FreedomWorks

From the courts to Congress, American property rights are under siege from the socialists and the social engineers. In a decision better suited to Red China than the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that local governments can seize your private property and give it to other private owners, so long as the new owners offer a plan to generate more tax revenue, jobs, or even to just make the property look better. This outrageous decision, called Kelo v. New London, is sadly not out of the ordinary. Rather, this Supreme Court ruling is one event in a long and disturbing chain of policies that undermine property rights and the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.

There’s no doubt that the Kelo decision is catastrophic: the Supreme Court essentially nullified the “public use” restriction in the Fifth Amendment on government confiscation of property through eminent domain. Now, a simple majority of a legislature is all that is required to take your home in order to further the ‘public interest’. This misguided ruling opens the door to a host of abusive government policies.

Unfortunately, the government was able to disrespect property rights within the pre-Kelo boundaries of “public use.” For example, Congress took 32,000 acres of land from family farmers in North Carolina in order to build an outlying landing field for the navy. Many citizens—the majority of whom are seniors—will lose their generational homes as a result of this gross neglect of property rights.

One of the biggest ways Washington violates property rights is through the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The ESA penalizes landowners that harbor endangered species on their property by subjecting them to severe land-use restrictions that often ruin them financially. More importantly, many owners are never compensated for these restrictions even though the government has taken control of part or all of their property.

The truth is that this fight has to take place in all three branches of our government. FreedomWorks is one organization that is fighting to restore property rights and to educate the public about this critical issue. It is up to ordinary citizen activists to defend our property rights and other freedoms that anchor our way of life.