By Bob Barr
Home ownership is an important component of the American Dream. A home is a sanctuary in which people can raise a family and maintain at least some semblance of a private life. As John Adams once said, private property rights are “as sacred as the laws of God.” Our country’s second president was echoing what had come to be understood long before he and other freedom-loving colonialists won their independence from Great Britain — the principle that “a man’s home is his castle.”
Unfortunately, private property rights — and the Constitution itself — were dealt a severe blow by the Supreme Court in 2005, when a majority of the nation’s top jurists granted government the power to take a person’s home for virtually whatever reason it wished. This was the infamous decision Kelo v. City of New London.
Before 2005, Susette Kelo personified the American Dream. She and her husband were living happily in a nice, riverfront home in New London, Connecticut. Kelo’s comfortable life came to an abrupt end when the city decided it could make better use of her property by turning it over to Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company. Pfizer promised a massive development of the area, and the cash-strapped city was blinded by the lure of the tax revenues that would be generated by the promised development.
Home ownership is an important component of the American Dream. A home is a sanctuary in which people can raise a family and maintain at least some semblance of a private life. As John Adams once said, private property rights are “as sacred as the laws of God.” Our country’s second president was echoing what had come to be understood long before he and other freedom-loving colonialists won their independence from Great Britain — the principle that “a man’s home is his castle.”
Unfortunately, private property rights — and the Constitution itself — were dealt a severe blow by the Supreme Court in 2005, when a majority of the nation’s top jurists granted government the power to take a person’s home for virtually whatever reason it wished. This was the infamous decision Kelo v. City of New London.
Before 2005, Susette Kelo personified the American Dream. She and her husband were living happily in a nice, riverfront home in New London, Connecticut. Kelo’s comfortable life came to an abrupt end when the city decided it could make better use of her property by turning it over to Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company. Pfizer promised a massive development of the area, and the cash-strapped city was blinded by the lure of the tax revenues that would be generated by the promised development.
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