Harold Speaks Out!

As I live in TN, I am oft reminded of the brilliance of Rep. Harold Ford by the locale press, and the continual undercurrent of the West Tennessee Republicans hoping they can convince him to switch parties. As if there weren’t enough liberal Democrats in the Republican party now. Now comes this latest snipped, courtesy of Bob Novak.

Rep. Harold Ford, one of the brightest young Democratic lights in the House and a Senate candidate in Tennessee next year, stunned colleagues by endorsing the Supreme Court's unpopular Kelo decision. That ruling permitted a Connecticut city to seize homeowners' property and transfer it to private developers.

''We have a lot of properties in my city [Memphis] . . . that are crying out for development,'' Ford said on a Nashville radio talk show. The congressman asserted, ''I've always been one to believe that individual rights is a big thing,'' but added, ''there is some real value to this decision.''

Harold’s admission is surprising, though his attitude is not. The self-superiority of those who believe that things would just be better if you did it their way is indicative of a decidedly non-Christian worldview.

How many times have we seen in scripture where the ability to own and sell property is a right granted by God, yet once again, we have government deciding what the “best” use of the property is and taking it for their purpose. Even if it means the end of your dream home.

Even so, it is ironic that all those great social planners who campaigned so hard for cities to now complain about the blight that comes from their very existence. Once you start down the path of designing the perfect society, you can’t help tweaking with it. While it’s not that hard to encourage people to build a home, it’s not all that easy to convince them to leave it once they are there. Whether it’s the homeowners in Kelo, the farmers in the Klamath Valley, or even those poor souls in Memphis that Ford is supposed to be representing. To the statists on both sides of the isle, property owners are nothing but game pieces in big game. Pieces to be moved here or there, to the maximization of their own profits, power, or whatever “greater good” they believe in.

The problem is that property owners aren’t game pieces. They are people. Living, breathing creations of God. As such, they are endowed by their creator, (not by government) with certain rights. The root of belief and that national heritage lies within the Judeo-Christian faith, we ought not forget that...