Moving Toward Neo-Fascism

LEIGH STANDISH / Opinion / Hartford Courant 24jun2005

The Supreme Court's eminent domain decision against New London citizens is one more step toward neo-fascism. We see new forms of public-private hybrids nearly everywhere, with government increasingly employing its coercive prerogative to serve the interests of the powerful. Now it is deemed by this court as the law of the land. But does this court still serve our Constitution?

When our antecedents forced Jared Ingersoll, the king's Stamp Act collector, to resign his commission as such, the townspeople of Wethersfield surrounded him on the Commons with the cry: "Liberty and property!" We fought a revolution over the right to hold private property without continued dispensation from the monarch. Property rights are so intertwined with every form of liberty described in our founding documents that eminent domain should only be exercised for the exceptional need rather than the convenient option.

When commoners, the little people, no longer have a stake in the protections afforded by the state, they no longer have a stake in the state itself. Now that property rights accrue only to the more successful, or to those who can produce more tax revenue, such will likely follow. History may repeat itself through this abuse of power. We chose to form a more perfect union. If the courts and government continue with this pattern, we may have to choose again.

Leigh Standish
Wethersfield

source: http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/letters/hc-lets0624.artjun24,0,5404165.story 25jun205