> Sure, go ahead and take another losing stand on a hot
> button issue.
>
> Eminent domain is indefensible. The state should not
> have this kind of power over people's lives and space.
> I don't give a damn about the American fetish for
> private property rights, but everybody feels threatened
> when some government thinks that it has a right to do
> what it wants with a person's home.
>
> Progressives need to take a stand against any form of
> eminent domain.
What nonsense. I'm tempted to cite the old adage that "property is theft," but you're congenitally incapable of grasping irony, so it would hold no amusement value for me. What is property, though, but the state recognition of someone's exclusive right to make use of something -- in this case, land? Property rights are themselves enforced by the state, so setting property rights against "the government" is a false dichotomy that only right-wing libertarians believe. (Since you're a right-wing libertarian at heart, though, I can see why this appeals to you.)
You can oppose state action to drive people from their homes to make way for a Wal-Mart without opposing the *principle* of eminent domain. First off, people do not need to "own" their own homes per se to have what amounts to an ownership stake in them and a right to them (e.g., subsidized apartments in many countries). Second, eminent domain is a tool with a wide range of possible applications, and opposing eminent domain in toto is like opposing guns or icepicks.
During deindustrialization in Pittsburgh's Mon Valley, one of the leading resistance organizations -- the Tri-State Conference on Steel -- advocated the use of eminent domain to seize the plants from the companies and operate them as public assets in the interests of the community. There were lots of politically insurmountable difficulties in this, but had they been successful, I think that Duquesne or Braddock would have ended up in much better shape than they are now. There would have been nothing wrong in using eminent domain then.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories