Private ownership of Property is what makes a capitalistic America more free and prosperous than a socialistic Soviet Union.
When the 14th amendment guaranteed "life, liberty, and property," it was echoing a basic theme of our Founding Fathers, a secular trinity, each of which is an essential component and guarantee of the others. Life, liberty, and property--they are like three pegs holding up a table. Remove one, and the whole thing comes crashing down. It seems almost old-fashioned to talk about property rights these days, but to our Founding Fathers, property rights were part of the natural law, the self-evident rights granted by God. Governments were instituted among men to guarantee them, not to take them away. A man's home is his castle--that is the foundation of civilized order, an ancient statement of individual rights that comes down to us through English common law. But in the last several decades, it seemed that the Government saw a man's
home as simply another source of tax revenue. Marginal income tax rates soared as high as 75 and on up--90 percent. They were, to use another old-fashioned term, "confiscatory."
—President Ronald Reagan, Remarks at a White House Briefing for Minority Business Owners, July 15, 1987, Public Papers of the Presidents, 1987, p. 828.
If they could travel through time into the 21st Century, our Founding Fathers would be shocked at the growth of government power and the assault on Life, Liberty and Property.