Americans have been duped for years into thinking that by right of possessing vocal chords they may hence disgorge whatever ramblings they have in succession of their mind. After all it is their constitutional right, yes?
It is the purpose of this article to show how such a conclusion is mistaken and how this perversion is actually an enemy of liberty.
Property Rights and Funeral Protesting
Rev. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church have been picketing their memorandum of god-hate for nearly 20 years. If you are yet to witness the distasteful hatred of anti-gay protesters waving signs outside the funerals of dead soldiers, signs of the likes of “God hates fags” and “Thank God for dead soldiers,” then I invite you to watch this short clip of Hannity & Colmes. The revulsion from such film is immense, but the question of causality is straightforward. To recap the great giant of liberty Murray N. Rothbard, there can be no crime against one’s image or reputation, only one’s property.
“…someone’s ‘reputation’ is not and cannot be ‘owned’ by him, since it is purely a function of the subjective feelings and attitudes held by other people. But since no one can ever truly ‘own’ the mind and attitude of another, this means that no one can literally have a property right in his ‘reputation.’ A person’s reputation fluctuates all the time, in accordance with the attitudes and opinions of the rest of the population.” (For a New Liberty, chapter 6, page 117)
Therefore, the sheer act of protest is free from liability as long as the protesters have legal admittance to the property from which they protest. Here is where the perversion of sidewalk communalism takes up position.
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By way of common ownership individuals cannot be barred from any specific sidewalk unless they are in direct violation of some municipality’s accord. Thus, anyone may travel along the sidewalks outside of businesses, homes, churches, etc. demanding that his or her voice be heard in the name of free speech. Even unsympathetic listeners will reframe from quarrels in opposition to these protesters because they too support this “supposed” freedom.
But freedom does not signify you right to speech; property signifies your right to speech.
Surely freedom of speech cannot take place from any location one chooses. Surely, for example, someone cannot stand in my kitchen or my living room and protest what I may eat or watch on my television. If they did they would be in violation of my rights to ownership and potentially held responsible for trespassing. No sane individual would argue in opposition to this example since no sane individual would argue against the right of property owners to make such decisions.
Why are sidewalks so different from other property?
If sidewalks were privatized then owners would have the right to remove any individual whom they deem bothersome as well as charge individuals for their use.
(Most knee-jerk reactions will involve something along the lines of “what if the sidewalk owner entraps you” or "why should I have to pay to walk down the block." Although these questions have been addressed elsewhere, it is beyond the scope of this article. I encourage readers seek such answers through The Privatization of Roads and Highways: Human and Economic Factors Block, Walter. 2009.)
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Therefore, if Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church wish to hang out on the street corner and protest their stupidity, they must pay for it. Yet, because there is currently no fee associated with sidewalk use these individuals have thus freely picketed more than 20,000 street corners within a span of 20 years.
Therefore, this situation is not one of freedom of speech versus defamation of character, or freedom of speech versus reverence for one's country; it is not concerning freedom of speech at all, since freedom of speech presupposes a platform from which to speak.
It is about property!
Who owns the property from which the protesters shout? If the answer to this question is uncertain or bleak, then you have located your problem.
Therefore, let us reexamine this scenario under the lens of property rights. If anti-gay activists wish to celebrate the deaths of gay soldiers or police officers then they must first purchase the right to do so. They must either rent or buy the space from which they desire to shout.
Furthermore, family members of dead soldiers or gays would have the option of choosing funeral homes that contract no anti-gay protests. Or family members could agree to allow such protests at a discounted price.
Therefore, in the end, anti-gay protesters must be willing to subsidize the funerals of gays in order to wave their signs.
April 6, 2010
