James Madison argued in Property that a government ceases to be just the moment it violates “the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty” through “arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.”
The same principle was affirmed in Vanhorne’s Lessee v. Dorrance (1795), which declared that “no man would become a member of a community, in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry.”
In other words, redistribution by force is not merely bad policy—it is the mark of a government that has broken its purpose and promise