Posted on 09/20/2015 10:29:03 AM PDT by Oldpuppymax
John Adams said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God … anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.”
I am not a politician or public figure. I am one of many Americans whose property is under assault by government. I am a student of self-governance living in New Jersey. My state and local governments make a habit of redistributing privately held property among the private parties it chooses. This is absolutely forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. If it can happen here in my state, it can happen anywhere in America.
Attorney Jennifer Kruckeberg writes: “Corporations . . . are proposing the following assignment: ‘Find me your most prominent location, get rid of what is on it, help me pay for it, and maybe you will be lucky enough to have me move to your city.’”
To clear out areas for big business, local governments force mom and pop businesses to leave. Multimillion-dollar companies establish close relationships with government officials in communities across the nation where they squeeze out, come hell or high water, any opposition.
Court rulings disregard constitutional protections of private property located in the “takings clause” and play a big part in the abuses of property rights. They also disregard the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which...
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...
Thank the USSC. The Dictators.
My copy is heavily bookmarked and annotated. Should be required reading in all high schools. It's also an in-your-face refutation of collectivist filth like Bernie Sanders and his ilk.
KELO decision anyone?
How are roads constructed when land is owned by individuals? Government pays a fair amount to that land owner and gains that property.
One can argue that there is a problem with doing that simply to have a greater net tax receipt, as Donald has, but we have needed and used eminent domain.
Matter?!? Property rights are the sine qua non of liberty. Any chink in the armor of property rights is a direct hit against our liberty.
You’re correct about roads etc., but as with most things government, they decided to go further, much further. KELO was a big step over the line.
The remainder of this post is from a related thread. As a consequence of citizens not being taught about the Founding States division of federal and state government powers, they don’t understand that the eminent domain protections of the 5th Amendment doesn’t work the same for the states as it does for the federal government. Insights, corrections to the argument below are welcome.
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Note that the Founding States had originally decided that the personal privileges and immunities that the states had amended the Constitution to expressly protect, most of these protections listed in the Bill of Rights, did not apply to the states. In fact, the justices who had clarified the state eminent domain case of Barron v. Baltimore had clarified that, unless the states were specified, general prohibitions on government power in the Constitution applied only to the federal government, not to the states. “
The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual States. Each State established a constitution for itself, and in that constitution provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated. The people of the United States framed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself, and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally, and we think necessarily, applicable to the government created by the instrument. They are limitations of power granted in the instrument itself, not of distinct governments framed by different persons and for different purposes.If these propositions be correct, the fifth amendment must be understood as restraining the power of the General Government, not as applicable to the States.”
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We are of opinion that the provision in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution declaring that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation is intended solely as a limitation on the exercise of power by the Government of the United States, and is not applicable to the legislation of the States. ” —Barron v. Baltimore, 1833.
So before the 14th Amendment (14A) was ratified, the states arguably didn’t need an excuse to seize land.
It wasn’t until the states ratified the 14A (that amendment ratified under very questionable conditions (imo) that the states required themselves to respect the Constitutiion’s personal privileges and immunities as well.
BUT THERE’S A CATCH !!!
The congressional record shows that John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, had clarified that the 14th Amendment took away no state’s rights.
“The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights [emphasis added] that belong to the States.” —John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (See bottom half of first column)
“No right [emphasis added] reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired…” —John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (See top half of 1st column)
“Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State [emphasis added]? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existance.” —John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (See bottom half of third column)
In other words, rights expressed in the Constitution as a prohibition of power on the feds, such as 1st Amendment prohibitions on certain powers of Congress to make laws, did not get applied to the states.
So let’s get back to prohibitions on government power versus constitutionally express rights in the context of the 5th Amendment’s imminent domain protections since that is a two-pronged right expressed in terms of a prohibition on government power as well as an express personal right.
"Under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, the government can exercise its eminent domain power to take property from private residents if it satisfies two conditions: it’s for public use, and just compensation [emphases added] is provided."
While the 14th Amendment applied the “just compensation” aspect of the eminent domain clause to the states, as evidenced by Bingham’s clarification concerning states’s rights, that amendment did not apply the “public use" aspect of the eminent domain clause to the states imo.
This is why the Supreme Court’s opinion in Kelo v. New London was the constitutionally correct interpretation of the 5th Amendment in conjunction with the 14th Amendment where state power issues are concerned imo.
It remains that since the low-information citizens probably understand the Constitution based on the gossip and hearsay that they are fed that, until citizens work with their local and state government representatives to make state eminent domain laws that are more friendly to homeowners, the eminent domain aspect of the 5th Amendment is probably going to continue to be a “loose canon” for many citizens.
I’ll throw into the mix a paraghraph fromm an essay I wrote about the eniquenss in founding of our country.
“Finally with these and other precedents we come to the founding of our country. Now human rights get synthesized into property as defined most prominently by John Locke and James Madison. Property is first of all sourced internally in opinion, religion, communications, use of abilities to labor physically and mentally, and in conscience. Only by application of these inherent rights does one come to the external and more traditional definition involving those things which man was to have dominion over ever since the Creation. Therefore the Declaration of Independence says, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. Here we have the internal attributes of property on which all external manifestations depend.”
Thanks for posting Retain Mike. Although I agree with you in principal about property rights, since the Founding States had decided that the states didn’t have to respect the privileges and immunities protected by the Bill of Rights, citizens were not protected by states exercising eminent domain until the 14th Amendment was ratified. And even though the states then had to buy the private land that they seized, they still didn’t need an excuse for taking the land as far as I can tell; corrections welcome.
Note that Mr. Barron lost his state eminent domain Supreme Court case to the City of Baltimore before the 14th Amendment was ratified.
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