Landless in America

Totalitarian states keep the governed politically impotent by preventing them from owning land.  Landowners use and dispose of land as they choose and hold it free from liens or encumbrances.  Government reserves these rights for itself.  Unelected bureaucrats determine how we use land, regulate its disposal, and keep perpetual tax liens against it. 
 

Individuals cannot not own land outright; instead, government confers legal privileges to citizens concerning it, and the state can rescind those privileges arbitrarily.  Fourth Amendment guaranties are being eroded daily.  This article reveals one frightening instance.

Just last week, however, in a move that would have made King George III proud, the Indiana Supreme Court cavalierly decided that police can enter a person’s home for any reason – or no reason, or an unlawful reason — and the homeowner forced to stand aside and let them do their deeds.  Unless overturned by the federal courts or the state legislature, Indiana residents will be deprived of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures” enjoyed to at least some degree by people in other states and under federal law.  The specific issue at hand is whether or not you can resist someone – anyone, including a police officer – attempting to illegally enter your home.

The American Thinker’s Daren Bakst offers thoughts on how the state gutted the Fifth Amendment in order to steal property rights from individuals and redistribute them to others.

Six years ago, the United States Supreme Court effectively gutted property rights protections in the Fifth Amendment.  A pending bill in the United States House could help to address some of the damage caused by the Court.  In Kelo v. City of New London, the Court held that the government can seize private property from one private citizen and transfer the property to another private citizen for economic development.  If a home would generate more tax revenue as a mall, then the government can seize the home.  The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution states "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."  This language is supposed to limit the government's power to take private property except for a "public use."

At Global Research, Paul C. Wright describes what the current administration is doing to the public; they are incrementally remanding the Constitution.

The pretext for the destruction of Americans’ civil liberties is the “global war on terror,” which – according to all three branches of government – requires that Americans surrender their liberties for security and protection from foreign and domestic threats…local law enforcement agencies are increasingly becoming a tool of state authority and state security.  Without a reversal of this trend, law enforcement will soon exist primarily to protect the interests of government.
 
Government should protect the little guy from the rich and powerful, especially when the rich and powerful is the government.  The Institute for Justice cites a case in which they prevented Donald Trump and the state of New Jersey from confiscating an elderly widow’s home.

Vera Coking, from Atlantic City, knows firsthand the power of unaccountable government agencies. [They] sought to take her property and transfer it—at a bargain-basement price—to another private individual: Donald Trump. Trump convinced the State agency to use its “eminent domain” power to take Vera’s home so he could construct a limousine parking lot for his customers...unfortunately, cases in which government agencies act not as protectors of constitutionally guaranteed rights, but instead as agents for powerful, private interests, have become all too common. 

'Individual freedom finds tangible expression in property rights.' This statement, penned by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, recognizes how central property rights are to a free society.

The people are no longer the government because the government is no longer accountable to the people.

May your gods be with you.