Kelo edition:

• David Holcberg on CapMag:

  And as Ayn Rand has pointed out, the “public” as such does not exist. Only individuals exist. Whenever governments act to promote the “public” good, or to advance a “public” purpose, or to satisfy a “public” need–beware. For what invariably happens in such cases is that some individuals are forced by the state to sacrifice for other individuals.

  It is no coincidence that appeals to the “public” good have been used by dictatorships throughout history to justify tyranny over the individual. Thanks to the deplorable decision by five justices of the Supreme Court, America is a big step closer to tyranny and away from the freedom America’s founders intended to establish.

• Matt Welch on Hit and Run: Yesterday, Julian Sanchez asked, in the wake of Raich and Kelo, “will some court-watchers on the left begin to question the wisdom of having let economic freedom become the red-headed stepchild of modern jurisprudence?” A preliminary answer — some may have, but several of the more influential ones have concluded that the unchecked government power to bulldoze your home and sell your property to Wal-Mart is the price we all must pay to avoid the scourge of “property rights extremism.” Rarely are public policy issues so stark, in terms of revealing whose side you’re on.

  As I said earlier: this is unprincipled pragmatism allowed to run wild behind the guise of “public good” and, nonsensically to some, common sense.

• I haven’t read the Assenting Opinons yet (sorta kinda makes me sick to my stomach right now, but if Scalia and Rehnquist signed on to O’Connor’s dissent instead of writing their own, I shudder to imagine how sick those two felt) but right now I can’t buy any Conservative/Federalist argument that favors local officials having the decision to do what is right for their constuencies. Property Rights take precedence over local autonomy.

  UPDATED: Irony of ironies observed by Professor Ann: It’s interesting — isn’t it — that the Court’s liberals stressed “federalism,” which the conservatives often praise, and the Court’s conservatives stress the oppression of the poor by the rich, usually the plaint of the liberal.

• Jay Solo does a better job of opining on the nature of the SCOTUS more than I could dream of doing. I’m not a big SCOTUS buff anymore since these folks are quite predictable, but I will say this: despite O’Connor being demonized as an unprincipled maverick wench for her occasional leftist opinions, I’m glad to see that the “card-carrying Conservative appointees” all said “no” in this case.
• Finally, Bryan S. of Arguing With Signs has a comprehensive roundup of opinions all over the place.

When it comes to morals, plenty of talk is about the epistemology of one’s values: where from such moral guidelines come from. Verily, it may “all be relative” between believers of different faiths, but society—establishment clause or none—tends to sit down and agree upon a civil moral code whose epistemology becomes irrelevant. (If it were, and the original assumption that morality is relative, then no civil moral code would come to fruition at all.) This moral code of course hinges on what is forbidden, not what is allowed.

The concept of Federalism is usually my yardstick when talking about politics. This was the most alien concept to me that I had to first learn when I started following American politics. Basically, just because “a law makes sense” doesn’t make it right to implement nationally, because of these two additions to the constitution:

Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

That has to mean something to our lawmakers. It has to.

A moral epistemology based on reason falls flat when faced with two individuals who find conflicting propositions equally unreasonable. Buffet-style statism falls flat in the face of a similar test. I wonder if we are moving towards an overreaching federal government that tends to take the term “United” too far.

I am sometimes asked, “why shouldn’t this law be implemented nationwide?” It makes sense and is good for everyone, and good for society and good for the country. My usual answer (which of course gives the impression that I am a close-minded guy) is that because individual States get to decide on those things. Surely, federal encroachment has brought both good and bad results, but I believe that the onus is on those who push for federal legislation to justify it, not the other way around.

“States’ rights” has become such a dirty word in politics because of the Civil Rights Era that almost no one in Congress uses it to remind their colleauges of exactly the type of government we should be having. People holler in indignation over the idea that gay marriage from Massachusetts, or California’s (seemingly) irrational environmental policies, or Kansas’ anti-evolution educational ideals, or Delaware’s tax policies, and so many other state laws, might cross borders between states and affect how they live in their home state. Without the acid test question of “why should it be a federal law,” the answer to which should be taken in consideration to the constitution, then “federalism” would mean nothing, and there is no reasoning left to stop laws from other states being implemented federally in those that do not want them.

The UNITED “states” of America would then make a good monicker.