Just as Patrick Henry proclaimed “Give me liberty or give me death”, James Madison did likewise. His statement was worded just a little differently.

Madison defined “property rights” to be the same as all human rights. Such rights are specifically protected in our Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments, proposed by Madison and adopted by the States.

James refers to property to include such human rights at freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. He wrote that property “included everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right, and which leaves to every one else the like advantage”(emphasis in the original writing).

This emphasis distinguishes the natural rights of the Declaration of Independence from the kind of rights proclaimed by socialism; for example the right to a guaranteed income or to free education, which, of course make claims on the property rights of others.

Madison continues in his writing: “In one sense, a man’s land, or merchandise, or money is called his property. In another sense, a man has a property in his opinions and free communication of them [freedom of speech]. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them [freedom of religion]. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and property of his person.”

And then he continues: “A man has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.” In other words a man has the right not to be killed!

Madison was an educated genius in the proper form of government.