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“Unfortunately,” replies James Bovard, author of the book Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen, “federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors are making private property much less private. In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled in Oliver vs. United States -- a case involving Kentucky law enforcement agents who ignored several ‘No Trespassing’ signs, climbed over a fence, tramped a mile and a half onto a person’s land and found marijuana plants -- that ‘open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the (Fourth) Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance’ (466 U.S. 170, 179 [1984].) ...

“The core of the ‘open fields’ decision,” Bovard wrote in the September, 2000 edition of Ideas on Liberty, published by the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., “is that the government cannot wrongfully invade a person’s land, because government agents have a right to go wherever they damn well please. ...And for those areas that are sufficiently fenced in, the Supreme Court had blessed low-level helicopter flights to search for any illicit plants on the ground. (Florida vs. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 [1989].)

“The Supreme Court decision, which has been cited in over 600 subsequent federal and state court decisions, nullified hundreds of years of common-law precedents limiting the power of government agents. The ruling was a green light for warrantless raids by federal immigration agents; in 1997 the New York Times reported cases of upstate New York farmers’ complaining that ‘immigration agents... barged into packing sheds like gang busters, handcuffing all workers who might be Hispanic and asking questions later. ...’ In a raid outside Elba, N.Y., at least one INS agent opened fire on fleeing farm workers. Many harvests subsequently rotted in the fields because of the shortage of farm workers. ...

“Police also possess the right to destroy property they search. Santa Clara, Calif., police served search and arrest warrants by firing smoke grenades, tear-gas canisters, and flash grenades into a rental home; not surprisingly, the house caught fire and burned down. When the homeowner sued for damages, a federal court rejected the plea, declaring that the police force ‘only ... carelessly conducted its routine and regular duty of pursuing criminals and obtaining evidence of criminal activity. The damage resulted from a single, isolated incidence of alleged negligence.’ (Patel vs. U.S., 823 F. Supp. 696. 698 [1993].)”

Renters fare even worse. “Park Forest, Ill. in 1994 enacted an ordinance that authorizes warrantless searches of every single-family rental home by a city inspector or police officer,” Mr. Bovard continues, “who are authorized to invade rental units ‘at all reasonable times.’ No limit was placed on the power of the inspectors to search through people’s homes, and tenants were prohibited from denying entry to government agents. Federal Judge Joan Gottschall struck down the searches as unconstitutional in February 1998, but her decision will have little or no effect on the numerous other localities that authorize similar invasions of privacy.”

We are now involved in a war in this nation, a last-ditch struggle in which the other side contends only the king’s men are allowed to use force or the threat of force, and that any uppity peasant finally rendered so desperate as to employ the same kind of armed force routinely employed by our oppressors must surely be a “lone madman” who “snapped for no reason.”

No, we should not and do not endorse or approve the individual choices of Carl Drega, or Stuart Alexander, or Garry Watson. It would not be right to actively encourage anyone else to pick up a gun and shoot the next government agent who barges his or her way onto private property.

But we are obliged to honor their memories and the personal courage it takes to fight and die for a principle, even as we lament both their desperate, misguided actions ... and the systematic erosion of our liberties which gave them rise.

“Just because one government agent has a piece of paper that’s signed by another government agent, does that mean there’s no more right to private property?” asks my friend Gregg Tivnan.

“If statists fear popular resistance,” replies Jim Bovard, “perhaps government should violate fewer rights.”

There remain in America -- especially in rural America, where many have now made their final retreat, backs to the wall in hopes of no more than being allowed to “peacefully enjoy” life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- millions of Americans for whom “private property” is not some dried and dusty phrase out of a long-discarded history book, at all.

To many Americans, “property rights” remain something worth fighting -- and dying -- for.

Want to find out how many? Keep pushing.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (subscribe by calling Lance at 612-895-8757.) His book, Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998, is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site

“When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.” -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” -- H.L. Mencken