Delftsman

Check your Arms and Ammo Supplies

Just the other day I was engaged in an IM disussion with one of my friends that was prompted by my post on why I hold the 2nd Amendment so dear, and my feelings that the time for a second American Revolution may just be closer than we would wish. My friend is of the staunch opinion that "working within the system" will forstall any such need for open rebellion; and he asked me a very cogent question: Just WHEN will we know that the time for taking up arms has come?; what will be the trigger to let us know that it is no longer possible to redress our complaints against government through the law, and go on to take up arms?

I told him that there probably wouldn't be just one major trigger, but a series of seemingly minor incursions on our individual liberties, to the point where it becomes obvious that our government no longer deserved to be in power; AND that the ballot box was no longer effective in effecting peaceful changes in the course of policies.

Our 2nd Amendment rights have been under fire for a great many years now, a battle that ebbs and flows, but one that has been leading ever closer to the loss of those rights.

The SCOTUS upholding the McCain-Feingold act has already curtailed our 1st Amendment rights of free political speech. The urging of the FCC to regulate the Blogosphere in regards to the M-F Act only furthur imperils that freedom of speech, although it's too early just yet to know to just what extent that curtailment shall be.

However, with the latest SCOTUS decision, I fear that a major trigger has been pulled, and the time has been drastically shortened to when an armed revolt just may need to occur. This decisions strikes deeply into our 5th Amendment rights

In case you don't realize the effect of that decision just yet; it is, simply put, that no longer are private property rights held to be inviolable.
Government at any level can now decide that YOUR property can be better utilyzed by another for the betterment of "the People" as a whole. Read that to mean that when government can get more money from someone else by transfering your property to them via "condemnation for public use," they are not completely free to do so.

Yes, there is the fiction of "just compensation" for the property involved. But think about it. If the developer in question would be willing to pay you fair market value for your property, there wouldn't be any need for the government to be involved at all, would there?

And regardless of price, If you don't wish to sell for any reason, WHY should the government have the power to force you off your land just because they can garner higher tax revenues from the petitioner for your property?

This isn't a minor little disagreement, this is the end of true private property rights for good and all, and the removal of one of the prime pillars of our liberty.

For all intents and purposes, the concept of private property ownership ended when government started assessing property taxes, but at least we could maintain the fiction that we still were the lords of our manors. The taxes weren't unduly burdonsome in the majority of cases, and after all, that money went toward the needed infrastructures to make our property more valuable, so there was some equity in the exchange. This decision will strip the wool from the eyes of many people that heretofor were content in the delusion that they were more than mere lessors of their property, and will lead to an ever growing awareness that there is a monster on the loose, and that monster is our own government.

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."
~John Adams~

Lay in your supplies, weapons, and ammunition NOW.

Posted by Delftsman3 at June 24, 2005 08:51 AM