You'll have your choice of reading about the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court yesterday, giving the stamp of its approval to the notion that state or municipal government has the last say on the use by you of your property, to decide that it has a better idea, and to move you off and away.

The normally insouciant and irrepressible Jeff Goldstein, over at protein wisdom, has a pretty representative sampling of the outrage beginning to percolate through the 'sphere, perhaps building to a "blog swarm" - am I mixing my metaphors too badly here? - of unprecedented proportions.

And it should:

That's right, the Supreme Court has just expanded the government's right to seize private property for "the public good"—which, in the case of New London, Connecticut, means tearing down people's homes in order to make way for a Pfizer office complex:

[Lawyers representing the Connecticut home owners] argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result [of today’s 5-4 ruling], cities have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue.

Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.

"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including—but by no means limited to—new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Property rights are one of the fundmental building blocks of any free society; SCOTUS disagrees, apparently.

Another revolution in a country as diverse and fragmented as this one is, I suppose, unthinkable.

But now that there is an increasing ability of ordinary people to talk over and around the powerful, without resort to the media, just by booting up a computer, getting together with like-minded people far away, perhaps the unthinkable has become just a bit more . . . well . . . thinkable.

If you want another example of how bad it can be, take a walk over to Lileks and check out the photographs he offers as part of Today's Bleat. Look at the fenced-off, empty houses, which once housed families and the dreams of so many people, now banished from their homes by a government that knows better. See the ghosts of human anguish in the blank windows, all brought about by the government's perceived need for "progress".

Think about the start of a revolution.

With me.

Update:

Our unhappiness has its precedents:

As Joseph Story wrote in 1833:

It seems to be the general opinion, fortified by a strong current of judicial opinion, that since the American revolution no state government can be presumed to possess the transcendental sovereignty to take away vested rights of property; to take the property of A. and transfer it to B. by a mere legislative act. A government can scarcely be deemed to be free, where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon a legislative body, without any restraint.

And yet that's the law now: The rights of property are left solely dependent upon a legislative body, without any restraint. Small wonder that it's inspiring a lot of unhappiness.

From Professor Bainbridge, quoted by Instapundit.

Michelle Malkin is all over the story as well, with 17 trackbacks so far, no doubt more to come.

Eyes on the skies, everyone.

Further Update:

Samizdata has a more complete version of the quote from Chief Justice Story:

"It seems to be the general opinion, fortified by a strong current of judicial opinion, that since the American revolution no state government can be presumed to possess the transcendental sovereignty to take away vested rights of property; to take the property of A. and transfer it to B. by a mere legislative act. A government can scarcely be deemed to be free, where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon a legislative body, without any restraint. The fundamental maxims of a free government seem to require, that the rights of personal liberty, and private property should be held sacred. At least, no court of justice, in this country, would be warranted in assuming, that any state legislature possessed a power to violate and disregard them; or that such a power, so repugnant to the common principles of justice and civil liberty, lurked under any general grant of legislative authority, or ought to be implied from any general expression of the will of the people, in the usual forms of the constitutional delegation of power. The people ought not to be presumed to part with rights, so vital to their security and well-being, without very strong, and positive declarations to that effect."

Someone say amen.

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