Category: Democracy and Instituions

Property Is Not Sacred. It Is Useful.

Stylized revolutionary-era crowd holding a red banner reading “Property Is Theft,” illustrating Proudhon’s famous critique of private property.

“Property is theft” is a powerful slogan. But slogans are not systems.

There was a time when a line like “property is theft” would have struck me as profound.

It is a great line. Short, shocking, morally charged, and almost impossible to forget. I remembered it for decades, although I managed to attach it to the wrong author. The phrase is Proudhon’s, not Bukharin’s, as I used to think. My memory apparently filed it somewhere in the Russian revolutionary theory drawer, between Mikhail Bakunin, who would have embraced the phrase, and Nikolai Bukharin, who might have rejected it.

That probably says something about how memory works. It also says something about how political slogans work. The best ones do not merely state a proposition. They lodge.

In high school, I was not immune to that kind of language. I had been raised working class and skeptical of inherited privilege. I had seen enough of the world to know that property was not distributed according to virtue. Some people inherited homes, money, confidence, connections, and second chances. Others inherited bills, caution, and a smaller sense of what was possible. A slogan like “property is theft” did not sound absurd to me.

And it is a phrase worth taking seriously.

Private property is not morally innocent. It can create opportunity, but it can also preserve exclusion. It can reward work, but it can also reward inheritance, luck, monopoly, political influence, and proximity to power. It can create independence, but it can also give some people power over the lives and labor of others.

So I understand the appeal of Proudhon’s line. I also understand why young people drawn to socialism, democratic socialism, or other critiques of capitalism find it clarifying. It takes the world as they see it — unequal, unfair, tilted toward owners — and gives that perception a moral vocabulary.

But slogans are not systems. CIVPAC’s broader approach to political philosophy starts from that distinction.

The strongest argument for private property is not that it is sacred. It is not that God, nature, or metaphysics somehow assigned each parcel of land, each factory, each share of stock, or each bank account to its current owner. Property rights are human institutions. They are created, defined, limited, taxed, inherited, transferred, regulated, and enforced by law.

The better argument for private property is practical.

Societies that protect private property are generally richer, more productive, more innovative, and better able to sustain broad prosperity. People invest, build, save, lend, borrow, repair, improve, and take risks in part because they expect to keep most of what they create. Societies that reject private property sometimes starve. Secure property rights are one of the great foundations of economic life.

Without them, people do not become morally purified. They become poorer.

The political argument may be even more important. Hayek and Friedman were right: economic power and political power cannot be completely separated. If the state controls jobs, housing, investment, credit, production, and the means of livelihood, it controls much more than “the economy.” It controls the practical conditions under which people speak, organize, dissent, publish, worship, move, and live.

A person who can lose only an argument is freer than a person who can lose his livelihood. A society with many employers, many property owners, many newspapers, many associations, many sources of income, and many centers of power gives dissidents room to breathe. A society in which all economic life runs through the state may promise equality, but it gives political authority a terrifying lever.

That does not make laissez-faire a sufficient theory of justice. It is not. Markets can fail. Private power can become abusive. Property can be accumulated in ways that undermine opportunity and democracy. A serious defense of private property has to include taxation, antitrust, public goods, environmental rules, social insurance, and limits on fraud, coercion, and monopoly.

But that is very different from treating property itself as theft.

A better formulation is that private property is not sacred, but it is indispensable. It is not a natural right floating above politics, but it is one of the institutions through which both prosperity and freedom become possible.

This is where I part company with the slogan. Proudhon’s line does not tell us how to build a free and prosperous society. It identifies a wound, but not a cure.

The old socialist and anarchist writers were not stupid. Many of them saw genuine injustice. Some of their questions remain good questions. Who owns? Who works? Who benefits? Who has power? Who is excluded? Those questions should still be asked.

But the history of the twentieth century should make us cautious about answers that concentrate economic power in the name of justice. When politics absorbs property, politics absorbs nearly everything.

That is why I defend private property, but not as an idol. I defend it as a practical institution, one that must be bounded by law and judged by its consequences. It helps make people richer. It can help keep power dispersed. It gives individuals, families, businesses, newspapers, churches, unions, universities, and civic organizations some space outside the direct command of the state.

Jefferson did not follow Locke’s familiar formulation of natural rights as life, liberty, and property. He chose “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That does not mean property was unimportant to the Founders. It means property was not the highest end. Property was one of the institutions through which people could pursue security, independence, prosperity, and happiness. It was a means, not the whole moral purpose of the political order.

Property is not theft. Property is not sacred either.

Property is a tool. Like all powerful tools, it can be used badly. But without it, we are not merely poorer. We are less free.

“Win Everywhere”: A Virtuous Cycle for American Politics

The Rivera report on the Democrats’ 2024 loss is an odd document.

It appears to contain some useful insights. It also appears unfinished, poorly rolled out, and only grudgingly released. The Democratic National Committee held the report for months before releasing it under internal pressure. DNC Chair Ken Martin then distanced himself from it, saying he was “not proud” of the product and that it did not meet his standards. The DNC also attached a disclaimer saying it could not verify many of the report’s claims because it had not received the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data.

That is not how a serious political party should handle a serious post-election review.

Still, buried inside the Rivera report is an idea that both parties should take seriously: Democrats need to organize everywhere to win everywhere.

That phrase matters.

In fact, it may be the key to a healthier American politics.

What “Win Everywhere” Should Mean

I would take “win everywhere” more literally than political consultants usually do.

Obviously, no party will actually win every race. Politics is competitive. If one party improves, the other party will adapt. Some districts are deeply Republican. Others are deeply Democratic. Not every race is polled, and not every race can realistically be close in any given cycle.

But the aspiration should be clear:

A healthy political party should try to make every election genuinely contestable.

Conceptually, every serious party should want to nominate candidates who could poll within the margin of error before Election Day if voters were paying attention and both parties were competing seriously.

That is not because every candidate will win. They will not.

It is because the discipline of trying to win everywhere would force both parties to become better.

A Democrat running in rural Georgia should not sound like a faculty-lounge progressive from Brooklyn. A Republican running in suburban Maryland should not sound like he is auditioning for a Trump rally. Candidates should fit their communities while still reflecting their party’s broad principles.

That is what political parties are supposed to do.

They are supposed to persuade.

Why the Impossibility Is the Point

The reason “win everywhere” cannot fully succeed is also the reason it is so important.

If Democrats became more competitive in rural America, small towns, the South, and working-class communities, Republicans would have to adapt. They could not rely as easily on Trump loyalty, cultural resentment, and the assumption that Democrats are unacceptable by default.

If Republicans became more competitive in cities, suburbs, college towns, and diverse metropolitan areas, Democrats would have to adapt too. They could not rely as easily on progressive cultural shorthand, demographic assumptions, or opposition to Trump as a substitute for persuasion.

That competitive response is exactly what the country needs.

The goal is not permanent one-party dominance. The goal is healthier competition.

When both parties have to compete everywhere, both parties have to listen. They have to recruit better candidates. They have to moderate their language. They have to understand local concerns. They have to stop treating entire categories of voters as either deplorable or morally superior.

In short, both parties would have to become less obnoxious.

That may be the best argument for “win everywhere.”

Democrats’ Bad Habit: “Failure to Communicate”

The Rivera report appears more reasonable than the progressive response to it because it recognizes real Democratic weaknesses with men, rural voters, non-college voters, Latino voters, irregular voters, and voters in Middle America and the South. AP reported that the report criticized Democrats’ focus on identity politics and said Harris “wrote off rural America.” Reuters similarly reported that the report faulted Democrats for failing to engage men, rural voters, non-college-educated voters, and irregular voters.

That is useful.

But Democrats often make the same mistake after losing: they describe the defeat as a failure to communicate.

Sometimes that is true. Sometimes the message was unclear, the candidate was poorly defined, the campaign failed to respond, or the party did not show up.

But sometimes voters heard the message clearly enough and did not like it.

That distinction matters.

Immigration was not merely a communication problem. Inflation was not merely a communication problem. DEI rhetoric was not merely a communication problem. Cultural overreach was not merely a communication problem. The Trump campaign’s “they/them” ad was effective not simply because Democrats failed to answer it, but because many voters already suspected the party had become too willing to indulge the cultural left.

A party that wants to win everywhere cannot treat every voter disagreement as a misunderstanding.

It has to ask whether voters understood the party’s priorities and rejected them.

The Democratic Lesson

For Democrats, “win everywhere” means more than opening field offices in red counties.

It means becoming plausible to voters outside deep-blue cultural environments.

That does not mean becoming Republican. It does not mean abandoning civil rights, immigration reform, climate policy, abortion rights, or concern for vulnerable groups.

It means learning to speak about those issues in a way that does not sound contemptuous of ordinary people.

Democrats need to stop assuming that voters who dislike immigration disorder are xenophobes. They need to stop assuming that voters who dislike DEI rhetoric are racists. They need to stop assuming that voters who reject progressive language about gender are bigots. They need to stop confusing academic vocabulary with moral seriousness.

People of good will can address the real concerns of transgender people without appearing so open-minded that their brains fell out.

A party that wants to win everywhere has to be able to say that.

It also has to be honest about inflation. Biden-era transfers were politically understandable during COVID, but in retrospect the additional fiscal stimulus was poorly timed. When supply chains were still broken and production capacity was constrained, aggressive transfers increased demand faster than supply could respond. That made inflation more likely, and Democrats then paid the political price for seeming surprised by a result that should have been easier to anticipate.

That is not a messaging problem.

It is a judgment problem.

The Republican Lesson

Republicans need the same discipline.

A Republican Party that wants to win everywhere cannot define “Republican” as “loyal to Donald Trump.”

It cannot treat every dissenting conservative as a RINO. It cannot indulge election denial, cruelty, corruption, or authoritarian rhetoric and then wonder why it struggles in suburbs, cities, college towns, and diverse communities.

A serious Republican Party should have room for fiscal conservatives, libertarians, national-security conservatives, business conservatives, social conservatives, moderates, and populists. Those factions will disagree. That is what political parties are for.

But when loyalty to one man becomes the organizing principle, a party stops being a coalition and becomes a personal vehicle.

That is bad for Republicans. It is also bad for the country.

If Republicans wanted to win everywhere, they would need candidates who could speak to voters who care about fiscal discipline but reject chaos. They would need candidates who can talk about crime without sounding cruel, immigration without sounding bigoted, religion without sounding theocratic, and patriotism without sounding authoritarian.

That would make the Republican Party better.

The Virtuous Cycle

Here is the point that matters most.

If one party seriously tried to win everywhere, the other party would have to respond.

That response would create a virtuous cycle.

If Democrats competed seriously in rural and working-class districts, Republicans would have to stop taking those voters for granted. If Republicans competed seriously in urban and suburban districts, Democrats would have to stop taking those voters for granted.

More races would become real contests. More candidates would have to persuade. More voters would matter. Fewer politicians could survive by appealing only to activists, donors, cable-news audiences, or primary electorates.

That is how American politics could improve.

Not because one party becomes dominant.

Because both parties become less complacent.

A healthy democracy does not require one party to win everywhere. It requires both parties to believe they should try.

Why This Matters to CIVPAC

CIVPAC’s interest is not in helping Democrats win for the sake of Democrats, or Republicans win for the sake of Republicans.

Our interest is in making both parties better.

The country benefits when Democrats are forced to understand rural, religious, working-class, culturally moderate, and non-college voters. The country also benefits when Republicans are forced to understand urban, suburban, secular, immigrant, educated, and racially diverse voters.

Both parties need to compete for voters who are not already on their side.

That is how parties become less ideological, less arrogant, and less captured by their loudest activists.

It is also how voters get better choices.

Too many Americans are politically homeless because each party has learned to survive by making the other party unacceptable. Democrats rely on fear of Trump. Republicans rely on fear of the cultural left. Both strategies can work electorally. Neither strategy produces a healthy democracy.

“Win everywhere” offers a better discipline.

It says: do not write off voters. Do not caricature communities. Do not nominate candidates who can only speak to the converted. Do not assume that the other party’s failures are enough to excuse your own.

The Right Lesson From Rivera

The Rivera report may be unfinished. It may be poorly sourced. It may be incomplete. It reportedly sidesteps some of the hardest questions, including Biden’s decision to seek reelection, and the rushed elevation of Harris after Biden withdrew.

But the “win everywhere” idea is right.

The Democrats need it. Republicans need it too.

A party that wants to govern the whole country should try to understand the whole country. It should put forward candidates who can compete in places where the party usually loses. It should want every voter to believe that their vote matters and that both parties are capable of speaking to them.

That is not naïve. It is the competitive logic democracy is supposed to produce.

The country does not need one party to win everywhere.

It needs both parties to try.

That effort would force each party to listen more, preach less, and nominate candidates who can appeal beyond their own base.

That is the virtuous cycle American politics badly needs.

Of course, not everyone would welcome this. The activist wings of both parties benefit from safe-seat politics. Progressive activists have more power when Democrats only need to win deep-blue primaries. MAGA activists have more power when Republicans only need to win deep-red primaries. A genuine effort to win everywhere would weaken both groups because it would force candidates to persuade voters outside the ideological comfort zone. That is one reason the strategy is so attractive. It would return power from activists to voters.

After Trump, Again

In 2020, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith published After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency. The book argued that Donald Trump’s first term had exposed serious weaknesses in the constitutional guardrails, laws, norms, and institutional practices that constrain the presidency. They offered reforms covering conflicts of interest, foreign influence, abuse of the pardon power, Justice Department independence, special counsel rules, war powers, emergency powers, vacancies, and other areas where presidential power had proven more vulnerable to abuse than many Americans had assumed.

It was an important book. It was also, in retrospect, optimistic.

The premise seemed to be that Trump had revealed the weak points in the system, and that responsible people in both parties might respond by repairing them. That was not a foolish hope. After Watergate, Vietnam, and the Church Committee, Congress did enact reforms intended to constrain executive abuse. The American system had failed before, learned from the failure, and tried to build stronger guardrails.

But that requires goodwill.

It requires elected officials who care not only about whether their side wins, but about whether the rules survive. It requires members of Congress to defend Congress as an institution. It requires courts to enforce legal limits where they can. It requires political parties to screen out candidates who are plainly hostile to constitutional restraints. It requires voters to punish misconduct even when the misconduct is committed by someone who says the things they want to hear.

The Constitution is not self-executing. Neither are statutes. Neither are norms.

Rules work only when enough people in positions of power feel some obligation to preserve them. When that obligation disappears, the rules become less like walls and more like lines painted on the floor.

That is the lesson of the current moment.

It would be naive to pretend that presidents of both parties have never bent, scraped, or even occasionally jumped the guardrails. They have. American history is full of examples of executive overreach, partisan hardball, and self-justifying claims of necessity. But the current moment feels different in scale, scope, and intent. What once appeared as episodic abuse now looks increasingly like a systematic effort to convert weak points in the constitutional order into ordinary tools of governance.

The problem is no longer simply that Trump found weak points in the presidency. The problem is that those weak points are now being used as a governing strategy. Conflicts of interest, attacks on law enforcement independence, pressure on neutral institutions, threats against political opponents, abuse of pardon and prosecutorial discretion, and the blending of public power with private grievance are no longer aberrations. They are becoming part of the operating manual.

A revised edition of After Trump would not be a 400-page book. It might be 1,000 pages.

That is not because the first book was inadequate. It is because the second Trump term is testing whether the American political system can respond to known vulnerabilities after one party has decided that exploiting them is preferable to repairing them.

Republicans should think harder about what they are teaching.

They may believe that bending the rules is justified because Trump is their candidate, because Democrats are worse, because the bureaucracy is hostile, because the press is unfair, or because the stakes are too high to lose. Those rationalizations are not new. Every faction that weakens institutional restraints tells itself that its emergency is unique.

But no party stays in power forever.

At some point, a Democrat will win the presidency. Perhaps that Democrat will be center-left, restrained, and institutionally minded. Or perhaps the next successful Democrat will be a left-wing ideologue with Trump’s appetite for grievance and Trump’s willingness to use public power against enemies. Perhaps that person will also be a gifted performer, a relentless fundraiser, and a shameless grifter.

If Republicans believe that possibility is impossible, they are fooling themselves.

Every precedent they set now will be available later. Every weakened ethics rule, every politicized prosecution, every retaliatory investigation, every permissive theory of presidential power, every excuse for self-dealing, every attack on neutral administration, every effort to turn law enforcement into a partisan weapon—those lessons will not be forgotten by their opponents.

Republicans may think they are building a fortress. They may be building a road map.

This is the part of constitutional politics that partisans often refuse to see. A rule that protects only your side is not a rule. A norm that matters only when the other party violates it is not a norm. A legal restraint that depends entirely on whether the president feels like obeying it is not much of a restraint at all.

That is why goodwill matters.

Goodwill does not mean weakness. It does not mean refusing to fight for policy goals. It does not mean pretending that the parties are the same or that disagreements are unimportant. It means recognizing that there are some tools a decent political movement should not use, because once those tools become legitimate, no one can control who uses them next.

The American constitutional system was designed with ambition counteracting ambition. But ambition does not counteract ambition if Congress becomes an extension of the president, if party loyalty overwhelms institutional duty, if courts avoid hard questions, and if voters reward abuses because they are aimed at their favorite targets.

The result is not strong government. It is government by retaliation.

A healthy political system needs more than written rules. It needs officeholders who accept that victory is temporary, legitimacy matters, opponents are not enemies of the state, and power borrowed from weakened institutions must eventually be repaid—with interest.

That is the warning Republicans should hear now.

The damage they tolerate because it benefits them today may become the weapon used against them tomorrow. The constitutional shortcuts they excuse now may be used by someone they fear far more than the current Democratic leadership. The presidency they are helping to reconstruct around personal loyalty and unchecked discretion will not always be occupied by their champion.

That should worry them.

It should worry everyone.