The Basis for Tyranny
by Modern Governments

Edward J. Dodson

[A comment posted in response to a Washington Times, commentary on government tyranny, 10 December 2014]

What Thomas Paine understood is that the system of law adopted by the new United States of America failed to remove fundamental privileges carried over from Britain. By the second term of George Washington, Paine already feared for the Democracy. His fears intensified during the Presidency of John Adams but became more hopeful when Thomas Jefferson was elected. However, even Jefferson could not overcome the forces already at work subjecting the population to the vested interests of those who enjoyed inherited wealth and inherited political clout.

The historian Jackson Turner Main analyzed the ownership of land and other assets in colonial North America and found that already by the mid-1700s those who owned most of the wealth had acquired it by inheritance.

Paine attacked privilege in all its forms, but particularly attacked those laws that secured and protected the concentrated control over nature. In Agrarian Justice he echoed the insights of the French Physiocratic writers -- Quesnay, Turgot and du Pont de Nemours -- as well as Adam Smith by declaring that those who control land owe to the community, to society, a ground rent payment for the privileges enjoyed. In this same essay, Paine called for many other measures that today would be considered progressive in their effect.

If Jackson Turner Main was to bring his study up to date, he would find that the ownership and control of the nation's land and natural resources is even more concentrated. This outcome was predicted by Henry George, writing in the late 19th century. Corporatism, massive government and the loss of our liberty are the result. Thus, unless we rid our society of monopoly privilege by the public collection of the rent of land we will continue on a path to despotism and tyranny.