Posted on 06/24/2005 5:59:15 AM PDT by conservativecorner
I wrote a book a few years ago about property rights.
It was called, "This Land Is Our Land."
I didn't think of it as an optimistic book at the time.
But after yesterday's chilling U.S. Supreme Court ruling that government can seize our property against our will for no other reason than it capriciously chooses to do so, the title is certainly no longer accurate.
We do not own our property any more in America.
Imagine the home you own – the one you scrimped and saved your entire life to purchase, the one you planned on living in for the rest of your life, the one you planned to pass on to your heirs – was taken from you, capriciously by a small group of local officials in conspiracy with wealthy developers who want to level it and build office buildings.
You may not have to imagine it. It could happen to you any time. It has already happened to a group of Connecticut homeowners – salt-of-the-earth, working Americans whose modest homes represent their life savings, their estates, their life's work.
That was the finding of the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday. Your property is not your property.
That home you invested so much of your life in – it belongs to the government. It is only on loan to you until the day the government chooses to loan it to someone else. That is the message of the black-robed tyrants. Listen to it well.
This is the most basic freedom – upon which all the other liberties we hold dear are built.
That's what the founding fathers explained. Freedom of speech? It descends, they said, from the right to property. Your thoughts, your beliefs, your opinions were equated with your personal property and possessions. That's why you had the right to express them according to your conscience.
Notice I said "had."
Five fascists on the U.S. Supreme Court undercut every freedom we know in America.
I do not exaggerate when I say they have done more damage to the Constitution than any five people in history.
Stop worrying about Osama bin Laden and nuclear-armed terrorists. All they can do is kill you. Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stephens and Stephen G. Breyer have done something worse. They would have you live in servitude to the state. They would reduce all free Americans to serfs. They would make government your master.
The Congress better stop worrying about trivial issues like flag desecration. The Constitution has just been trampled, spit upon and torched. In doing so, these judicial terrorists have done more harm to the American way of life than weapons of mass destruction ever could.
If this ruling is permitted to stand by the U.S. Congress, it's simply time to start shopping for a new country or start planning the revolution. I don't know what else to say about it.
President Bush needs to speak out against this travesty of justice. The Congress needs to be heard from. Yes, the Congress has the power, should it ever have the courage to use it, to set aside a ruling like this and permanently enjoin the court from ever ruling in the future against the well-enshrined, inalienable, well-documented, constitutionally protected right to own and enjoy property.
This country was birthed in a war of independence fought against an unaccountable empire that failed to acknowledge and respect the rights of colonists in America. But the grievances of those heroic patriots that created the greatest experiment in freedom the world has ever known were trivial compared to the grievances 21st-century Americans have against the empire in Washington.
The only question is whether or not we have the courage of our forefathers. Are we willing to sacrifice our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to reclaim our American birthright of freedom?
It's time for a new tea party. It's time for a new Lexington and Concord. It's time for a new Declaration of Independence. It's time for civil disobedience and throwing off the shackles of rule by men. It's time to begin plotting how to re-establish the rule of law under a sovereign God.
It is time EVERYONE gets this, this ruling takes away the rights of the poor and middle class to own property, this can not be allowed to stand. If this stands we are serfs.
exactly.
We have as a nation become tooooo complacent.
Umm, Let me see, you think the person who has put his stamp of approval on the repeal of the first amendement and the forth amendment now will protest the repeal of the fifth?
I'd hate to be hanging from my neck for as long as that will take.
It's over, Republicrats have ceded our country to fascists. Hell, they are the fascists.
What has been the commentary of this ruling by Bush, Cheney,Reed, Kerry,...anyone in elective office. They are not, seemingly, concerned about this ruling. Why. We are loosing our country, and the elected oligarchy does not give a damn. I will revise and extend my remarks if Bush comes out against the ruling and tries to do something about it.
Taking an appallingly biased world history course at my local college this summer and this whole concept of rich people stealing the land of the common people has always been very commonplace. Seems to me what the supreme court just did yesterday undoes all the protections our brilliant founders put in place to put an end this practice for the US. Some sins never change, they just keep popping up.
I predict, when this plays out, if something legal is not done right away, this will have as profound an affect on this country as abortion.
I predict......
there will be significantly less if not little lake front or ocean front property owned by little people. rich developers (alone or in consortiums) can buy up whole communities and replace with commercial development. and i fully expect the local "politicians" to enable it.
farms and open land will be hit badly by this.
alot of rezoning will take place to enable more thievery of this sort.
corruption will increase with government officials and developers scratching each other's backs.
churches will have a much more difficult ever getting property within local communities.
It is all about greed and money.
Whenever I talk to people outside of this forum, everyone is way too complacent in their lives and what is going on around them to look at the BIG picture.
A public venue is different - it indisputably falls under the eminent domain power. There are two categories of eminent domain takings under long-established jurisprudence: transfer from private ownership to public ownership and transfer from private ownership to privately owned public service (a utility is another example).
The third category is more recent and arguable: transfer from private to private ownership for public purpose. Before this ruling, it was justified by remedy to public harm (e.g., eliminating urban blight) but now it can be justified by increasing the tax base..
This third category shouldn't exist at all in my view (and that of Justice Thomas). It didn't become permissible until Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s and the 1980s ruled it permissible. Now it's been dramatically expanded..
ok
I'm not sure he will, but ok.
reserve judgement and watch.
I'd say, let's see if this law is going to be enforced. I doubt it, and in fact expect a huge backlash.
I imagine that there is going to be allot of unhappy people out there if local gov'ts start practicing eminent domain tactics to take private land away from people.
What cruel trick of fate, what conspiracy of the damned led Geogre H. W. Bush to appoint David Souter?
HEY about pfizer....
i have been at the archives this summer and it was interesting to see that several of the drug companies seemed to really get their boost out of the chemical/biological program that was run during WWII (and I would imagine after as well). not only did they seem to provide and manufacture the supplies we used on our own soldiers and citizens as well as other nations, but they, I believe, bought some of the govenrment built production facilities as the country dismantled the operations. probably for a song.
Agreed.
The politicians (in particular the president) could make it front and center immediately. I hear crickets chirping..
This is INSANITY!
NO!!!
I love my country. It's the gov't I'm PO'd at.
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