Remember Kelo
Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on June 25th, 2005 by James Leroy Wilson
I confess that I am having trouble summoning the appropriate outrage at Kelo v. New London, the Supreme Court decision that permits states and local governments to use eminent domain powers to transfer land from one private owner to another.
This assault on the rights of poor and middle-class homeowners for the benefit of corporations and developers is indeed outrageous. We should all be angry. But the real villains are not senior citizens on a bench in Washington D.C, but the politicians, bureaucrats, and developers who conspire to steal land in our communities.
As most of us know, this case was not about the traditional concept of “public use,” the theory that government can appropriate people’s property for the purpose of building a public facility in its place. Whether it be for roads, schools, or military bases, private land has always been appropriated by the government. I’m not saying it’s right, but there is at least some logic in the claim. If the community really does require a defense installation, it’s got to be put somewhere. But taking from one private owner to give to another private owner is different in kind. The difference between kicking a person out of his home to make way for others, and forced ethnic resettlement, is one of degree, not principle.
This story was inspired by the comments of a World War II veteran. He came back from World War II to find his own government strangling the freedom for which he had been fighting. He found bureaucracy spreading like a fungus, controlling his fellow Americans with mind-numbing demands to conform to arbitrary regulations. With anguish and despair, and with the inevitable humor and clarity of one who has loved and lost much, he saw our future.
