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Saturday, June 25, 2005
Kelo and the Death of a Country
I'm not even gonna bother linking to anything. The 5 people who actually visit will all know what I'm talking about. Anyone who cares about this country will know what I'm talking about. I'm pretty impassioned about American politics. I scream at the TV and at my monitor. I 'passionately debate' (read: scream as spittle flies from my mouth) anything from abortion to gun rights to conservation as often as I have opportunity. I've been angry, I've been happy, I've been annoyed. Today, I was depressed. For the first time in my life, politics actually made me depressed.
You see, living in England for the past 8 months, I realized that the difference between Europeans and Americans is that while we are citizens, they have never thrown off the ideological yoke of being subjects. In England, that's a literal truth; even their passports read "Subject of the Queen of England." As much as they claim to be free-thinking individuals what all Europeans really want is to be coddled and controlled by an overarching government. Subjects, not constituents.
Today, I actually contemplated whether America really was better than Europe or not, for the first time in my life. Today, we became subjects. The court (the liberal justices anyway) ruled that 'Government Knows Best.' The essence of their position is that city officials know more than their constituents about 'what's best for the city'. Might as well just call it the Divine Right of Kinghood. In their scathing dissent, Supreme Court Justices (to paraphrase Clarence Thomas) succintly said that if A can potentially pay more taxes than the current occupant B, the govt is justified and siezing B's property to give to A. The government just became an evil corporation, concerned with only the bottom line. At the hands of liberal justices, i'm at pains to remind you.
Every American's personal autonomy has just been destroyed. We have become serfs on the feudal lord's estate. He has allowed us to work it, to live on it, even to call it our own, just as Serfs did in the Middle Ages. And just like those peasants, we are subjects. Subject to the whim of a government who can evict us on the premise that our houses and our small businesses don't give it enough money. The guys in New London must feel a lot like Jonas the peasant farmer way back in 1382...
Jonas worked, and he worked hard, but one day into the Lord's keep waltzed Bailey, the ambitious barrel-maker, "Sir Stealsalot, Jonas made you merely 50 florins with his flax and wheat crop. If you give me his land, I can make you 100 doubloons." "Jonas. Pack up your 8 kids and get the hell out of here. You are of no more use to me!" shouted Sir Stealsalot.
The guys who settled out West went there for one reason and one reason only; the prospect of owning their own land. A place to call their own. They rode the Oregon Trail, they turned the barren soil of the Dust Bowl into something of a breadbasket. They lived, they sacrificed, they died to call a place their very own. All that work was shat on today by the Supreme Court, who today told us that our land and our property is only ours as long as the government decides not to snatch it from us. This isn't all that different from England, where Queen Elizabeth II allows her subjects to engage in a parliamentary government...at least until she gets bored of it and decides to assert her sovereignty.
Today I am no longer an American citizen...Today I became a subject. For me, at least, there's hope. As the son of two native-born Indians, I'm eligible for citizenship in a country where the word may still mean something.
You see, living in England for the past 8 months, I realized that the difference between Europeans and Americans is that while we are citizens, they have never thrown off the ideological yoke of being subjects. In England, that's a literal truth; even their passports read "Subject of the Queen of England." As much as they claim to be free-thinking individuals what all Europeans really want is to be coddled and controlled by an overarching government. Subjects, not constituents.
Today, I actually contemplated whether America really was better than Europe or not, for the first time in my life. Today, we became subjects. The court (the liberal justices anyway) ruled that 'Government Knows Best.' The essence of their position is that city officials know more than their constituents about 'what's best for the city'. Might as well just call it the Divine Right of Kinghood. In their scathing dissent, Supreme Court Justices (to paraphrase Clarence Thomas) succintly said that if A can potentially pay more taxes than the current occupant B, the govt is justified and siezing B's property to give to A. The government just became an evil corporation, concerned with only the bottom line. At the hands of liberal justices, i'm at pains to remind you.
Every American's personal autonomy has just been destroyed. We have become serfs on the feudal lord's estate. He has allowed us to work it, to live on it, even to call it our own, just as Serfs did in the Middle Ages. And just like those peasants, we are subjects. Subject to the whim of a government who can evict us on the premise that our houses and our small businesses don't give it enough money. The guys in New London must feel a lot like Jonas the peasant farmer way back in 1382...
Jonas worked, and he worked hard, but one day into the Lord's keep waltzed Bailey, the ambitious barrel-maker, "Sir Stealsalot, Jonas made you merely 50 florins with his flax and wheat crop. If you give me his land, I can make you 100 doubloons." "Jonas. Pack up your 8 kids and get the hell out of here. You are of no more use to me!" shouted Sir Stealsalot.
The guys who settled out West went there for one reason and one reason only; the prospect of owning their own land. A place to call their own. They rode the Oregon Trail, they turned the barren soil of the Dust Bowl into something of a breadbasket. They lived, they sacrificed, they died to call a place their very own. All that work was shat on today by the Supreme Court, who today told us that our land and our property is only ours as long as the government decides not to snatch it from us. This isn't all that different from England, where Queen Elizabeth II allows her subjects to engage in a parliamentary government...at least until she gets bored of it and decides to assert her sovereignty.
Today I am no longer an American citizen...Today I became a subject. For me, at least, there's hope. As the son of two native-born Indians, I'm eligible for citizenship in a country where the word may still mean something.
