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June 23, 2005
Beyond imagination
A narrow majority of the court simply got the law wrong today and our Constitution and country will suffer as a result. These narrow majorities don't stop, either. Thanks to the Gang of Five who usurp by interpretation, local bureaucrats will be tearing down the nice little post World War I downtown area where I grew up -- to make it more like La Jolla or some upscale place. More tax revenue that way, they imagine. When governments enter the market, they just make things worse. And more corrupt. What could be more corrupt than taking people's homes and businesses and giving them to political favorites? The sheer arrogance of permitting the taking of private property for private use is astounding. When they wrote the takings clause, the founders never imagined that the government would seize property belonging to person A in order to give it to person B. They'd have correctly seen that as serfdom. But like a lot of things the founders never imagined, serfdom is now quite imaginable, while limitation on government has become unimaginable. MORE: In the good old days, politicians were known for abusing eminent domain to play political hardball. As the late William S. Burroughs said (mocking the mindset): he'd better play ball or I will route a sewer through his front yard...How passé. In the exciting new world of modern political hardball, why, you could just threaten to confiscate his house to give it to a political crony! Then, after only a head-nod to the concept of some "public benefit from increased taxes," you'd have enriched your crony and destroyed an enemy! A wide open world with a whole new playing field, I'd say. MORE MORE MORE! Since we're on the subject of the thinking the unthinkable and imagining the unimaginable, it just occurred to me that Kelo's clearcutting of property rights might provide a marvelous way for environmentalists to restore open space by condemnation of lands so condescendingly called "developed." In the past, open space planners had to content themselves with "reactive" measures like merely preventing development. Now, armed with Kelo, urban environmentalists can be retroactively-proactive, and bring to fruition dreams like this: "We have to have in place an imagination based on intimate knowledge and love of the places where we live, so that we can push programs forward rather than just react to environmental despoiling for the rest of our days. It can begin in small and symbolic ways, like the day-lighting of Strawberry Creek in Berkeley. To open up the fact that we live on a watershed, that where we live is really a drainage from the Contra Costa Hills into the Bay -- and that we've lost that connection -- can be solved with imagination. Imagine our streams flowing freely again, with the egrets and the herons working their way up the creeks through the city, fishing for minnows and sticklebacks. With this imagination we can restore the ecological cycles of this place, reminding us daily of the larger issues involved in preservation and restoration, the healing of the planet.As to those few antisocial misfits who don't think restoring open space is in the interest of the public good, why, there's plenty of Ritalin to make sure their kids don't grow up to be like them! MORE: Eminent domain authority is already being used to block development. (Preventing growth is of course the "public purpose," but you already knew.) posted by Eric on 06.23.05 at 10:11 PM
Comments
And, yes, it's totally corrupt. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 24, 2005 12:44 AM Notice how some prominent leftist blogs (kos, marshall, astrios) have nothing on the SCOTUS ruling. They'll suspend their anti-business rantings on this one (at least for now when no one has really noticed their silence) because it increases the power of government to suppress the individual in favor of a "collective" good. And the Left is about nothing if it's not about Knowing What is Best for Everyone(tm). Darleen · June 24, 2005 01:04 AM Darleen: Quite true. This is yet another conflict of the individual against the collective. This whole case once again creates a 4-quadrant spectrum: 1) those on the Left who hate business more than they love government, 2) those on the Left who love government more than they hate business, 3) those on the Right who love business more than they hate government, 4) those on the Right who hate government more than they love business. In this case, hate is better than love. Those of us in 4 might be able to make an alliance with those in 1, while those in 2 are clearly in alliance with those in 3. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 24, 2005 02:15 AM I looked and saw that the 5 Justices (Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer) who had defended your right to privacy in your home in 2003 now, 2 years later, negate your right to have a home. I can't even find the words to describe such a grotesque contradiction. I'm glad that at least Justices O'Connor, Thomas, Rehnquist, and Scalia were on the right side this time. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 24, 2005 03:14 AM Steven, I love your spectrumological analysis of this case. Darleen, I think that had Rehnquist written the majority opinion (allowing the condemnations), there'd have been far more leftist criticism of it. (Along the lines of "taking homes away from the working poor" or something.) Anyway, since it's open season for takings, I can't wait to see people running for office on a platform of "IF ELECTED, I PROMISE TO DEMOLISH THE HOMES OF THE RICH, TO PROVIDE HOUSING FOR THE POOR!" (Opponents could oblige by promising the inverse.) Eric Scheie · June 24, 2005 07:29 AM Dear Eric: Thank you! Some more thoughts on this: I would say that this actually is classic fascism except that that word has been drained of all meaning by now. I will instead say that it is Prussianism (the alliance of Kaiser with Krupp). It is, as you said, The Road to Serfdom, the road to, as G. K. Chesterton's friend Hilaire Belloc put it, The Servile State. Or, perhaps the Enclosure movement in 16th-17th century England, when the peasants were driven off their land (shortly after the looting of the monasteries by Henry VIII). Legalized looting. Or, to put it more succinctly and bluntly, as a conservative friend of mine once defined socialism: government theft. I have to say that I'm extremely disappointed in Justice Kennedy. After Lawrence & Garner I had thought we had, for the first time since the New Deal era, a consistent individualist conservative or libertarian on the Supreme Court. He was appointed by President Reagan (right after the defeat of Bork, who was his diametrical opposite) and, while he upheld the "right" to abortion, he had also upheld the right to free speech for those protesting abortion. And then, in the most eloquent words, he upheld the right of homosexuals, and of heterosexuals, of androsexuals and of gynosexuals, of every individual man or woman, to privacy, to "liberty both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions", in our own homes. "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." But then -- to use a baseball analogy, he comes up to bat again. And then mighty Casey struck out and there was no joy in Mudville. Three strikes and you're out. Three lousy decisions in a row. First, Incumbent Protection Act vs. First Amendment, then Federal War on Medical Marijuana vs. Tenth Amendment, and now Socialism for the Rich vs. Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. He has fallen from a consistent Reagan individualist conservative to a mere New Deal-style "liberal", for the liberty of the individual when it comes to homosexuality or abortion, for the tyranny of the state when it comes to anything else. Tragic. Ever since Lawrence & Garner, I had long dreamed of Justice Kennedy as Chief Justice after Rehnquist. Now, no way, no more. Now, I say: Justice Thomas for Chief Justice. He, at least, has stood consistently for states' rights, for property rights, and for free speech. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 24, 2005 10:26 AM I wrote: Back in the late 1960s, policemen who were members of the John Birch Society* paid the bails of members of the Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.) who had been arrested while protesting against "urban renewal". (*"Support your local police -- and keep them independent!) Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 25, 2005 11:45 AM |
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I'm just too pissed as Hell to say anything about this. Welcome to Socialist America. Your property belongs to the state. Shit.