Kelo: The Growing Specter of Government “Rights”

by Christopher Adamo

Most profound among the many failures of the American “educational” system has been its abominable distortion of this nation’s history. In particular, the principles of constitutional law, once widely understood by the citizenry, are now treated as hazy and erudite philosophies, only fit for debate within intellectual circles.

All too often, any agreeable sounding platitude serves as a worthy substitute. Thus Americans wander through life believing in “constitutional rights” to employment, housing, recreation, or any other amenity they crave. In this parallel universe, “rights” exist not as inherent components of the human condition, but as gifts handed down from a benevolent government.
 

But, perhaps too late, people may finally be realizing that whatever the three-headed hydra of government once arrogantly presumed to “give,” it now seeks, on an ever-expanding basis, to take away.

Consider the original nature of the Bill of Rights in contrast to the misconceptions of it now held by a dangerously large number of Americans. Even a cursory reading of the document quickly reveals that it does not enable the people but instead uncategorically prohibits actions by the government, and more specifically the Congress (the founders presumed laws could only originate there), that might infringe on universally understood rights of the people.

Thus, despite the seemingly misleading nature of its title, the document was never intended as a litany of “rights,” granted by the nation’s beneficent leaders in Washington. Rather, it established ironclad limits on the ability of government to encroach on those inalienable rights of the citizenry.

The founders well understood the dark and universal tendency of those holding power to seek to expand it, and thus placed unassailable roadblocks in their path. For well over a century, this firewall worked. But eventually the power mongers became sufficiently creative to fabricate a loophole. And widespread public ignorance of the ensuing threat has allowed it to metastasize ever since.

Only now, as the scope of last summer’s “Kelo” decision becomes apparent, are people recognizing their own peril in the face of a government whose reigns have been thus removed.

The blueprint for this ruse was simple, and had the citizenry been less self-absorbed and more devoted to principle, the inevitable disaster could have been thwarted long ago. Now an epic battle for the future of the American experiment looms. Its outcome is not at all certain.
 

In the 1947 “Emerson v. Board of Education” decision, the Supreme Court executed an amazing U-turn on the supposed meaning of the Bill of Rights. In order to circumvent the First Amendment protection of religious expression, the Court substituted “separation of Church and State” for the original text. By so doing, the Court transposed a time-honored restriction on the government, thereafter invoking it as a restriction on the people.

What had formerly been a “right” suddenly became a prohibition. Tragically, this blatant corruption of the Bill of Rights was subsequently imposed, ostensibly as the surest means of upholding the original right.

Having proven so successful, this judicial “sleight of hand” has been applied on an ever-expanding basis. The Second Amendment, again a restriction on the ability of government to disarm the citizens, has likewise been recast as a protection of the government’s ability to establish a militia. Advocates of gun ownership are increasingly compelled to clarify the Second Amendment as belonging to the people and not the state.

Now, with “Kelo,” the crucial right of the people to own property has metamorphosed into a “right” of the state to decisively arbitrate the ownership of all property in its own best interests. By transferring this “right” to the state, it has been stolen from the people, under the auspices of “constitutional law” of course.

Interestingly, a consistent pattern exists among the regions in which private property is thus being systematically seized from common citizens. From New London Connecticut (sight of the original Kelo decision) to New Jersey, Oakland California, and now, West Palm Beach Florida, governing philosophies represent the bluest of America’s (liberal) “blue” zones. Local demographics indisputably prove the controversy to be a statement on the moral and spiritual bankruptcy that defines the American left.

Finally, the liberal facade of supporting “the little guy” can be seen in its ugly reality. Liberalism seeks to maintain “the little guy” in his lowly place in perpetuity, for he is most useful to it in that condition. And if it eventually benefits the state to trample him underfoot, his fate is sealed.