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To: Question_Assumptions; TomServo
Your arguments are typical Hobbesian crap. Your interpretations of Constitutional language are colored by one assumption "That the government is the keeper of rights and determines which rights the people hold." The Framers did not hold this view when they wrote the same language you are misinterpreting. Rights are qualified in that if you interfere with the rights of another your life, liberty or property may be taken. For example, if you kill someone, you may be incarcerated. If you scream like a banshee at 3am on your front lawn you may not exercise your right to free speech because you are interfering with your neighbor's property rights. It does NOT mean that you own your property so long as the government lets you. The reason the civil war happened is because you secularist, leftist Yankees didn't understand that in 1865, and you don't understand that now.
351 posted on 10/01/2003 11:45:59 AM PDT by Texas Federalist
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To: Texas Federalist
Your arguments are typical Hobbesian crap. Your interpretations of Constitutional language are colored by one assumption "That the government is the keeper of rights and determines which rights the people hold."

My interpretation is based on a clear reading of the language of the Constitution, a document written in language so simple and so short in length that it continues to amaze me that people seem unable to understand what it so clearly says. You are confusing the abstract philosophy of the Founders with the practical document they crafted to run a real country.

The Framers did not hold this view when they wrote the same language you are misinterpreting.

If the Framers did not feel that the government had eminent domain over private property, then why does the Constitution only prohibit the taking of private property for public use "without just compensation", clearly implying that private property may be taken for public use with just compensation?

Rights are qualified in that if you interfere with the rights of another your life, liberty or property may be taken. For example, if you kill someone, you may be incarcerated. If you scream like a banshee at 3am on your front lawn you may not exercise your right to free speech because you are interfering with your neighbor's property rights. It does NOT mean that you own your property so long as the government lets you.

That may be what the Libertarian Party platform says but that is not what the Constitution says. Read the Fifth Amendment. It is brief and very clear. When it says, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation", the clear implication of the qualifying clause "without just compensation" is that private property may be taken for public use with just compensation.

Yes, I am sure you can find quotes from various Framers that take a different stand and I'm sure you can provide me some wonderfully colorful quotes stating in absolute terms where rights come from but the bottom line is that abstract proclaimations of absolutes are not practical foundations of real governments while the Constitution is. And the fact remains that the states of the Unites States, both Northern and Southern, ratified or were admitted to the Union under a Constitution with a 5th Amendment that clearly implies that the goverment has eminent domain over private property. You may not like it but pretending that the 5th Amendment doesn't say what it so clearly says is no more honest that the gun grabbers pretending that the 2nd Amendment does not say what it so clearly says.

The reason the civil war happened is because you secularist, leftist Yankees didn't understand that in 1865, and you don't understand that now.

Ah, the name calling. When all else fails, call people names.

Are you trying to claim that the text of the 5th Amendment changed between 1789 and 1860 or that the words, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." mean something different than what I'm saying they mean? If so, then please enlighten me to what the Constitution said before 1860 or clearly explain how I am misinterpreting the 5th Amendment.

Please note that you could use the same "taking clause" that I'm citing to argue that slave owners deserved "just compensation" for the "taking" of their property in the form of slaves. I am not claiming that the North acted in an entirely correct or Constitutional manner in everything it did. What I am saying is that the idea that property contained within in country is not subject to any sovereign control by that country's government is not even recognized by the Constitution. If you've got a problem with that, then you've got a problem with the Constitution as well as me.

375 posted on 10/01/2003 1:23:44 PM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: Texas Federalist
Well said.
412 posted on 10/01/2003 5:38:38 PM PDT by Godebert
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