Mover Mike

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Those nations always progress through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith,
from spiritual faith to great courage,
from great courage to liberty,
from liberty to abundance,
from abundance to selfishness,
from selfishness to complacency,
from complacency to dependency,
from dependency back into bondage."

–Alexander Fraser Tytler Lord Woodhouselee (1748-1813), "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic", Scottish historian at Edinburgh University

Are we doomed to repeat this sequence? Madison wrote in 1782, the bottom line of government is to protect property rights. From property rights all else flows. J. David Breemer, of the Pacific Legal Foundation, writes of the framers of the Constitution, in Oh Madison, Where Art Thou?

You cannot have freedom of religion if you cannot build and keep a church; free expression is repressed if you live in fear for your place of work; a free press cannot exist if you cannot own the tools of the trade and a place to use them.

As Virginian Arthur Lee reminded his fellow colonials on the eve of the Revolution, “the right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.” Upon the signing of the Constitution, John Adams reiterated that “’property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.’”

* - Find out what is going on- In your state, for example, what does your constitution say about eminent domain? Are there cases of use of eminent domain going on now?
* - Document your findings!
* - Does your state use "urban renewal" and how does that come about?
* - Now share that information with others.
* - Write your elected representatives about your concerns.
* - Network with others with similar interests.
* - Don't get discouraged!

Eminent Domain