Many years ago, I spent some time studying with the Constitutional Patriots.   Since then, I've pondered some of what I learned from them.  One concept that I encountered and retained is the idea of people as property.

Most people haven't been exposed to the Constitutional Patriots or to their ideas, so the idea of people as property might not make much sense without some understanding of the underlying assumptions.  There are some documents that we've all been taught to uncritically accept as normal but which the Constitutional Patriots view as instruments of commerce.  Marriage licenses and birth certificates are examples of such documents.  Here's the Constitutional Patriots' view of those documents, as I understand it.

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Other documentation exists, in addition to birth certificates and marriage licenses, which suggests that the government owns the people.  The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments are two such documents.  We've all been taught that the Thirteenth Amendment abolished the ownership of people.  However, we were not told that the Fourteenth Amendment reestablished such ownership in a different form.  However, that is one effect of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Only the owners have changed.  Today, instead of people being owned by other individual human beings, they're owned by governments and corporations.  Certain definitions provide support for this claim.

chattel ....  n.  1.  Law.  An article of personal, movable property. 2.  A slave ....  — American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1992 <underline added> own ...  — tr.  1.  a.  To have or possess as property:  b.  To have control over .... — American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1992 <underline added> jurisdiction ...  2.  authority;  power;  control.  3.  extent of authority .... — Thorndike Century Senior Dictionary, 1941 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. — Section 1, Fourteenth Amendment U.S. constitution <underline added>

A chattel is something that is owned.  Such ownership isn't limited to inanimate property.  According to the definition, the word is also applicable to slaves.  A slave is a person.  Therefore, the definition reveals that it is legally possible for a person to be owned.  Whether or not it is openly acknowledged as permissible at any particular time or place is irrelevant.  The important point is that it is acknowledged as being legally possible.

Ownership is proven by possession or control.  Jurisdiction is defined as authority, power, and control.  Ultimately, a thing is owned by whoever controls it.

A citizen is under the jurisdiction of the United States.  Thus a citizen is under the authority, power, and control of the United States.  That seems to me like a pretty convincing argument in favor of the conclusion that the government owns the people.

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The behavior of the government toward people is exactly the behavior that would be expected of an owner toward valuable property.  It isn't necessarily proof that the government owns the people but such ownership is the best way to understand such behavior.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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The Constitutional Patriots distinguished natural human beings from other kinds of persons.  At the time, they recognized only two kinds of persons:  natural human beings and corporations.  By their arguments, people inherently have rights which corporations ought not to have simply by virtue of the fact that people are natural human beings and corporations are not.  There didn't really seem to be any other kinds of persons besides natural human beings and corporations.  However, I believe that another category has arisen without anybody noticing it.

The idea that people might be created by methods other than the immemorial methods of natural biological propagation, to which the human species was previously limited, is an old one.  It has a long and illustrious history.  Myth and fiction are riddled with it.  However, when we consider the idea of people as chattels, then the idea of manufacturing them raises ugly implications.

The idea of manufacturing people isn't fiction any longer.  Human beings are now produced by technological methods that are in stark contrast to natural biological propagation.  Various people with various evaluations of the situation might describe the processes variously, even euphemistically.  However, regardless of the terminology used there are today at least three categories of persons:  natural human beings, corporations, and the new category — manufactured human beings.

I think that it might be successfully argued, and I'm sure that lawyers are available who will make the argument, that a human being who resulted from some artificial technique — test tube baby, clone, genetically modified person, etc. — can be denied the benefits of the status claimed by a natural
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Indeed, this consideration might apply to many people who already exist.  Consider that for even such common techniques as in vitro fertilization, even for children resulting from the use of fertility drugs, a value added concept might apply.  That is, if the fertilization would have been impossible without the intervention of a third party, then the process wasn't natural and the resulting person isn't a natural human being.  The party that enabled the manufacture of the person, or which actually manufactured him, can claim an equitable interest in the result.  Remember, think commercially.

The Constitutional Patriots have long argued that people become property in a sort of intangible sense by the operation of such documents as the parents' marriage licenses and the childrens' birth certificates.  It has long been established Constitutional Patriot practice to rescind such documents and then to pretend that the government will respect the resulting status of the undocumented natural human being.  The new reality, however, could be a legal situation in which people are designated as property in a highly tangible, inarguable, permanent, and enforceable way.  The person so designated would not have any more say in the matter than a washing machine does.  His status would have been decided before the construction of him even began.  Such status could not be changed, even in theory, by such gimmicks as the formal rescindment of documents.  The manufactured person would not have any access to the decision process because, by definition, he isn't a natural human being.  He is a manufactured human being.  He is a product, without rights.

Here's another aspect of the manufactured human being idea.  How much of a natural human being has to be replaced by artificial components before the man can be involuntarily deprived of the status of natural human being?  If a man gradually becomes mostly artificial (first a false tooth, then an artificial hip, then an artificial heart, and so forth), wouldn't there come a point where such a change of status might occur as defined by applicable legislation?  How many artificial parts can a man have and still be considered a natural human being?  How many endocrines and hormones can be replaced before even a person's behavior can be regarded as manufactured?  Behavior modification by chemical means among such people as psychotics is already a well accepted practice.  Psychotics?  It's routinely done to elementary school children who are accused of nothing more than being too active.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Such considerations regarding medical services might be inapplicable if a man pays for medical services and improvements himself.  However, when they're supplied by some third party, such as Medicaid, considerations of equitable interest will arise.  Consider that Medicaid will already seize a Medicaid recipient's assets, after the recipient dies, on the basis of past services provided.  Doesn't that indicate an accrued commercial interest in the person, on the part of Medicaid?

It seems to me that the groundwork is already in place and that people just haven't noticed it.  The precedents have already been established and people just haven't recognized them.  All that remains is for the people to be given an appropriately receptive mindset (status, rights, liberty, and so forth are less important than security), for the politicians to find an adequate excuse (national security, the greater good, or whatever), and for bureaucrats and corporate executives to be given the go-ahead.  Given the present state of things, it doesn't seem too unlikely that we will soon discover that we already exist in a system in which any modification of a human being, either before or after birth, will be used to set aside at least some of the status of natural human being and to establish some lesser status for the person.  Incrementalism being what it is, beyond that point there's nothing left but the dreaded slippery slope with the great sucking sound at the bottom.  As they say in karate, it's all over but the shout.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Not only that, the status of natural human being will probably become extinct anyway.  Once the doctrine is well established, any physical change can be used to terminate natural status.  He had a cavity filled in a molar?  He had his appendix removed?  He had a vasectomy?  Welcome him to the ranks of the remanufactured human beings.  Remember Larry Niven's frozen corpsicles, the so-called Homo snapiens.¹

It gets even more complicated.  As people become increasingly artificial, how far do we need to go before successive models of people become indistinguishable from the machines which, of course, will become increasingly organic in their capabilities and their appearance?  As I ponder that one, I'm reminded of the movie Terminator.  In that movie, technological skills had enabled people to make machines that were sufficiently human to understand the idea of dominance.  The machines pursued that dominance to  the dismal detriment of organic people.  Those machines, in their campaign to destroy humans, learned how to make better machines and then to make machines that were increasingly difficult to distinguish from natural human beings.  It's a very Karmic notion, a dandy fictional example of the wheel coming full circle.

Of course, the consequences of our self-improvements won't be all bad.  As John Connor said in his prophetic message to his mother, the future isn't set.  If the Terminator had encountered a manufactured human being instead of

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That considered, maybe the best thing that we can possibly do is to embrace biological technology and promote its widest possible use.  Maybe we should achieve the maximum possible diversity among ourselves, including manufactured human beings in the mix.  It will be impossible to keep the technology from the hands of evil parties, either individual or institutional.  However, if it's equally available to all people, then maybe we can manage to create as much good as evil with it.  Maybe we can even use it, as individuals, to recover some of our rights.  As usual, we'll just have to deal as best we can with the ugly consequences that are an inseparable part of our creativity.  Therein lies the challenge of enlightenment.  We must avoid the Brave New World and prevent 1984.  Corpsicles might be inevitable.  We must deal with the Terminator, if we inadvertently (or intentionally) create it.  We must tread a perilously narrow path between the disasters and the glories that are inherent in our achievements.  Through it all, we must somehow maintain our fundamental humanity, or what's the point?

I don't know what the result will be, how we will accomplish it, or how we will survive it.  I can only speculate, hope, and rave on.

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chattel....  n.  1.  Law.  An article of personal, movable property.  2.  A slave....

The term is very elastic and may mean actual imprisonment or physical detention or mere power, legal or physical, of imprisoning or of taking manual possession.  Term "custody" within statute requiring that petitioner be "in custody" to be entitled to federal habeas corpus relief does not necessarily mean actual physical detention in jail or prison but rather is synonymous with restraint of liberty.  U. S. ex rel. Wirtz v. Sheehan, D.C.Wis., 319 F.Supp. 146, 147.  Accordingly, persons on probation or released on own recognizance have been held to be "in custody" for purposes of habeas corpus proceedings.

See Chain of custody;  Custodial interrogation;  Protective custody.

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