When I lived in the Berkshire Mountains, just south of the Vermont border, our brutally cold winters struck early and held on for months. But there always was a day in February, thawed by southerly winds, when false Spring occurred, and, however briefly, we could sense the approaching long hot days of Summer. It was a sign that the time of sweet corn and ripe peaches was nearing.
Politics also has signs that the times are changing. We’ve seen enough of the recalls and election results from around the country to know with certainty that the era of wokeism is over. The plain truth is that the American people have awakened to the sheer silliness of progressive ideology and are tired of hearing it—not that that stops progressives from continuing their blather. Take Carroll Fife—please (with apologies to Rodney Dangerfield). Among her memes is that “Housing is a human right,” a slogan she came up with when she broke the law by squatting in that West Oakland house. As it says on her website, “At the root of Carroll’s vision for addressing Oakland’s housing crisis is a shift from a financialized housing system to housing as a human right…What is needed,” she argues, “is a different kind of [housing] system and market.”
What could she mean by that? Our current housing system is free market, which means that you can buy a house and then, if you wish, you can sell it and get the highest price you can. Or you can choose to not sell it. It’s your property, your choice. That’s how everything in America, and throughout the world, works. It’s how human activity has always worked. It’s impossible to imagine human activity on any other basis. This isn’t to deny the role of things like altruism and charity; it’s only to point out the fundamental truths that govern human economic activity.
So what is the “shift” Fife envisions, based on “housing as a human right”? She never quite explains it—maybe she’s unsure in her own mind exactly how it would work. Fife’s goal is aspirational; what’s she’s saying is, “Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had a house?” Yes, it would. It would also be nice if everybody was honest and law-abiding and respectful of their neighbors.
Why is “housing a human right”? What is a “human right” anyway? There’s no universal definition. Our American Declaration of Independence is silent on the question. The Constitution, which is the basis of all U.S. law, makes broad references to “promoting the general welfare” but the Constitution’s Bill of Rights also is silent on the question of housing, beyond guaranteeing, in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, the rights of homeowners “to be secure…in their houses” and to not be compelled to quarter “soldiers” in their homes.
And what of international law? The United Nations in 1948, following the horrors of World War II, published a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose famous Article 25 stated, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” But this goal, too, is aspirational. It’s one thing to claim a “right” to something; it’s quite another to pay for it or to justify it under every nation’s laws. Clearly, Planet Earth is no closer to providing food, clothing, housing and medical care to every resident on our planet than it was in 1948. So is Carroll Fife saying that U.S. law ought to be based on the idealistic U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, rather than the Constitution? If so, let her come out and say it, and then explain how it would work.
I think rational people are rightly suspicious when they hear rhetoric like Fife’s. They realize it’s impossible of achievement. They suspect, correctly, that even the effort to achieve it will somehow harm them personally. They also feel that there’s something immoral about it. “Are you telling me,” they ask Fife, “that someone who refuses to work, who lives outside the normal boundaries of moral behavior and harms his neighbors without remorse, should be guaranteed a house, clothing, all the food he wants, etc. etc. etc.? No way.” And how could anyone blame people for thinking the idea is offensive—of rewarding people who don’t deserve it? “I worked hard for everything I have,” reasons the average citizen, “and I’ll be damned if my tax dollars will go to idle, unproductive slackers and addicts who are against everything I and my family are for!”
I wonder what part of this Carroll Fife doesn’t understand. She practically comes right out and admits that, if she had the power, she would seize people’s houses and appropriate them to the poor. “In Oakland,” she writes, “there are more vacant homes than unsheltered people. That’s because the ‘free market’ has been making housing policy decisions for us for generations. As long as there is a profit motive to deprive people of shelter, this housing crisis will continue.” Read in between the lines: Fife wants the ability to tell a homeowner she’s taking ownership of his property in order to house homeless people. She wants to destroy the free market. Is that the kind of dictatorship you want?
Which brings me back to signs of the times. Every sign I’m aware of is that the American people have rejected Fife’s approach. They don’t want an overweaning, Communist-type government seizing their private property. They don’t want apparatchiks like Carroll Fife running anything. They have rejected wokeism in all its ugly posturing. I can feel it, just as I could feel the coming of summer long ago in those Berkshire Mountain winters. The sweet corn is coming, and it will be delicious.
P.S. Check out the series “All American” on Netflix. It’s been on for a few years but I just discovered it. The plot is a bit formulaic but the actors are so likeable, so relatable. Totally bingeworthy.
Steve Heimoff