"Here we see the Supreme Court loking for a nice piece of land..YOURS!"
DOWN with the ROBED NAZGUL!
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
Actually, it's fascism.
I can't stand the RATS, but that does not make it ok for "our guys" to get away with that which we would not tolerate from the RATS.
GWB is a good man, but he seems to have lost his way. Could anyone really say that after 9/11 they would imagine our soldiers having to wear gloves when holding the Koran and being taught how to properly respect that piece of garbage?
Could anyone ever believe we would be stalmated in the Senate despite having a 10 seat majority.
Could anyone ever believe after 9/11 we would be taking orders from Vincente Fox as to our immigration policy????
We lack effective leadership in this country. We are good at waging war, but we totally suck at dealing with our own domestic problems. It is not the foregin powers that are killing us, it is the domestic issues our leaders refuse to confront and deal with for campaign money and votes.
Just look at all the effort going into writing a constitution for Iraq. Just let them have ours. We're not using it.
I am so depressed by this, I can't even stand it.
The furtherment of "'Smart' Growth" is exactly why SCOTUS took this case.
Considering the line of reasoning used by the 5 Lawgivers in Black, it's doubtful that would have worked. They emphasised that the city had a "plan", and that "plan" explicitly excluded the homeowners.
Maybe, we will see, but there are a lot more of "us" then there are of "them".
This won't work. Eventually, someday, they'll get liberal justices back in.
I, too, am dismayed at the property rights decision (and I live in Connecticut).
But I'm also dismayed at the responses on Free Republic (not you, ChinaThreat, I'm referring to others): veiled or more direct threats against the Justices who rendered this decision, even a call for their home addresses. This is _not_ the way to correct bad rulings.
Someone somewhere posted that "judicial review" should be abolished. Not going to happen anytime soon; probably never going to happen.
Others post that the liberal justices of our courts must be replaced by those of more conservative constitution who will apply a more conservative, strict-constructionist interpretation of _the_ Constitution. Of course, we want to move in that direction. But even Anthony Kennedy was - at one time - thought to be "conservative". In truth, there is no firm guarantee that determines _how_ Supreme Court justices will rule. It's pretty much just pot luck, a crap shoot.
If we want to securely re-establish "individual property rights" for ourselves and the generations to come, there is only one way to do so, and that is to write and pass a Property Rights Amendment to The United States Constitution. This is the only way - let me repeat that for you folks in flyover country - ONLY way - to enshrine such rights in a way that is untouchable, unreachable, and fundamentally un-interpretable by ANY state or local government or ANY court ANYwhere in the United States. The Fifth amendment - by itself - can no longer be regarded as having been written in language sufficient and succinct enough to protect individual property holders. Additional language must be added to the Constitution to further clarify exactly _what_ property rights individuals have vis-a-vis the state and federal governments, and clarify under what circumstances individuals' property may be taken and the manner and amount of compensation paid.
I'd like to try - TRY - to put forth an analogy here, regarding our Constitution as written by the founders, the courts, and the sands of time.
Think of the Constitution as you would think of a house out on the prairies. It was carefully constructed, of good materials, by fine craftsmen, with the hope of a long lifespan.
But as time goes by, our house must withstand the effects of the prairie weather: wind, rain, dust, cold. However, it has been built in a way in which making small repairs and modifications are done only under extreme circumstances. Thus, with the passing of time, this inherent fault has become the Achille's Heel of our structure.
It was constructed to the best standards of its time, but as years pass, the elements continue to act upon it, trying to find ways into the smallest cracks. Eventually, grains of sand and drops of water _do_ penetrate the house, and thereby the building's erosion begins.
And, someday, as the elements relentlessly assualt our house, it must finally give way and collapse.
As the "elements" work on the house in the analogy, so is our Constitution under relentless "erosion", by the courts at all levels, by local governments, by state governments, by the federal government. Of course, you know this already.
But.... the reason such erosion often can occur, is because the original language of the Constitution was written in intentionally brief phrases that - over time - have become too easily bent (read: interpreted) to mean whatever the courts in session _want_ them to mean.
The only way to correct this is to amend the Constitution and further clarify the rights enumerated therein.
We cannot "leave it to the courts" and justices of ANY political persuasion to do this for us. Letting justices decide the fate of the nation is no better than letting kings decide it.
It is up to "We, the people" to make these decisions.
I could be wrong about this, but that's the way I feel.
Cheers!
- John
Not advocating anything here--far from it--but a Patriot, particularly one who feels he owns the land in question, might take it in his head to put that place to the torch as it nears completion.
Only the LIEberals of ELF can get away with that.
maybe, but I got a feeling what's coming is going to make the civil war look like an ice cream social.
Take action. Look, the pinkos have a smart strategy when it comes to their NIMBY schemes: tie up the project (waste disposal, power plant, refinery, chemical plant, etc.) with legal challenges, escalating demands, environmental concerns, pickets, human chains, etc. These things don't stop the project by themselves, but they throw sand in the gears, enough to make these things very expensive. And they usually accomplish their goal without doing anything illegal.
It will take time, but we need an apparatus that can identify projects based on illegitimate takings, and target them for legal disruption.
I expect a massive move to a third party, I expect a complete house clening in DC and I expect a new SC. I do not expect mass violence. We still get to vote, and we can unelect the fools and idiots that currently rule us.
The hotel builders invite that kind of response by going about their project the way that they have. I sincerely hope they haven't put their guests at any risk.
Good article. I agree with every point the author makes.
Heres another inteded / unintended consequence of this ruling...repost from the other big thread on this today...
"The point is..with this ruling...big developers now have incentive to get very actively involved in local government activities. This law...plus the authority empowered to local zoning commissions...gives them considerable leeway.
Before this ruling...they had some inhibitions because of the threat of a lawsuit...particularly a class action suit brought by a group of homeowners.
Now..the inhibiting effect of legal action by the homeowner have been removed.
You cant take your case to a local court...they will be immediately overruled if their decision does not hold with this ruling.
Your only hope is that you have local government officials who are honest and incorruptible. Thats a tall order in some areas."
Add one other possible salvation...you live in a solid red state whose legislature has enacted strict legislative guidelines on eminent domain...AND the State Supreme Court is not an activist rogue court (as in Fla).
Still, a lot of people slept that day in Social Studies when the nature of property rights was explained.
"Here we see the Supreme Court loking for a nice piece of land..YOURS!"
DOWN with the ROBED NAZGUL!
Well, I hope that can happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Supreme Court overturns any real change, unless it is a change that furthers the shift toward socialist government.
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