No Longer the King of His Castle

Thinking about my last posting on the erosion of liberties in our country, one of the more recent subtractions from our previous list of rights grinds on me. It is the broadening of the eminent domain issue to include the allowance of property seizure simply for economic necessity, i.e., if a developer proposes a more profitable use for your land, you may be up the proverbial creek.

I have an image of everyman Ralph Kramden, Jackie Gleason's wonderful bus driver construction from The Honeymooners. At the end of a hard day of being knocked about by the System, Ralph could come home and say with confidence, "A man's home is his castle" as he surveyed his humble domain, and we smiled knowing wife Alice would be his only, albeit formidable, challenge.

However, a recent Supreme Court decision has voided even this most basic concept of proprietary rights. Developers now have more rights to your homestead than you do, if you should be unlucky enough to have local commissioners who covet your home for its economic development potential. And if necessary, every local, state and federal law enforcement agency has the ability to demolish your homestead, as the David Koresh fiasco in Waco illustrated.

Thinking of Ralph's fanciful banishing of Alice to the moon puts me in a planetary mindset. I am wondering: to where do we repatriate all of these dispossessed citizens?