Efforts continue to use powers of eminent domain (UK = compulsory purchase) to take US Supreme Court Judge David Souter’s home away from him in order to use the land for a hotel and tourist attraction called the Lost Liberty Hotel.
However New Hampshire State Representative Neal Kurk, in spite of being behind worthy measures to prohibit in his state the sort of abuses of eminent domain that the US Supreme Court okayed with their monstrous Kelo judgement, is nevertheless opposed to the plan to use eminent domain against Souter.
“Most people here see this as an act of revenge and an improper attack on the judicial system,” Kurk said. “You don’t go after a judge personally because you disagree with his judgments.”
Why not? If Souter was part of the system underwriting a grotesque abridgement of liberty, who not grotesquely abridge his liberty? I suppose being a politician himself, the notion of using laws against the people responsible for them might be a little too close to home for Kurk even if he is sponsoring a measure to prevent such abuses in New Hampshire. Yet why should people whose liberty is abridged and rights to property threatened not want to punish the guilty parties with the tools they themselves have no problem seeing used against others? I am a great believer in revenge.
Do unto others as they do unto you.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” will generally be found to be more productive.
EG
A lot of things get accomplished through the revenge motive.
“Do unto others as they do unto you.”
Only do it first.
Sure, very ‘productive’ for statist predators who like nothing more that to hide behind the process by which they take from you. Your remarks is a worthwhile sentiment for someone within the context of civil society where I generally have a presumption of good will until proven otherwise. When dealing with psychopaths, gang members or members of the political class (but I repeat myself) such people see good will as weakness.
—“”Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” will generally be found to be more productive.”—
Actually in this case it’s not. The Lost Liberty Hotel is forcing Representative Neal Kurk to take quick action in limiting eminent domain abuses, which is exactly what those behond the Lost Liberty Hotel want. Directly petitioning, in the standard political process, Representative Neal Kurk to limit eminant domain abuses would happen in… maybe 20 years?
Anyway it’s not revenge. If David Souter says it’s completely legal to do this, then it is completely legal to do this. If it’s wrong, then Justice Souter should have said so when he had the opportunity.
Next, they need to find out how much tax Ruth Bader Ginsberg is paying on her womb and then seize that for the “public good”. I’m willing to pay $10 a year, so if she isn’t paying that much in womb tax… it’s mine! And then make her pay my leagal expenses too.
It’s somewhat ironic to see a class approach being adopted by a soi disant individualist.
EG
Thanks for reminding me why I do not take you very seriously. When I see a bunch of muggers coming down the street towards me, I think “oh, a gang”, rather than “oh, a bunch of individuals with hoodies seeking to redistribute my wealth”.
And a note to other commenters: do not let Gray’s remark be the topic of the next few comments as engaging him is both worthless and a distraction.
Agents of the state routinely set up special rules for themselves regarding liability, conflicts of interest, compensation, pensions, benefits, etc., and the legislative branch is one of the worst offenders.
There’s nothing wrong with retaliation—much of the court system is based on that very principle.
If what the proponents of this hotel deal are doing is legal, what’s the complaint? That it’s mean? Did that ever stop an agent of the state when they had a “public interest” excuse to use eminent domain against some helpless sap who didn’t have the right connections to prevent it?
Sauce for the goose…
I think that sticking it to members of the establishment like this is just about the best and most rightious thing that any activists could do.
I seriously think this should become a standard tactic for beating all manner of power addicted bastards over the head with their own weapons. Part of the problem is that people who want to get the state off their back and just too polite and nice. I agree that people need to be more vengeful. Sure, get even, but get mad too. Politics is not a game and people need to take it more personally.
Would you take it personally if you got mugged? So take it personally if you get mugged by a politicial too! They make your life a misery? Well do the same to them. Hell yeah.
Yes, to hell with the spirit of law, if the letter of law says the state can take Souter’s pad, then damn well take it. That alone will make the place a tourist attraction. I’d sure go there!
I love this story and I think it has very long legs. I don’t see the people behind the Lost Liberty Hotel (what a great name and of course I plan to go there once it opens) giving in until they have it open for business.
Revenge works.
This gal wasn’t known to me personally, but to a friend. Her boyfriend started to double-time her. They fought. She said she was moving out. He said fine, please be gone when I get back from this business trip. She cleaned out her closet – some cruel gals cut pants (trousers) of expensive business suits off at the knee; some throw all his lovingly collected jazz CDs into the bayou. But this gal wasn’t that crude.
Once she was packed and out, she bought three pounds of uncooked shrimp. She went back into the apartment and took the brass rail that held the living room curtains off the wall. It is hollow, of course.
When evalutating whether or not using Eminent Domain against Justice Souter is ethical, consider the notion that Souter has CONSENTED to this form of property seizure. He didn’t have the moral authority to subject OUR property to such measures, but doesn’t he have the authority to subject HIS OWN property to confiscation?
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
This suggests treating others the way you like to be treated — but what if they’d prefer to be treated differently from that? Why assume the way you’d like to be treated is a universal preference?
As for the reported reaction to eminent domain, it shows how differently Americans react to attacks on there liberty vs the British. We’ve seen attacks on liberty on both sides of the atlantic, but ISTM there’s a damn site more opposition, including effective opposition, in the US than there is here in the UK.
In the UK the rule of law is in tatters, surveillance of the masses is increasingly a reality and freedom of speech is increasingly curtailed, but the public seem indifferent to these developments and many welcome them.
Sadly, James Hammerton, you are right.
Yes, they should construct the Lost Liberty Hotel on the very next lot to Souter, even if they cannot manage to condemn his property.
They should also look into seizing the home of former President Bush in Kennybunkport, Maine, since he was the jackass who appointed Souter.
The Kennedy family had another version of the “Do unto others” rule. They said, “Don’t get sore, get even.”
Gosh, thanks, expat. None of us had heard of this quote over the last 20 years. Thanks for the revelation. The Kennedy family are certainly lovely folks. Did that one who staggered out of the toilet on the plane and fell on his face coked to the gills die, or get revived? I can’t keep track of Bobby and Ethel’s 11 children.
For sure we know that Teddy Kennedy, although he drove off a bridge blind drunk in Chappaquidick, managed to claw himself out of the window, and leave his pregnant girlfriend to her fate, trapped in the tiny airpocket she was clinging on to. Waited 12 hours to call the police. Well, you know how upset sensitive liberals like the Kennedys can be! And then appeared in a neckbrace – a victim!
He has never stopped being drunk since! Why stop staggering around and giving windy Congressional speeches sober people have written for you? It works in MA!
Sorry – that was ‘exguru’. The points are unchanged.
This gal wasn’t known to me personally, but to a friend…Once she was packed and out, she bought three pounds of uncooked shrimp. She went back into the apartment and took the brass rail that held the living room curtains off the wall. It is hollow, of course.
Gosh, thanks, Verity. None of us had heard of this story over the last 20 years. Thanks for the revelation.
Is this the friend with the Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe or the one that got into an elevator with Eddie Murphy/Michael Jordan/O.J. Simpson?
” I am a great believer in revenge.”
Oooh, nice bloke.
Good to see Euan back, however.
So you are one of those “turn the other cheek” sheep then? If people wrong you, are you so enervated that you do not wish them ill in turn?
RobtE – Oh, no! The girl who told me said it was a friend of hers, and even gave me her name and the name of the boyfriend and the bank he worked in and told me which apartment complex they lived in in Houston! So it’s an urban myth. …. My red-faced apologies to everyone. How embarrassing!
(Re the elevator story – I heard it was Mike Tyson.)
Verity: My chest swelled with pride & embarrasment when you briefly attributed Exguru’s quote to me. Alas, the pride was short-lived as you smartly corrected your error. But I do believe that…..”revenge is a sweet dish, best savoured cold.”
……..and only the other day I was thinking about that stinker………….
But expat, there is also enormous satisfaction in immediate revenge. Whether immediate or eaten cold, revenge is very rewarding.
Maybe so, Verity, but unless one is blessed with a Wildean gift of riposte…..and how apposite that “Gift” in German means poison…..the knee-jerk immediacy could easily hoist one with etc.
Assuming your femininity I thought you would be more inclined to the long haul variety. If my history is correct (and it mostly isn’t) did not Holy Mother Church take a leisurely 12 years to, wrongly, nail Galileo.
Oh, BTW, I never thought for one moment that your hairdresser didn’t visit you……….as does my gardener me.
…………and David Souter is definitely hoist with etc.
Why would my hairdresser be an issue with you? How peculiar.
I don’t include a quick riposte in the revenge category. Revenge requires the infliction of greater damage on your enemy than they did to you. Sometimes an opportunity presents itself serendipitously. Sometimes you have to plan it.
Not an issue….nor peculiar.
I do not remember the thread, some days ago (the ability to embed links in order to claim your attention etc., bad hair day etc.) You had obviously and quite rightly forgotten.
Hrm – I enjoy prawn (shrimp) flesh far too much to waste it on an unfaithful lover who I’m walking out on. Surely some lesser decomposable substance would suffice?
The governing classes are quick to ensure the persecution they visit upon other citizens doesn’t bite their own personal tush.
permanent expat writes: You had obviously and quite rightly forgotten. No, no, I don’t forget sexist remarks. You wouldn’t have accused a man of having a bad hair day. You were trying to trivialise me.
Those who deplore retaliation are usually those who merit such by their aggression against the rights of others.
Okay, I fail to see what’s so terrible about the decision in question. Eminent domain is part of the constitution (like it or not) and in substance, the Supreme Court simply decided it wasn’t going to get into local disputes about when it could be used.
Had they done that, they would get an endless parade of cases to wrangle over which they understandably didn’t want. So, they essentially kicked it back to the state and local level, and now motivated, a number of local and state governments are legislating about under what (generally very limited) instances it can be used, a tendency I expect to continue.
As much as many people (like me) don’t like eminent domain being used willy nilly and as much as many people (like me) didn’t like the specifics of the case in question, I really don’t see what else they could have done.
I’m willing to be educated.
I also call bullshit on Verity’s approval of the shrimp story, as since this was an apartment it wasn’t the scummy boyfriend’s property and it amounts ot vandalism against private property.
Well I got sacked once, and before I left the building poured a pint of milk behind the boss’s refrigerator. It made me feel better at the time, and if I’m honest, it still does.
And yet clearly Kelo was about the state taking private property and turning it over to others for private use. To then interpret taking things for the benefit of well connected developers as a “public use” is monstrous and makes a nonsense of the notion that the Bill of Rights in any way constrains government.
John K – There’s the spirit!
The fellow who has the Chase Me, Ladies I’m in The Calvalry blog claims he gets his own back on airlines by smuggling cigarette butts in and leaving them in the toilets and other places.
michael farris – Sorry, but the apartment complex she cited had gone condo, as they all did at that time. But as RobtE has pointed out that I was taken in by a cleverly told urban myth, the point is moot.
Verity: Yes, I’m a male sexist pig & also have “bad hair days.”
So you are one of those “turn the other cheek” sheep then? If people wrong you, are you so enervated that you do not wish them ill in turn?
I don’t think not taking revenge is a very herd-like mindset. Indeed, I tend to assocciate revenge (or fantasies thereof) with baying mobs, demagogues, and other more herd like things. Obviously if people wrong me I wish them ill in return. I just don’t give it to them, because it’s an ineffective, pointless, weak and stupid thing to do.
I suppose there may be some people who genuinely find inner peace through revenge, but my experience of life, not to mention most English literature and arts, suggests they are rare, and often sociopathic.
The “pro-revenge” crowd would do well to watch Clint Eastwood in ‘Hang ’em High’, and excellent film about the topic.
I am glad to see that Souter is being pursued in this way. Sometimes you have to fight a bit dirty to make the authors of the looter state take up and take notice. I say give em hell.
J says: Indeed, I tend to assocciate revenge (or fantasies thereof) with baying mobs, demagogues, and other more herd like things.
You don’t mix with the right people.
So you are saying that punishing people for their actions is ineffective? And are you also suggesting that taking on (and presumably pissing off) a US Supreme Court Justice is a ‘weak’ thing to do? Please explain.
We had a baying mob around here a few years ago, but I was already signed up for a senior bowling league, so I couldn’t join.
Actually, baying mobs et al always make me think of “Young Franenstein”, one of my top ten movies.
I have sudden urge to play darts…
In the UK, the only pressure group that ever fights back is the pro-hunt lobby.
In response to a fundraising drive from animal rights loons, The League Against Cruel Sports, the hunting boys decided to send them huge amounts of mail and bulky items. Jeremy Clarkson then waded in saying he was going to send in a “paving stone or a horse”
So much mail was posted that the League ran up a bill from the Post Office of £500,000.
Sadly the Royal Mail ended the party by letting them off the bill.
Times
Interesting article in the Times. So the filth were trawling e-mail accounts on behalf of the animal rights lunatics were they? Nothing for us to worry about with regards to Big Brother in the UK obviously.
The animal rights lunatic claimed company franking machines were used for some of the mail. Er, wasn’t the whole point of this to use the animal rights loonies’ freepost address? Why would anyone use their own franking machine? Sounds like complete bullshit. Shows what too much tofu can do to the brain.
I live near Sacramento, California…Which is where (US Supreme Court) Justice Kennedy is from. He went to the traditional rival of my high school (Justice Kennedy: C.K. McClatchy High School, Me: John F. Kennedy High School) and he grew up in a neighborhood that is in the same part of town as where I grew up (Justice Kennedy: Land Park, Me: Greenhaven/Pocket Area). Hmmm…I wonder if he still owns property around here….
The BBC has an article on the Kelo case for anyone who is interested.
Surely it would only be revenge if the people whose land was taken in the Kelo decision were the ones behind this action against Souter.