’t afford to support their ideals, the best solution is to force other municipalities to accept those ideals. And they’ve found sympathetic (or greedy) business owners in those municipalities to carry out their plans.

Is that the best solution? To allow an out-of-towner to pit neighbor against neighbor?

Probably not.

Since this is fundamentally a municipality against municipality conflict, private property owners should be left out of the fight. With the number of closed prisons (Hochul closed six just this past December) and medical facilities, there should be capacity to house foreign refugee seekers. At least until they can have their day in court. This, by the way, is how the process works, for they can’t immigrate until a court formally sanctions their refugee status, otherwise, they will be declared illegal aliens and deported.

Yes, if they really are refugees, they should be allowed to pursue their happiness here in America. Otherwise, their choice to enter the county illegally should not impose upon the rights of honest citizens of the United States.