Eminent Domain or State Theft?

In the matter of “Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108” the United States Supreme Court has effectively reduced the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution a wordy but meaningless sentence. The Supreme Court has ruled that private business is now in the public interest, and that individual cities may decide which people will be uprooted and robbed for the enrichment of both the city coffers and the corporate bank accounts.

By deciding that a city may, without any guidelines, decide that a “project” will be a benefit to the community, even though it is a private venture that will benefit a private business (usually given a tax abatement as well), the court has opened the door to the deprivation of a citizen’s private property without just compensation. Just compensation does not mean strictly a monetary or economic figure that is arrived at by means of what a neighbor is willing to settle for. Just compensation, as cities define the term, does not consider the desires of or the undue hardship placed upon an individual American citizen. Just compensation, it seems, means only that the city is willing to “give” an amount for a property, regardless of the investment by the homeowner of time, money, sweat and dreams, and then turn it over to another private entity for use in a venture designed to make money for that entity.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor dissented with the comment: “Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power.” She continued, "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. . . . The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms." More and more often we are faced with the ever increasing usurpation of the individual citizen’s rights to own property.

Terms such as “eminent domain” and “environmental concerns” prevent the individual from owning and utilizing his property in a manner which is consistent with legal, moral and historical use. The Fifth Amendment is the same which guarantees that no individual may “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” as well as the private property portion. Most disconcerting is the thought that by interpreting an entirely new definition to this part of the amendment, the way has been cleared to redefine the entire amendment. It is an insult to any American who believes that this nation is a special place, with special meaning, to say that the very documents that forged our tremendous heritage are nothing but pieces of paper with arbitrary sets of guidelines set upon them. The Constitution is systematically being rewritten to mean anything but what the framers intended. From God to property to individual thought, the constitutional protections that so many have fought for and died to defend are eroding into an indiscernible mix of anything but the original intent. The document is firm and without fluidity. It is alive because of the thoughts within it, not because it is easily changed and interpreted to mean new things. The continued assault on the original brilliance of the men who created this great nation and set forth a document by which we would continue to survive as a nation can only result in the ultimate downfall and destruction of everything that they risked all to create.

June 23, 2005
© 2005 Michael A. Porter, Sr.