A Call of Warning to the Mothers and Fathers of our nation….
The Supreme Court yesterday said cities can seize people's homes or businesses to make way for private commercial development such as shopping malls, a far-reaching ruling decried by property rights advocates. By a 5-4 vote, the justices for the first time said governments can take private property and give it to developers citing eminent domain, a practice historically used for public highway projects. This means that any government enity that wants to build a shopping mall can take your land/home away from you whether you want them to or not. You not longer have the right to say, “Not for Sale”. They can throw you out on your duff and send you packing. What’s happening to our country? Can Supreme court judges just negate the fifth amendment? You say no, well look again, yes they just did. How is it that our checks and balances in government have made it this far out of whack? Do we want to be slaves in our own country? If we allow the government to gain complete control, we will be. Please read this webpage for complete details of the decision: http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050624-120942-4179r.htm
Do you know someone who has a family farm? How about someone who owns prime lake front land? What about your own neighborhood? What if Wal-Mart came in and wanted your land of one of their stores. You wouldn’t even have the right to say, No Thanks! Your land would be confiscated so fast it would make your head swim. To me this is the last straw. It is a very dangerous precedent.
We need to fight for judges who will protect the rights of the Constitution, those that believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life…. Basic to our understanding of the Constitution is that governments should have only limited powers. It seems to me that they are taking more power away from the citizens of this country. Back in the early years of our country our pioneers were busy defending themselves, their property, and their liberty from the “lawless West”. In order for people to prosper, they cannot afford to spend their time constantly guarding family, fields, and property against attack and theft, so they join together with their neighbors and hire a sheriff. At this precise moment, government is born. The individual citizens delegate to the sheriff their unquestionable right to protect themselves. The sheriff now does for them only what they had a right to do for themselves – nothing more. Quoting from Bastiat: “If every person has the right to defend – even by force- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these right- its reason for existing, its lawfulness – is based on individual rights.”
As a parent I want my children to enjoy the fruits of the Constitution. I don’t want to see my children owned by the government. We have rights and we need to defend them. Why are we allowing the Supreme court to change the Constitution? They don’t have that right. The time has come to defend this precious document. Write to the President and tell him what you expect of him. Write/fax/email, your Senators and legislators and tell them also. Stand up and take a stand. If we don’t, then the Constitution as we know it, will no longer look the same or mean the same. It may be to late then to make a difference. Make your voice be heard.
A personal letter to the President/ Senators/legislators means the same as 200 emails or faxes. If you can write it by hand it means even more. ( I read this on a website) It may take a little time but it will be worth it. Thanks for lending me your ear.
President George W. Bush
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC. 20500
Here is the web page for the complete list of Senators and their addresses:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
For your state legislator: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
posted by Lucy Stern @ 2:47 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Amen to that, Lucy!
Very well said. I think along with buying a book for a good cause this weekend I will be writing some letters to some people who have lost any and all common sense. Thanks fro visiting my site.
Write what is in your heart, those are the best letters anyway. Don't worry about your language, it doesn't matter. What counts is that you wrote a letter. I hope your family farm stays in your family for many generations to come.
Lucy, Thank you for visiting my blog, I will write a letter and I will have a talk with my parents, They have been pen pals with the President from the begining. Hope all is well. Thank you for leaving a comment on my blog.
This has already happened years ago in my community. One of the biggest farm had more than half of its property and road access taken away because the government needed it for a new highway. There was no choice in the matter so this is nothing new. My father-in-law and a large group picketed, called, you name it, but nothing good came of it.
It's a shame!
The Gardening knitter, Eminent Domain for highways and roads has been around for a long time, what has happened now is that they can take your property and give it to someone who will use it to generate more taxes for the city/state. We have lost more of our individual rights and that is not what the Constitution was meant to be.
I agree 100% with you.
Hey Lucy, I just went to a few of my family members blogs and I had to chuckle when I saw that there was a comment from you....G-wiz you get around... Take care.
i'm in ontario, canada and they can do this type of thing here as well.
(aka janie q)
This happened to my parents TWICE within two years. The first was on their home they'd just built and nearly had paid for. In Spring, where the toll road makes the bid left curve going out to The Woodlands, that's where their house sat, right in the middle of that curve. They had 4 acres and it was completely wooded and had part of it's property line on Spring Creek. It nearly broke my father's heart, not to mention his spirit. After many weeks of keeping him from harming any of the workers that were out their surveying, I talked long and hard with him. He was actually very lucky in the situation. I reminded him he could be sitting RIGHT on the edge of this massive tollway with his house in tact. How horrible would that be? We still have family out there that are in that situation. There are no exits or anything like that, to thing maybe in the future there'd be commercialization out there. This helped the blow. And that they did make some pretty good money on it, altho that really didn't matter to Daddy.
One year almost to the day after they sold to the state, one of their rental units in Houston was 'bought' from them to make a new school.
Thanks for the addy Lucy, I will write too, it's hard to watch the life's work of someone be torn down for pavement.
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