Posted on 06/24/2005 5:41:24 AM PDT by jigsaw
Freedom died yesterday.
The freedom understood and fought for by the Founding Fathers collapsed in a heap, its throat slit by big-government liberals on the Supreme Court.
It was the case of Kelo v. City of New London. It threw the notion of property ownership on the bonfire of history.
And we and our children will live to mourn the day.
It's a simple concept to explain: The government can take away your land and give it to someone else.
Period.
That's what it's about. The five liberal members of the Supreme Court have decided that you have no fundamental right to own property, you may only do so at the whim of the mayor. Or town board or village trustees or county executive. If at any time your local municipal leaders decide that they want your land to be used by someone else, you can kiss it good bye.
The case in question involved a neighborhood in Connecticut. People had lived there a long time, a real long time. It was where they'd been raised and where they'd raised their families. But somebody with big money came in and wanted to bulldoze the homes and put up a hotel. A real swanky hotel. Big, big money.
But the homeowners didn't want to sell.
So the developer went to the city and mentioned how much more tax money would flow in if he had his hotel in place of those homes and the city -- suddenly a fan of big development -- told the homeowners they had to sell. The city used the power of eminent domain -- previously only used to make way for public projects -- to condemn land and evict homeowners so that the developer could get the land.
And the Supreme Court yesterday said that is OK.
The Supreme Court said that the municipal interest in making more money was more important than the private interest in owning property. Government growth is more important than personal liberty.
That declaration, by that court, is a milestone in the decline of American freedom. This is a dramatic and fatal leap into the abyss of governmental oppression.
And it is a repudiation of the Founding Fathers and their belief in the essential nature of property ownership. They believed that the only truly free person was the person who was free to own and bequeth property. It was essential to their understanding and definition of freedom. This was based in the experience of generations in Europe, often in situations where property was only used with the permission of a prince or king.
One of the appeals of emigration to America was the ability to own land -- not just because it was available, but because it was allowed. In America, anyone who could pay a mortgage or stake a claim could be a landowner -- he could create his own little kingdom, him home could be his castle.
But that is over now. At any point a majority of members of your village board or city council -- or the mayor -- decide that they want to use your land for something, you're gone. Period. If they decide -- on criterion of their own selection -- that the government would be better off if you were displaced, you are displaced.
Think this through.
Say your family has had a little cottage on a lake for years and years. Just a tiny thing your grandfather built for summer weekends. Let's say a developer comes in and wants to put up some giant rich-guy mansion on that land. All that developer has to do is go to the town board and explain that his development will pay far more in taxes and be far better for economic development than your family cottage. At that point your land is condemned, you will be paid a "market rate" and the bulldozers will come in.
And to hell with your right to own land.
Same thing happens if you're a farmer and some developer wants to put in a sub-division on your land. You don't want to sell, you want to keep farming, your family's owned this land for generations. Well, you're screwed. A sub-division pays much more in taxes, and helps economic growth, and the local idiots on the city council can take your farm without blinking an eye.
Say you've had a little gas station on the corner of a busy intersection for years. It's how you make your living. All the traffic supplies you a steady stream of customers. You've got a good location. Under this new ruling, some other business can come in and have you thrown off. Say it's a bigger gas station, or a nicer one, or if it's an office complex or a big restaurant, or anything city hall thinks is better or more lucrative than your business. You can, against your will, have your property taken from you. Sure, you get paid, what they decide is fair, but your business goes out of business. Your livelihood is gone.
Your neighborhood could be wiped out by plans for a shopping mall, your old home could be demolished to make way for someone else's new home, your dream could be destroyed to further the government's profit.
Your village or town board, your city council, your county executive or city mayor, controls the ownership of all the property in your town. So you better not tick them off, and you better hope that no screwballs run for office and win. You better hope that the developers don't pack the boards and you better hope that these "smart growth" people don't take over.
Smart growth? That's the thing where Democrats want to control all development centrally, limiting where people can live and how many roads will be built. It is a subversion of live-where-you-want-to-live into live-where-we-tell-you. This ruling gives those central planners the authority to impose smart growth, not just going forward through zoning, but retroactively through the condemning of property.
Simply put, your home is your home only as long as the government says its your home.
But the moment somebody with pull covets your home, business or property, it's gone.
You do not have the right to own property. Not after yesterday.
It went away.
The Fifth Amendment says "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Nowhere in there does it authorize the taking of private property for private use. The Constitution doesn't authorize it, but now the Supreme Court does.
Which makes two things very important: Who gets appointed to the Supreme Court.
And the Second Amendment.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2005
Sad to say, but with 3 years of GWB and Rinos and Liberals, left and possibly 2 appointments to the bench, I see things getting worse, not better
Then HILLARY will step in and SAVE THE DAY!!!
I need a drink...
It is not time to stack the court, it is time to take away their power completely. It is time for a rebirth of this nation.
Someone else came up with a better idea...seize through eminent domain the homes of the Chief Justices who made this ruling and build something on their property.
Do the Supremes realize how much blood will be spilled over this? It paints people into a corner. The only recourse is to slaughter the selectmen --- at least as history is guide, that will happen in case after case. I strongly advise against such bloodletting. But how else will a farmer protect the legacy of many generations? He has no hope in the courts. And without that hope -- despair, hate, bloodshed.
Isn't it time that well meaning citizens go to Connecticut and exercise some of our other rights?
Sad,sad day for all.Where is the justice in this decision?
Some much for the little guy who is simply trying to provide for his/her family. The whole issue boils down to an over used cliche: Money Talks. Perhaps someone should write a song....(sarcasm)
Let's see, he is trying to protect the American Family through a Marriage Amendment. He's trying to protect us from Al Queda via the war on Terror. He is trying to save Social Security for future generations. He is trying to get an Energy policy passed so we will have fuel for your car and your home and where you work.
And all this with the dems, liberals bucking and kicking all the way. The Liberal media want him impeached at every turn. You might offer some real prayers for the man instead of just hate.
Leadership is a friendlessness place and the thousand knives of Washington have been out against him since 2000.
If he buckles under the pressure, we all will know it.
Pray some real prayers such as God give the President wisdom from above to deal with our enemies from without and within. Give him wisdom to persuade our people to follow righteousness and to eschew evil. Give him principals from above to hold fast and not waiver. In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Presidential Prayer PING!
I agree.
He used to be a fighter - what the heck happened?
As I stated yesterday (and people had real trouble with this), the PRECEDENTS in American history go all the way back to the "mill acts" of the 1830s. Justice Thomas addressed this, sort of, but not very well.
First, when you combine the "mill acts," the American Revolutionary notion of property taxation to prevent large estates from building up, and "squatter's rights," you created in this nation a bias for development. It is NOT just this one act or city action that is at issue here, but the whole American predeliction for development.
Second, given that---and that courts are REALLY hesitant to overrule 170 years' worth of judisprudence (i.e., say, "no, the courts have all been wrong all these years), the USSC was likely to rule for the city.
Third, what we as conservatives then need to get realistic about is that PROBABLY (I haven't looked at the arguments, but I'm guessing) the homeowners' arguments were from a purely private-property standpoing---which is where most Freepers come down. That argument was the wrong argument legally in this case.
What the homeowners should have done was to base their case on the fact that they had "developed" their property; that homes contribute more to the "public good" than do malls (and here I would have brought in a bunch of econometric models to show that these malls usually fail and COST the city money; that improving homes was CONSISTENT with squatter's rights and the mill acts. Instead, they fought against these trends on grounds of "pristine property rights." (again, as best I can tell, esp. looking at Thomas's dissent).
Realize that there is a deep-seated American preference for development and for penalizing "barons" who just sit on their land, and that whatever legal arguments the homeowners made needed to stem from that, not from (what I think are right) Constitutional claims of "pristine property ownership.
Can you see what I'm saying here? I think the lawyers for the homeowners blew it, and that it would have taken a remarkably radical court to overturn so much established law.
No, they DO have excellent grounds to resist---but the argument has to be different than, "It's my property."
Conservatives need to re-think their approach to this, and quit basing arguments on "it's my right" and start basing the legal arguments on "it's my right and it's a public benefit that I have that right." If we do that, we'll win.
State's rights were lost 2 weeks ago, now private property. the second amendment is our last hope of saving ourselves, that is until the SCOTUS takes it away too. It is indeed a sad, sad day.
The legal arguments here were absolutely wrong-headed in my view. The homeowners could have won, but they needed an approach that emphasized that PRIVATE OWNERSHIP is in the "public good" and that having a mall built would have HARMED the "public good" and given evidence to prove it.
Keep singing the talking points while Rome burns.
Just one thought
REMEMBER MEIGES FIELD..............
Agreed my old friend. Sigh.
Before, the landowner could hold out for a higher price, but now the developer doesn't even need to negotiate. They can now say, take it, or we'll MAKE you take it.
Yes, Keep singing the dem talking points while Howard Dean and the liberals burn. The dems seem to be for flag burning. I wonder how that will play just before independence day, huh? Will the Red States like it?
Let me enlighten you on some recent dem talking points:
Nancy Pelosi: The war in Afghanistan is over.
... Very interesting, the Secretary of Defense and the President and our troops were surprised at the news.
Howard Dean: Republican Voters "never held a real job in their life" and are "White Christians"
... I'm posting this on a break at work. I am a "White Christian", I voted in 2000 and 2004. How is this supposed to make me want to vote the Democratic Ticket?
.... Oh and by the way, I never forgave the democrats for disenfranchising our military voters in Florida. You have a lot of work to win me over.
We are dying the death of a thousand paper cuts. I got to love when GWB says Freedom is on the March - Yeah - everywhere but here.
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