Thursday, June 23, 2005

The End of Property

Since I've been old enough to use and control my rational faculty, I've never been under any illusions about property rights in America. Govenment at all levels has been unConstitutionally confiscating private money and property with a host of lame excuses for many decades. The main reason for real property confiscation is failure to pay taxes. A secondary reason is that government wants to build something.

Government owns hundreds of thousands of square miles of land, in all parts of the country already. but whenever they want to build something, they ignore that and take land from some poor, unsuspecting American who actually thought there is a right to ownership of private property in the United States.

Well, as the legal system of the United States was originally written, there is.

If you read the Founding Documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, if you read the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers and other letters and declarations of those who signed the above documents--you'll have to come to the conclusion that the Founders and supporters of the early United States considered it beyond question that property rights were absolute.

The Eminent Domain law was put into place to allow government to build roads, government buildings, etc for "public need" without having to pay exhorbitent amounts to get land. I don't agree with eminent domain law, because property rights are absolute and if someone wants an exhorbitent price for his land, he should get it, or prospective buyer should look elswhere.

Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling killed whatever was left of property rights. The grossly flawed decision gives any government agence at any level the "right" to steal any bit of property for any reason. The government agency merely has to claim that the taking is for the public good. To my knowledge, there is no requirement to justify the claim. The law, and the Fifth Amendment calls for just compensation according to fair market value, but who decides what's fair? The government agency that's stealing the property, that's who. It doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out which way that's gonna go. This ruling goes against every principle of property rights that most people thought existed.

This court action should incite violent rebellion. It might still, when government attempts to steal the wrong parcel of land. Those folks in Connecticut probably won't do anything. They're Easterners, used to peace and love and corrupt local government. When they try it on the wrong group of mossy-horned old cowpokes in the West, though, it might turn ugly.

This single Supreme Court ruling could just be the beginning of the end of Law....

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

No comments: