No wonder, then, that the song that uses those very words, “Imagine” by John Lennon, has found another resurgence in popularity.

Not only are its chords yet another majestic achievement of the late Mr. Lennon -- a miraculous artist -- but its hopeful image of a peaceful, global society is especially appealing amidst the current social climate.

However, with all due to respect to Mr. Lennon, not all his lyrics should be taken as a literal prescription for social ills.

“Imagine” states that, in a perfect society, there’d be “no possessions.” That’s where the song’s philosophy harkens to a different philosopher with a similar sounding surname -- Vladimir Lenin. It echoes French socialist Pierre Proudhon, who nonsensically asserted, “Property is theft.”

A world without property is a world without rights, as all rights are property rights.

Why is it wrong for others to murder you? Because your life is your own property, so no one else has a right to forcibly remove it from you without your consent.

And since you have a right to protect your ownership of your own life, it’s morally permissible of you to use force to defend it from the violence that others have initiated upon it, even if it’s with a gun of your own.

Your ownership of your mind and your mouth beget your freedom of speech, as it does the freedom of (and from) religion.

And, finally, the very first material belonging anyone receives is a body of one’s own.

Your ownership of your body is another reason why others can’t rightfully initiate violence upon you. That’s what makes rape a violation of rights. What a woman does with her own body is ultimately her rightful decision, and others have no right to inflict anything upon it without her consent.

Nor do others have a right to use force to stop her from peacefully doing what she wants with it, no matter how unwise or immoral they perceive it, if she isn’t violating the rights of anyone else.

To enslave a person is to threaten that, if the slave doesn’t obey the captor, his body or life will be physically harmed. So a violation of the right to liberty is also a violation of the right to life, and, consequently, of the property that is one’s life.

All these principles are derived from self-ownership.

In this sense, all civil liberties come from property rights. Therefore, any infringement upon civil liberties is also an assault on private property, economic freedom, and capitalism.

That’s what James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution, meant when he said, “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”

Moreover, in order for any society to survive, it needs to have at least a primitive conception of private property.

This doesn’t mean that people have to know the word “property” to have a subsistence economy. But they do need to behave as if at least two material objects are exclusively owned by individuals -- one’s own body and the food it digests.

If a body isn’t the private possession of the soul inhabiting it, then anyone could legally rape, beat or murder anyone else.

That’s because, under such a system, the victim has no higher claim to his or her own body than the aggressor. If a single person’s body is owned by everyone, then it belongs to the victimizer just as much as the victim, so why can’t a sociopath at least partially abuse other people?

If a person’s body belongs to everyone, then everyone should have an equal privilege to use and dispose of it.

People say that Ancient Hawaiians didn’t believe in private property when it came to material objects other than the body. But they had to in at least one other context. They understood that, while a person is digesting food, that food is exclusively his own material possession.

If they didn’t believe that, they could say to someone, “When you eat that piece of food, you deprive the rest of the community of having that exact same piece as well. No one should be allowed to eat, because anyone’s digesting of any piece of food makes it exclusively his while it’s in his stomach.”

See Part 2 at: http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?The+Propriety+of+Property+-+Part+2

Stuart K. Hayashi is the president of the Reason Club of Honolulu and an undergraduate in Entrepreneurial Studies at Hawaii Pacific University, though his opinions do not necessarily reflect that of either institution. He can be reached at radical_individualist@hotmail.com (If you would like to continue seeing Stuart Hayashi's editorials on this site, please let Hawaii Reporter know at info@hawaiireporter.com)

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