Opaque Lucidity

Where I Stop And You Start

My brother Jerry sends this Fox News story concerning the Supreme Court's expansion of eminent domain laws. In short, the city or town or county in which you live can seize your house (after paying you for it, of course) for use by a private company if that company is contributing taxes and economic growth to the community. Ironically, it was the court's liberal wing that held the majority in the 5-4 decision. What about all those attacks on big business, ladies and gents?

Many states (Kentucky is one of them) only allow eminent domain laws to be applied if the area in question can be considered a "blight"---that is, taking away from the value of surrounding areas because of decaying structures, crime, etc. In writing the majority decision, Justice Stevens did say that states could create protections against the abuse of the law. One would certainly hope so, although, presumably, any of those laws could then be turned over by the Supreme Court.

Our Founding Fathers thought property ownership was so important that, for many years, it was a prerequisite for voting. If you owned property, you had a physical stake in your town and you would, or so it was hoped, take more than a passing interest in the issues of the day. That is no less true today than it was in the 18th century.

Our state governments put taxes on our property to pay for schools and other programs necessary for the common good. But if government is allowed to seize that property in order to sell it to a private firm, then aren't we looking at a form of wealth redistribution? Wasn't the collectivization of farmland the first move of the Bolsheviks in Russia?

My friend Kevin posted on his blog some time ago that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that could've happened to the United States. His reasoning was that we knew of the injustices regularly endured by Soviet citizens and it reminded us to protect our nation from the overreach of our own government.

Have we forgotten that lesson so soon?