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I used to live in an "historic district" in Iowa City, Iowa. Many of the homes there date back to the Nineteenth Century. More than a few of them might rightfully be dignified as "mansions."
While the small, two-bedroom duplex I rented seemed a bit like the ugly duckling amongst these architectural swans, I was still able to enjoy free of charge the beauty of the stately structures and well-manicured landscapes that adorned my neighborhood.
I saw those large homes and felt not envy but admiration. While I did appreciate the houses themselves, my admiration was really extended to the homeowners themselves.
For me, those buildings represented a tangible reward for the hard work required to purchase and maintain them. Whatever the individual faults of those people (whom I never met), I know they did not obtain such elegant dwellings by shirking personal responsibility, seeking the line of least resistance in their jobs, or concentrating only on short-term gains at the expense of the rest of their lives. The doctors, professors, and business people who have achieved the personal values symbolized in part by the homes in which they live know they attained their goals by dedication to a long-term purpose. They realize that worthwhile things are achieved by personal effort, not by pull or governmental largesse at someone else's expense.
One of those homes was given a neighborhood "Pride in Property" award sponsored by local realtors. A large lawn sign on the corner of the lot proclaimed the winner. Yet this public applause was less noteworthy for the attention it drew to a remarkably immaculate, well-designed, and maintained home than it was for the explicit and implicit messages it conveyed.
Somewhere during the time since most of the homes in that neighborhood were constructed, an inversion of values rolled across our society. "Property" and "property rights" became generally reviled as crass and materialistic. The latter are somehow separated in the thoughts of many people from the idea of "human rights," as though the needs of the body could mysteriously be divorced from the needs of our minds and our emotions. "Property rights" are denigrated as something readily and easily to be violated when "higher" values rise to the fore or -- even more frequently -- for merely "pragmatic" reasons. A desire for better things in life -- whether in the form of a home, a new car, or gourmet food -- is denounced or at best tolerated as shallow and in contradiction to having compassion for others who have less than we do.
In a country where more and more people clamor for "fairness" and "equality" that are to be paid for by expropriating the property of those who have more, it is imminently refreshing to witness even a modest nod to the notion that "property" is not a dirty word. It is, in fact, a highly moral concept, its attainment requiring the utmost in dedication and effort in accordance with the demands of reality. Not only does property in the material, utilitarian guise of a home represent the culmination of a rigorous process of intellectual effort, it can -- as this "Pride in Property" award signified -- be a profound source of esthetic pleasure, as well.
There is no dichotomy between property and human values. Since none of us exists as a disembodied spirit, property in whatever form we earn it allows the implementation of all other rights. Anyone who doubts or denies this connection need only examine the former Soviet Union or ask any person -- from slave in chains to harried taxpayer -- what happens to the human spirit when one does not control the use of that which one has earned.
Real fairness demands that we should rephrase that old slogan and state that "from each according to his ability, to each according to his ability."
I believe that any homeowner who has sweated figuratively or literally to obtain and maintain his property would agree with this sentiment. "Pride in property" is a concept we would all do well to promote in every aspect of our lives.
