High Court Bulldozes Property Rights

Welcome, readers from Nashvillefiles, and thanks for the link, Mr. Blake.

Less than an hour ago, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to bulldoze the concept of property rights.

On what basis was this decision made? The notion of the "common good".

Writing for the court's majority in Thursday's ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens said local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community. States are within their rights to pass additional laws restricting condemnations if residents are overly burdened, he said.

"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue," Stevens wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

To which I would reply, "And a landowner does not know what use for his own land would benefit himself the most? So what the hell does the title to your home mean if a "community" can now act on the notion that your loss is alright because it would mean more taxes go to the local government?

Or, as Ayn Rand once noted in her essay, "What is Capitalism?" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

When "the common good" of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.

As in another recent setback -- at the hands of this court -- for the cause of individual rights, the Gonzales vs. Raich decision against the use of medical marijuana, Clarence Thomas wrote an excellent dissenting opinion.

Thomas filed a separate opinion to argue that seizing homes for private development, even with "just compensation," is unconstitutional.

"The consequences of today's decision are not difficult to predict, and promise to be harmful," Thomas wrote. "So-called 'urban renewal' programs provide some compensation for the properties they take, but no compensation is possible for the subjective value of these lands to the individuals displaced and the indignity inflicted."

In America, it was once true that a man's home is his castle. Now, here in America, we are no better off in that respect than the proles in China! Recall why there were recent reports of unrest in the "People's" Republic:

The tensions in Shengyou are playing out in many parts of China. On Thursday, villagers in a northern Beijing suburb blocked a road leading to their land, which they say has been taken unfairly from them to build an Olympic venue.

Only yesterday, I noted that just as China's government refused to cut North Korea's oil supply to get its autocrats to reconsider their crash nuclear weapons program, ours refuses to cut off its military's food supply.

So our government won't permit private citizens to use medicinal marijuana in their own homes and regards these homes as its own for the taking anyway. And this is on top of providing resources to a rogue state in Asia which is developing nuclear weaponry. And what if we want to dissent from this? Congress has already passed McCain-Feingold and dealt another blow against freedom of speech yesterday. This precious right is coming under new attacks -- by our own government -- on a daily basis.

So who's in charge? A government by the people, of the people, and for the people, or are the Red Chinese running things here? I'm having a hard time telling the difference these days.

-- CAV

Crossposted to the Egosphere

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