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Friday, June 24, 2005
Kelo v. New London: A Curmudgeon’s Response.
When the above decision was reported yesterday, your Curmudgeon was so furious he could barely breathe. He's spent most of the time since then contemplating possible correctives. Few are attractive.
The State does hold the preponderance of instruments of coercion. Even our heavily armed citizenry can't quite match its armored divisions, much less its nuclear arsenal. So one might easily conclude that armed opposition to this suspension of the Constitution is out of the question.
Not so.
The State's agents are distributed, as we all are, all along the emotional and political spectra. Many would not be willing to "go to the wall" to enforce a condemnation decree upon a private citizen resolved to resist it even at the price of his life. Many more would feel the same if the price might include their lives as well.
Armed revolt might be infeasible, but armed resistance is not. Therefore, your Curmudgeon has decided to announce his intentions:
- He will resist with force any attempt to expropriate him, up to and including the cost of his own life.
- He will regard the lives of all persons complicit in an attempt to expropriate him as forfeit, and will take them without consideration or restraint.
- He will assist any neighbor in similar resistance, without regard for the consequences.
- He will use his personal resources to accumulate similar pledges, properly formed and geographically circumscribed, from like-minded persons, and will propagate them constructively, to the best of his ability.
It's "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" time, friends.
Come and take it, statist bastards. Just try.
Comments
I stand with you. This makes my blood boil. I am literally near tears, I can’t believe my country’s highest court just ruled such a thing.
Posted by Head on 06/24/2005 at 09:01 AMI stand as well. Sick. Enraged. Outraged.
Posted by on 06/24/2005 at 11:40 AMI stand with you. I wonder how long it will take the statist bastards here in Multnomah County to start up.
Posted by on 06/24/2005 at 12:15 PMI stand with you as well.
Posted by Guy S on 06/24/2005 at 12:33 PMIt didn’t take long in my neck of the woods. The city of Freeport Texas has been involved in a scandalous eminent domain battle for a long time now. They have declared a man’s 50 year old seafood business on the waterfront to be more valuable as a private yacht club, developed by a private company, on money loaned by (you guessed it) the city.
Now, they appeal to this illegal SCOTUS ruling to complete their thuggery:
http://www.emdo.blogspot.com/#111961724168449124
Posted by Head on 06/24/2005 at 12:45 PMAre you ready to give up on the purely political? Any commission may surely be made to feel the heat locally no matter what the blackguards in Washington decide.
Curmudgeon: You, of all people, know how public perception is more than half the game.
That’s why money rules politics: to pay for delivery of that perception. It is how media became so powerful. Yet great inroads to their hegemony, at a pittance of the cost, have been forged right here a million times over.Here’s something I think you have been proven better suited to than that of today’s emission.
The Left loves to label conservatives as “fascist.” To those slanderers and their simple-minded parrots, fascism has long been just another epithet to hurl.Is this not the time to stand up and startle the fools with fascism’s true meaning?
Shouldn’t it be undeniably clear that it was five liberal justices who decided against individual private ownership of property in favor of moneyed interests (for real or even just imagined civic coffer gain)? Does not the Left still believe like Lenin that the capitalist will sell them the rope with which to hang them? Do not the moneyed interests believe that they can control any other interests with their control of the money supply?
We have spoken of Statism and Leftism. But I fear we have not compared and contrasted them sufficiently to make it clear how their shared vision has sloughed them into an alliance of mutual tolerance. I hear whispered how each thinks the other to be its useful idiot. The rest of us are mushrooms.
How many more and what litany of examples are needed to make it clear that it is the Left, knowingly or unknowingly allied with statists, which has embraced Fascism as their very own.
This ruling, coming on the heals of the Democrats tumbling into that death spiral you noted, is a gift! Remember the philibuster? Combine these bits and other bits with your great writing skills and all the rest you wrote today will become (pity the nihilists) less necessary.
Posted by Pascal on 06/24/2005 at 12:51 PMI stand with you.
I’m also going to email, write, and attempt to call my Governor, State and US Reps, and State and US Senators and request them to do their damnedest to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Posted by Dave on 06/24/2005 at 01:13 PMThe Nazis stole everything from my grandparents (home, business, bank accounts). My grandfather when he left Germany (Feb. 1939) took with him his Iron Cross First Class (2nd battle of the Somme 6 Jan 1916). Patriotism and love of country did him no good there. He loved America and I am glad he is not here to see this travesty.
The Communist stole everything from my father-in-laws family (home, business, bank accounts). He is 94 years old and I’m glad he does not read the newspapers any more.I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor to defend the property and liberty of myself and my neighbors.
I not only stand with you I pledge that this is the line that WILL NOT BE CROSSED.
There is now NOTHING that is “Illegal” for the state to do. We are now in the EUROSHIT where the state owns the people and may do with them as it pleases. Is it not now clear that civil society in the Burkean sense is dead. This will of course not effect the fat, powerful, and connected. The middle class (family income 30k-120k), the unpopular, the strange, minorites of all kinds, the politically incorrect, and people who just want to be left alone to live a good life in peace are all potential slaves of the state with no legal recourse what so ever.
Let me suggest 7.62 x 39 by the thousand.
I am of course not advocating violence but simply resistance.Posted by on 06/24/2005 at 01:44 PM7.62x39 by the thousand is $85 shipped. A good investment, good bang for the buck so to speak.
This is still making me quake. I am saddened to see how much apathy there is concerning this, people simply accept it. Our nation is doomed if the majority is so easily lulled to subject-status because they care more for what is on TV tonight than the liberty they wallow in at the expense of people more dilligent to take responsibility for our own security.
Someone, anyone, is there any encouragement in all this?
Posted by Head on 06/24/2005 at 04:30 PMMy boat now lies a fraction of an inch deeper in the water. Five hundred rounds of .45 added to the locker, joining untold hundreds more, in a goodly variety of chamberings.
I’ve no landed property as such, but I’ve neighbors who do, I live in a marina which the developers would love to seize, and I possess both the means and the will to resist.
No macho words here. We all know this is the line-in-the-sand. Each indvidual must determine the gradition of his own line.
But if we don’t stop it here, if we can’t turn it around now, I fear we never shall.
Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TXPosted by Jim on 06/24/2005 at 05:04 PMThis is indeed the line in the sand. But Pascal is also right. This decision is causing some serious splintering on the Left. A lot of people are waking up for the first time and seeing what statism leads to...as many did in Michigan after Poletown.
Kelo is certainly the worst legal defeat we’ve suffered in living memory. But to be frank it looks like it’s already turning itself into a PR victory.
I stand ready, as do the other commenters here, to defend my property and my neighbors’ property with all the force at my disposal. But while I am gravely disheartened, I am no longer truly pessimistic. In the end, this will work for us.
Posted by Matt on 06/24/2005 at 08:39 PMDisbelief. SCOTUS justices are older than me (and hence predate the debasement of American education) and are from privileged backgrounds so they got the best education available; they are liberally educated and must understand where this will lead. No one will be able to oversee what this unleashes in State and local governments. Here in New Jersey there is a lot of corruption. Now it will be not only how much tax money politicians can give to their friends and supporters, but the accumulated value of lifetimes will be taken and redistributed at the stroke of the pen. I cannot imagine what they want to see come out of this.
Posted by Doug_S on 06/24/2005 at 10:16 PMI’m not so sure that I’m ready to die in defense of inalienable natural rights that are unrecognizable to the highest court in the land, a court that was formed by the document it just sundered, and exists only at our leisure. It would be a paltry, worthless death, unappreciated and almost certainly not understandable to the majority of my countrymen. I defintely don’t think The Rejoicing Left will splinter in even the most minimal form.
Me, I’m looking for boltholes for me and mine. I don’t have a lot of hope that I’ll find one, either, but I must try. This egregious overreach has completely convinced me that the Declaration & Constitution is gone in America. Time to re-Declare, and re-Constitute, where ever it’s possible.
Posted by Scott Chaffin on 06/25/2005 at 12:44 AMThere’s an outside chance signing this petition will finally prod Congress to curb SCOTUS over Kelo v New London.
As one of my rare essays a few months ago pleaded, are you willing to Place Restraints On the Judiciary Already! or are you not? Or do you prefer armed resistance?
Pascal
Posted by Pascal on 06/25/2005 at 03:26 AMthe petition url is http://www.petitiononline.com/lp001/petition.html
I do not know why expression engine converted and then botched my a href= html command.
Fran: Please fix.
Posted by Pascal on 06/25/2005 at 04:19 AMI’m not going to talk about doing such things. For one thing, at present it is entirely hypothetical.
In the meantime, I plan to develop personal acquaintances with as many local elected officials as I can (like I did while living in Alaska, simply because it was virtually impossible not to). That way if the issue progresses beyond the hypothetical to the potential, I’ll already be more than just some faceless homeowner whose situation can be safely ignored in spite of his complaints.
What might happen beyond that point, I’ll consider if/when it happens. There is a bottom line, a point beyond which I will give no more ground.
But they say forewarned is forearmed, and why forearm the bad guys?
Posted by McGehee on 06/25/2005 at 08:51 AMSeems to me that by the time you’ve reached armed resistance, the battle is already lost.
Seems to me that we need well-trained snipers.
Posted by og on 06/25/2005 at 09:42 AMThis violent talk is folly.
Like many people, I think a critical line was crossed long ago with Roe versus Wade. The solution is not shootings or bombings or intimidation. The solution is to slug away legally and civilly for as many generations as it takes to end this abomination.
Now your line has been crossed, you have to face the same realities and adopt the same steady, inexorable attitude.
I think the real lesson to take home from this is that no amount of political hell is too much if it results in the elevation to the Supreme Court of a sound originalist judge like Justice Thomas.
Remember what a savage bear-pit Thomas’ nomination battle was? How could it be worth it so go there again? Surely it would be easier to pick a moderate? Those are natural thoughts, but dead wrong. The kind of judge that you will have to go through Hell to get confirmed is the one who will stand up for the right thing in a critical case. The others, the ones who are easy to confirm, are worthless.
If you had a court full of guys who think like Thomas, this would not have happened. If one day the court is full of guys who think like him - originalists - it will be undone. That, and not talk of guns, is the solution.
Posted by on 06/26/2005 at 11:40 PM
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