SteveMc reports some quotes in Lewandowky email exchanges released through FOI. Discussing the time-wasting imposed on others by Lewandowsky’s ridiculous refusal to provide a list of bloggers who he contacted, someone wrote this to Lewandowsky:
Note – all but Podblack have been reported to say they never received an email. On that note, I did smile at your coy “check your inbox (and outbox) advice. Now you’ll have deniers all over the world poring over 2 year old emails! ïŠ
At a different point in the conversation, Lewandowsky wrote
I hope they spend hours looking 🙂
Interesting. But if someone had suggested that Lewandowsky’s intention was to require us to waste or time looking for information, that would be evidence of “conspiracy ideation”, right? 🙂
Happy hour? Yeah we all need a drink after the Lew paper event.
All that time spent at the behest of this conspiracy theorist is a part of our lives we’ll never get back.
Counting Lew and Gleick (well, and Jim Prall and John Mashey), the bozos driving that bus did more to discredit the movement than and 10 skeptics you could name.
History will not be kind.
“Academics Behaving Badly”
thomasfller2,
“History will not be kind.”
A perfect epitaph for most of ‘climate science’. Morally corrupt, factually wrong, and on average, destructive of human interests. I do sometimes wonder how the younger climate crazies will think of themselves in 30+ years time. ‘Shame’ seems an appropriate adjective, but I would suggest ‘evil’ may be more accurate.
Lucia, though I am sorry that it cost you and others time, Lew and SkS have provided me with so many laughs I hope you, Steve, and Anthony appreciate all the goodness you gave us by pursuing this and posting some of the truly bizarre and stupid stuff they have managed to do to themselves.
I kinda of miss them now that their 15 seconds of fame is disappearing. And I hope you don’t mind that I am here wishing that they start something else, because I can sure use the laughs.
SteveF,
It would certainly be interesting to see whether shame and embarrassment were expressed by former (assuming they gave it up) eugenicists after the little guy with the moustache gave the whole thing a bad name. What about the folks who thought we were on the verge of another ice age in the seventies?
What about the Ehrlichs?
Or the people who did lobotomies? Not that some recent manias haven’t made me wonder whether they are still at work.
Or the perpetrators of our recent unsound-mortgage based security bubble?
I don’t think shame is a human attribute, do you?
Oops. Damn you, rhetorical questions. Sorry, once again.
John Ferguson,
I believe that some are well intended but honestly mistaken, and may ultimately recognize that their errors were harmful, whether or not they say so. Those who are politically motivated, and I believe that is a large majority, would like to see big increases in public control over private activities, which are ‘demanded/required’ by the projections of future doom, independent of the true extent of future warming. Those folks will never regret any harm done; climate science is for them nothing more than a means to reach a desired political end: lower and more uniformly distributed global wealth, combined with greatly increased public control over most private actions, and intenational control over most national laws. Those on the left value their desired political outcomes over all else, and nothing changes that POV.
SteveF,
What I think you are suggesting is that the cAGW movement is an implement or tool (weapon?) of a larger movement. Given that, the collapse of the cAGW belief would not in itself invalidate in the minds of the faithful their larger assumptions and so there would be no sense of shame, more “This idea didn’t fly, let’s try something else”.
I guess we should hope that they never come up with anything that does work.
While not technically a conspiracy theory, I can see how this statement might be confused with one.
This, on the other hand, is a rather nice example with hints of the NWO along with a touch of Agenda 21.
Boris,
Ya, you’re right, I always worry about conspiracies 24/7. And, there is not even a hint of left/green politics in climate science, not a bit. Michael Tobis says so.
I don’t think you get to “public control over most private actions” without a great deal of conspiratorial extrapolation.
I’m sure there’s a fair amount of left/green politics in climate science. But then what you describe is not what the greens are about, let alone “the left.”
Boris,
“But then what you describe is not what the greens are about, let alone “the left.—
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Maybe not the green/left you imagine, but it seems to me a pretty accurate description of the real green/left. What I describe is most certainly not a conspiracy, it is a commonly held political POV, and one that motivates those who share that POV to constantly push for “progress” over all else, with “progress” always tied to greater public control over private actions. I have observed a great deal of this “progress” over my lifetime. It has become much worse in Europe, of course, but the trend in the States is clear. I suspect you think this is a good thing. I don’t.
Off Topic, but the UAH figures were published a couple of days ago:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/08/uah-v5-6-global-temperature-update-for-july-2013-0-17-deg-c/
Don’t know about others, but to me this is all sad. The whole attitude of the Skeptical Science leadership, which is after all one of the most visible faces of climate science, is a go-team-go, kill the orcs, sort of thing. The sneering, snarling, self-righteous hatred on display (“it’s all worth it if we can waste a few hours of their evil time”) – well, it’s not good for science.
If I were a climate scientist, and I believed that AGW is a really important issue for the world, I would be tarring and feathering these people. Look at what they’ve done with Andy Revkin: I have seen several issues recently where he has clearly come to realize that his side has a lot of people who just can’t be trusted.
Boris confuses observations and speculation of motives based on evidence with conspiracy theory.
But fanatics frequently do hang onto any shred of rationalization to sustain their fanaticism.
Boris
Maybe. But if so, that’s only because the following can be called conspiracies:
1) The active movement to ban abortion.
2) Past legislation to ban sodomy, various sexual practices, birth control.
3) Movements to require prayer in school (even if disguised.)
4) Proposals to tax liquor, cigarettes, recreational drugs.
5) Proposals to require recycling.
6) Proposals to restrict or limit use of private property (as done by the EPA).
7) Legislation preventing people from being able to easily purchase incandescent light bulbs.
All these things sure look like public control over private actions to me. We can argue whether each is good or bad and whether it’s a conspiracy. But if merely noticing they happen is “conspiracy ideation”, then “conspiracy ideation” merely means ‘noticing that things that really are happening are happening’. It could also be called ‘not wearing blinders’.
I’m confused. Is it still conspiracy ideation when the conspirators have publicly admited that they are working towards the conspiracies ends?
Quote by Ottmar Edenhoffer, high level UN-IPCC official: “We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy…Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization…One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
Quote by Timoth Wirth, U.S./UN functionary, former elected Democrat Senator: “We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.â€
Quote by Gordon Brown, former British prime minister: “A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis.”
A fair point, Lucia, but SteveF’s post implies a level of “public control” currently unknown (“greatly increased”,”most private actions”). It seems to me (and your list supports this) that the left and the right both advocate for more public control in some areas, but perhaps less public control in another.
SteveF is a bit confused over “progress” in the political realm. For instance, progressives are generally for marriage equality–and however you feel about that issue, it should be clear that it encourages private decisions over public ones.
Most of all, the idea that a majority of climate scientists are only concerned about more political control is fairly silly.
Schitzree
My understanding is “Recursive Fury” claimed that believing people are doing what they say they are doing can be ‘conspiracy ideation’.
Believing that a conspiracy exists is ‘conspiracy ideation’ whether or not the conspiracy exists and even if it is absolutely proven to exist. Moreover, one can have ‘conspiracy ideation’ for suspecting any element of a conspiracy exists even if you absolutely don’t believe other elements that must exist to establish conspiracy exist. So, for example: If you believe one person planned to one a bad thing, that is conspiracy ideation even though something involving only 1 person does not meet the definition of “a conspiracy”.
Heck, even believing that a climate blog addict who joked about an online survey while sipping too many beers during happy hour might enter fake data into said oneline survey is “conspiracy ideation”. I know this because the table showing examples of ‘conspiracy ideation’ included my suggestion that someone might do this.
Boris
I’m for marriage equality. Have been for a long time.
But the conclusion that progressives encourage private decisions over public ones more than conservatives do does not follow. Even with marriage equality, the question is more complicated.
There are some people who would also go so far as to insist that professional photographers would be prohibited from discriminating in taking clients and so would be required to photograph such weddings. I can see some relationship between this argument and “public accommodations”, but find it tenuous at best. Particularly given the widespread availability of cameras and peoples ability to hunt around for photographers in even the remotest hinterlands. And even if cameras were not widely available, not having access to a professional photographer is not quite like not being fed, given a place to sleep or access to toilets or education and so on.
In this situation, I think a photographer — even one who works for hire, should have a private right to decide on clients and projects. That should extent to refusing to photograph same sex marriages, just as much as the could refuse to do child portraits or high school yearbook photos or whatever. (Beyond that, I think wedding couple who wants to give their business to photographer who would prefer to decline for any reason…. well.. nutso.)
So with respect to this private/public issue, progressives aren’t always on the side of private interest. Often they aren’t. They are for certain private interests and not others.
Moreover, with respect to taxes many progressives aren’t on the side of private interests. Many progressives not only would accept but even promote confiscatory taxes and over-regulation of property. These cases where ‘progressives’ often think private interests can be blithely overridden. And I’m relatively sure that is the sphere SteveF is thinking about.
Is it? I guess it depends on what you mean by “concerned”. I’d also suggest we don’t know the political leanings of most climate scientists– but I’d hazard a guess it is towards the left on political social issues particularly large government and control. I don’t think that guess is “silly” though of course it may be incorrect. That said, I think it’s likely a correct guess.
Boris:
BTW, I suspect SteveF is a libertarian not a social conservative. 🙂
Lucia,
Your suspicions are correct; I am much closer to libertarian than social conservative. I don’t give a hoot about who marries whom, or if people want to pursue libertine joys, or drugs, or go to church every day, or not.
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I do care about people trampling on property rights. i do care about income tax rates which are confiscatory; ‘wealth’ taxes (including property) which are unconnected to income, inheritance taxes (how many times must one pay taxes on the same income?) and many more. I also think the current discrimination between types of income is both unfair and economically and socially destructive (a new-hire engineer pays a greater % of total tax on income than Warren Buffet…. that is just nuts). I strongly oppose most regulations, because they are almost always foolish and counterproductive, and when not that, then almost never worth their cost. And don’t get me started on ‘green energy’ boondoggles, or grotesque funding for NASA GISS and a half dozen other hornets nests of ‘green’ politicians… er climate scientists, or sugar price supports, or unfunded public liabilities for retirement benefits in the many trillions range, or any of a hundred other inappropriate and foolish uses of public funds and government power.
.
I would point out that the difference between libertarians and progressives and be summed up easily: for libertarians, government is a necessary evil, and one that should be minimized as much as practical, for progressives, economic freedom is a necessary evil, and one that should be minimized as much as practical.
I never reached that conclusion, though I suspect it’s true. But maybe this is because I value the ability to choose a life partner more than the ability to choose a customer.
Well, yeah it is. He’s saying that most climate scientists don’t believe in the science at all, don’t care how much warming there will be, and only care about wealth redistribution. That’s extremely silly.
Boris,
“He’s saying that most climate scientists don’t believe in the science at all, don’t care how much warming there will be, and only care about wealth redistribution.”
.
No, I am saying that they want specific public policy outcomes which are independent of the scale, timing, and consequences of future warming. In other words, they do not care much about the economic costs of their preferred public policies, because they view those policies as net positive, even at great economic cost, regardless of the presence or absence of future warming. (“It’s the right thing to do anyway.”) I also think the evidence is overwhelming that there is reluctance to honestly and clearly discuss uncertainty and any evidence which suggests future warming will be less than catastrophic… which is not surprising in light of their public policy preferences.
That’s pretty much what I said, right? Still silly.
Boris: “I value the ability to choose a life partner more than the ability to choose a customer.”
Statements like these, implying a false alternative, make me despair of political dialogue. Boris, you described the Democrats and Republicans as both advocating for more governmental control, merely in different areas. Surely the *real* choice is individual rights vs. governmental interference, not the particular areas of governmental intrusion. Isn’t it better to be able to choose one’s life partner *and* one’s customers? [Rhetorical question get-out-of-jail card: My answer is yes.]
Boris,
No. He didn’t say anything remotely approaching that.
HaroldW
I’m with you. It’s better to be able to chose both. And in the case of letting photographers decline photo-shoots and couples getting married, the freedom to make both private choices is certainly not an either/or.
HarroldW writes “Isn’t it better to be able to choose one’s life partner *and* one’s customers?”
And the whole discussion is a minefield. Here in Australia Taxi drivers cant discriminate against their customers although I’m certain it happens when the customer is likely to puke in the taxi…
But imagine if Taxi drivers could discriminate. How would you get home if you were a “poorly-thought-of minority” ?
Boris (Comment #118233),
No it’s not at all what you said, and no, not silly at all.
TimTheToolMan–
In the US, people can’t discriminate about customers if something is a “public accommodation”. But I don’t think one should view every business as a “public accommodation”. It’s not clear where the dividing line is, but I think wedding photographers who take individual clients are well on the side of “not public accommodation. In contrast, drug stores, hospitals, schools, medical services etc. are definitely on the side of “are public accommodations”.
You can read a definitions of public accommodations here:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/12181
http://www.nyc.gov/html/cchr/html/coverage/public-accommodations.shtml
The NYC gov one lists taxi cabs as public accommodations and I think that’s a widely held view.
But the difficulty is that there are cases that share similarities and then have differences. So for example: Landlords can’t discriminate based on race. This isn’t to say none do nor is it to say some who do get away with it. But it violates fair housing laws and a person declined the chance to rent an apartment based on race can sue in court and get some recompense if they can prove their case.
That said: people picking room mates to share an apartment may discriminate based on race. So, a skinhead looking for a roommate to split bills may refuse to share a room or apartment with a person based on race religion or merely not sharing the skinhead views. No one could sue the skinhead for refusing to share an apartment based on race.
I implied no such thing. I merely explained why I find progressivism to be more “free” than conservatism.
In fact, my example of gay marriage was merely meant to counter SteveF’s caricature of progressives as always wanting to hinder “private actions.” This is obviously untrue (see also, (for most progressives) drug laws, relaxed immigration laws and etc.)
Not necessarily. If there is significant discrimination against a minority group, then that group is harmed and undoing this harm by limiting the freedom to discriminate seems an easy choice.
Boris,
Assuming the we are talking about an adult of sound mind, from the point of view of the person making the choice, it is always preferable to be permitted to make one’s own choices.
Under which circumstances society might be justified in taking away an individual’s right to make a his own choice can be debated. I think taking away private choices ought to be done very rarely precisely because from the pov of the person making the choice, it is always better to be permitted to make a choice.
In the case of a wedding photographer, I think the photographer ought to be able to refuse jobs and chose customers even to the extent of permitting the photographer to discriminate even against groups that have been disfavored. That means: I think he should be able to refuse to photograph weddings he disapproves of. As far as I’m concerned, he can decree he only takes photos of Jewish wedding performed by Jewish Rabbis, or accept all wedding except those between couples previously divorced, or only white couples or only hetero couples or only celebrity couples or only good looking couples whatever other possibly strange requirements he might have.
Balancing harms, given the realities of technology, couples access to photographs of their wedding is barely affected.
Moreover as claimed rights go, there is and should be no “right” to access to professionally created photographs of one’s wedding. (In fact, I would suspect that access to professionally created photos tends to be restricted to those with economic means more than those who find themselves turned down by prejudiced photographers.) Meanwhile, forcing a photographer to accept clients he wishes not to take to the extent of declining a paid gig is a specific burden on that photographer and I think he should have a right to decline.
(The couple OTOH, should have a right to mention that photographers behavior on Twitter, google, facebook or publicize his behavior anyway they please– provided what they say is truthful. )
So while I endorse not permitting restaurants, hotels, schools, medical facilities and so on to turn away customers due to race, religion, sexual orientation and so on, I think taking away the right of a private photographer to decline clients is going much too far. I’d say similar things for florists and even caterers. ( OTOH, I don’t think grocery stores or sit down restaurants should be permitted to turn away people on the basis of race and so on. The line might be a bit fuzzy for someone baking cakes, as I don’t think anyone with a store front that permits walk in customers to buy cakes should be permitted to discriminate. But I think if a private individual limited cakes sales to those who pre-ordered wedding cakes, I would think that’s on the ‘can discriminate’ side.)
FWIW: With respect to performing weddings, I think public officials (e.g. judges, justice of the peace and so on) who do perform weddings should be required to perform weddings for anyone legally eligible without discrimination. If the public official is unwilling to do perform the ceremony for any and all eligible by law, they should get a different job. In the meantime, religious officials, who in our system, also perform weddings need wed those whose marriages do not meet the additional religious requirements of a particular religion.
The latter has long been the situation in the US where Roman Catholic priests will not marry all sorts of people– including couples where one was married but obtained a legal divorce which the RC church does not recognize as dissolving the marriage. The RC church also won’t marry a couple unless at least one is RC and so on. ( Jews and other religious groups have similar restrictions, but I’m not familiar with the details.) I think this situation will persist (despite Matt Briggs’s frequent concerns about all the bad things that will happen due to same sex marriage.)
Re: Boris (Aug 6 10:18),
Except where speech is concerned. See for example the uproar from the left over the Supreme Court Citizens United decision on corporate speech, or almost any college campus and a conservative speaker. Not to mention the whole PC thing. Then we can get into the IRS and the FEC scandals. Or even better, Kelo, where the entire left wing of the Supreme Court voted for the government over an individual right to property. The left is big on group rights, but not so much on individuals.
I’m not saying that there aren’t a lot of problems on the right too. I just think you’re cherry picking when you say the progressives are somehow more in favor of individual rights than conservatives.
DeWitt–
Have you read ultimately happened on Susan Kelo’s old lot?
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/feral-cats-pay-no-property-tax-where-susan-kelo-used-live-and-pay
That’s 2009. More recently:
http://www.volokh.com/2013/06/27/the-kelo-condemnation-site-still-lies-empty-eight-years-after-the-supreme-court-ruled-it-could-be-taken-for-economic-development/
Lucia,
I think we agree in principle if not in degree. I don’t really have a problem with a wedding photographer choosing to discriminate. But if we are going to have anti-discrimination laws, they should apply to homosexuals as well as to women or ethnic minorities.
Boris
Generally speaking, I agree. I say generally because reserve the right to consider the possibility that there is some hypothetical situation where one of the three groups should be treated differently from the other two. But off hand, I at least at the moment, no hypothetical situation comes to mind.
DeWitt,
“corporate speech” kind of makes me laugh, but, yeah, that’s not individual rights. Corporations are not individuals.
I don’t see how anyone’s free speech rights are violated. I’m not sure what this refers to–protests? conservatives not being invited to speak?
I’m not a huge fan of PC, but it is not a free speech issue.
Assuming conservative groups were actually targeted, is anyone arguing that that is a good idea?
To be clear, the majority voted that the government’s actions were not unconstitutional. I think you’ll find that many liberals and progressives disliked the Kelo decision. I don’t mind the decision, as it seems likely to have been rightly decided to me. That doesn’t mean I like eminent domain being used in that way–I don’t.
Boris
Neither are unions, newspapers or clubs. But individuals sometimes form associations to promote their views. In the US, this can involve “incorporation”. So prohibiting corporate speech especially inhibiting speech of groups that were formed and incorporated specifically to organize speech is inhibiting private speech in the sense that it is making it difficult for private parties to join together to do the sorts things to permit their speech to be heard. (Like for example: pool money to create pamphlets, fund web pages, hire someone to be available for radio or tv programs and so on.)
I suspect he means protestors storming venues where conservatives have been invited to speak on campus. Or he might mean organized protest when conservatives are invited as commencement speakers or… something. I know both have happened in my lifetime but I don’t know statistics. Possibly similar things happen on both sides. Anyway, he needs to be more specific with examples here. (And I don’t really object to students protesting commencement speaker choices. Students get to speak. OTOH, storming commencement would be a bad thing but I haven’t hear any such news stories.)
Campus speech codes are or at least can be. From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_code
Conservative groups were targeted.
Yes. And that majority consisted of 4 liberals and a swing vote. So you are both right: The entire liberal side voted to let the city of New London seize Kelo’s property and the majority also decided the case.
I have no opinion on whether this was rightly or wrongly decided. I dislike this use of eminent domain. Though, I guess the feral cats now living on the Kelo property are probably happy campers!
lucia and Boris,
Search on ‘conservative speakers shouted down’ if you want to see examples and comment. Here’s the first on the list, complete with video: http://www.redstate.com/kevin_holtsberry/2012/04/10/left-not-all-that-interested-in-free-speech-or-tolerance/ Now search on ‘liberal speakers shouted down’. Most of the hits are the same articles as the first search.
DeWitt, Boris
I’ve reached a position where I find both conservatives and progressives want to impose their will on individuals as far as social issues go. It’s just a question of what things they want to control. For example, conservatives often are opposed to the legalization of marihuana, but oppose restrictions on tobacco. Progressives the reverse. Both look to the government to control personal use of a substance. They only differ in what that substance is.
I do agree with DeWitt on the property rights issue. Even though the progressives try to distance themselves from it, they do not believe in individual property rights trumping the “peoples” (in the form of governments) right to the same property. If you follow Obama’s logic from (you didn’t build this) then the State can confiscate what ever it choses if they deem it in the peoples interest. Given the Kelo ruling what’s to stop them?
“The entire liberal side voted to let the city of New London seize Kelo’s property”
That was the effect, but it’s not like they agreed that it was the right thing to do. They found that it wasn’t unconstitutional, and by my reading they have a decent case.
Boris
The problem is that, just like the interstate commerce clause, they stretched the meaning of public use to include anything the government wants to do. Hence you have the city taking for public use by giving it to private developers. The chance of corruption in that interpretation is astronomical. If words “mean what I want them to mean” then the constitution can mean anything you want it and there is no check on government powers.
An interesting exchange. Boris (liberal/progressive) would never suggest an individual has any property rights which could be more important than the property rights of the government (AKA the majority of voters, at least in principle). Supreme Court rulings on public versus private property rights have gradually eroded private rights until they basically do not any longer exist; confiscation of anything for whatever public use is now officially sanctioned ‘by the Constitution’. The Constitution no longer is held by the Court to mean what the plain words of the document say, despite a lack of amendments. Such are the results of ‘progressive thinking’.
.
DeWitt: I agree, Woodrow Wilson was a profoundly bad president who caused enormous social damage, both immediate and long term. Jimmy Carter was just incredibly stupid and incompetent; and will be laughed at for his foolishness long after he is dead. Fortunately, at 88 he is no long able to do much damage.
“The problem is that, just like the interstate commerce clause, they stretched the meaning of public use to include anything the government wants to do.”
No, they didn’t do this at all.
“Boris (liberal/progressive) would never suggest an individual has any property rights which could be more important than the property rights of the government (AKA the majority of voters, at least in principle).”
You’re confusing is/ought here. I don’t think The Constitution limits eminent domain much at all–“public use” is a very broad term and economic development certainly fits within its scope. I’m all for limiting eminent domain power, however. So I definitely think citizens should have stronger property rights.
Boris: â€public use†is a very broad term and economic development certainly fits within its scope
I disagree strongly with this. While one can argue that economic development may provide an overall gain to the wealth of the citizenry, it is *not* “public use”. The buildings proposed were private ventures. The plain meaning of “public use” is parks, roadways, water reservoirs, &c which may be used by all.
I agree with Lucia’s assessment that expansion of the clause as in this case, equates to “public benefit”. Which pretty much includes anything the government wants to do, as all of its decisions are in the public’s interest, or so they claim.
Boris
The effect is the same. All they have to do is claim a benefit to the public a priori to the actual taking. So if Trump wants to build a mansion on your property all he has to do is get the government to claim it declaring that the increased property value is a public “benefit”. In almost any situation a reason can be cobbled together (no matter how specious) that can be used to justify a taking action.
While I suspect many of you are not as libertarian as I am when it comes to drastically limiting the powers of government, I find this thread encouraging as I note that several of you have given some serious thought to a number of liberal/progressive rationalizations for (more) government power and involvement in our lives. Some of these rationalizations are also accepted by the less liberal and more conservative constituents and primarily because those arguments are seldom taken to the necessary limits, but rather stop short because of what are thought to be impracticalities.
First of all I do not think that one should limit one’s view of individual freedoms based on 5 Supreme Court Justices’ interpretation of the Constitution. Secondly, government restrictions placed on individual freedoms, whether those freedoms are expressed individually or collectively through a corporation, union or other political or non political organization, because those entities might support or carry out an action that goes against conventional, or even politically correct thinking, but do no physical harm to others, are done so mainly in the belief that, as a practical matter, only through government control can man be made good and whole.
Unless they see doing “good” by calling free speech in the collective something different, I notice for liberals there appears to be a difference between protection of free speech, which I assume can lead to good or bad deeds, as being more absolute, i.e. beyond abridgement even in doing “good”, whereas other individual rights like property rights, gun ownership rights and the right to discriminate are not absolute but rather amenable to government control in order to do “good”. A number of people calling themselves conservatives are not that much better when it comes to any conception of the absolute inviolability of individual rights, but rather I think liberals are given way too much credit by way of protecting individual rights.
Boris,
“I’m all for limiting eminent domain power, however. So I definitely think citizens should have stronger property rights.”
So you would support a Constitutional amendment to undo the damage done by the Kelo ruling by explicitly restricting the meaning of “public use”?
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BarryW,
“In almost any situation a reason can be cobbled together (no matter how specious) that can be used to justify a taking action.” Yes, that is exactly the effect of Kelo… IMO, one of the worst, and by far the most irrational, decisions the Court has made in my lifetime; profoundly stupid, and completely contrary to the plain meaning of the Constitution.
Kenneth Fritsch
The breakdown as I see it is that the one part of the government that can act as the protector of the individual against the collective is the Supreme Court and unfortunately they have abrogated that position in the majority of cases. The other branches are elective and beholden (supposedly) to the majority that voted them in or to the group that provided the support that got them elected. The Court is the only one that does not have that concern and can brake the tyranny of the majority. Kelo was a total failure on their part to uphold that.
BarryW (Comment #118333)
August 7th, 2013 at 8:53 am
Boris
The effect is the same. All they have to do is claim a benefit to the public a priori to the actual taking. So if Trump wants to build a mansion on your property all he has to do is get the government to claim it declaring that the increased property value is a public “benefitâ€.
—————-
Would you settle for a parking lot?
Eli
I remember that and it still raises my blood pressure. Just another part of the Atlantic City casino con game.