When Property Rights Advocates, Aren't

Austin-American Statesman: Eminent domain bill headed to Perry

A high-profile measure designed to prohibit governments from seizing private property for commercial development is on its way to Gov. Rick Perry, who will probably sign it.

[...]

The eminent domain measure, by Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston, was triggered by a June ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed city officials in New London, Conn., to condemn and take a widow's home for a commercial development.

The case quickly became a hot-button issue across the country for property rights advocates, who insisted that eminent domain lawsuits should not be used for private development.

I hate stories like this. They help to screw up perceptions of what would normally be a good concept like "property rights advocate." An honest and consistent advocate of private property rights would indeed press for a ban on the coercion of land out of the owner's hand and into another private person's. That advocate would also not stop there.

Under the bill, governmental entities would be prohibited from condemning private property for economic development projects. Exceptions were carefully written in for public-use projects such as roads, parks, libraries, auditoriums, ports and utility work.

Also exempt would be the construction of a new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington and an urban renewal project involving an empty downtown Dallas high-rise.

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A property rights advocate with integrity (quite rare these days) would look at all this with just as much disgust as giving land to a Wal-Mart to expand the local tax base. It does not matter to whom the property goes. If a property owner is threatened with fines, arrest, and jail if he does not "consent" to the state paying him what it thinks is a fair value, it ain't a fair trade. No one sane would think it would be fine if I held a gun to a store clerk's head and demanded the diesel I just pumped be sold a few cents cheaper a gallon rather than the price posted on the sign outside.

Yet this is fundamentally no different from what happens when a government "condemns" your land for some purpose. It simply does not matter if that purpose is for a government library, highway, sports stadiums, or high-rise apartment buildings. The act remains thoroughly illegitimate, wrong, and harmful. To endorse "public" uses over "private" uses is to actually take a step in a worse direction: it entrenches the common perception of the Collective as being more important than the Individual. Looking at history and the present day will reveal just how greatly our freedom has been violated by that premise.

Janek himself stated:

Sen. Janek's proposal would allow a unit of government to use eminent domain to take land for public use, but public use would not include economic development.

"I'm proud to stand with Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor Scalia and Thomas in support of private property rights and against those who would take homesteads and family businesses under the guise of economic development," Janek said.

What about those who would take homesteads and family businesses under the guise of the Common Good? The Greater Good? The Benefit of the Community? Or, more accurately, since these jokers are supposed to "represent us": whatever those in government want and can get away with?

Posted by Drizzten at August 17, 2005 09:17 AM