Rob Kremer posts notes on Rex. It is clearly a wet dream list that only an authoritarian could love. But, it sets a mighty low bar for other stripes of authoritarianism to beat, but just by a hair.

Rob Kremer: I'll bet Rex is a card carrying member "Get a load of this list at NewUrbanism.org - a web site that pushes for sustainability."

I'll take the bait. But you get to figure out if it is you who is on the hook.

=============

It all starts innocent enough.

Driving is not a right but a privilege. (representative of an individual liberty)

Gambling is bad. (representative of an private right to be stupid with ones own money, and of particular interest to me even in the absence of incorporation)

All rights are mere privileges. ALL.

I could note that the essential element of private property is not a mere semantic exercise but has at its core the protection of individuals from the greatest threat to their liberty, authoritarian government in any form.

Steve Buckman's view I believe is not inconsistent with Rex's:

"In real estate law, that kind of a right is called a license. It is a form of right attached to a person, a personal right not appurtenant (e.g. attached) to the land."

Never mind that without the right of alienation (enabling transfer) the definition of property has no meaning. Conceptually, two neighbors could not exchange vegetables for meat (and vice-a-versa) to eat were it not for some notion to accommodate exchange -- by whatever name or even without any language as between flirting birds.

The semantics today match that of the "resistance" to a higher authority. (Think of Hez or any domination cult.) The opposition is viewed like a bacterial infection where one must take medicine for a long enough time to fully eliminate the risk that it might once again spread.

Let's face it, individual liberty is an ages old disease to any one or any group that wants to dominate others.

I have a strong beef with the judicially accepted notion that government is entitled to a presumption of acting in the public interest, and where the burden is on the individual to prove otherwise. It is the same sort of upside down reasoning as with conversion of rights to privileges.

In the narrow context of free speech it remains accepted that speakers cannot be stopped except where the speech transitions from peaceful to violent. Yet, how is one supposed to view speech by government itself? Government has a monopoly on the use of violence. Government has a monopoly on the power to deny individual liberty. When government acts, rather than speaks, by way of peacefully tapping out laws and entering them into the code books is there any other way to implement these laws but by way of the threat of violence or by way of limiting individual liberty, or denial of individual claims to ownership to the things folks need to live, like land? No. A government act, any government act, inherently implies the assertion of coercive force. At the cusp of absurdity is the view that government is itself entitled to assert the benefit of the Bill of Rights protections for individuals against the government. (Portland's Voter Owned Election thing.)

Rob,

I think you underestimate the level of threat to individual liberty posed by non-small-government acts that are passed today under the heading of bipartisanship. That is, while Rex is on the outer fringe of reason he is himself offered aid via the judicial assumption of presumption of deference for any act he may take, and it is the folks' who have cult-ivated a belief that any judicial road block to crazy elected political folks' agendas is tantamount to "judicial activism."

The courts do not make law, they are supposed to only strike stuff down. This subtle difference is what made me insist, as in the gay marriage debates, that the court should have struck down the marriage laws in total -- if they believed there was a violation of the Equal Privileges and Immunities clause. The court and the community took the position that it was acceptable for the court to threaten to act in a legislative capacity and compel the extension of benefits. (This to me was the greater threat, exceeding their authority, than to confining their action to strike down legislation as a remedy.) Think about the worst case scenario of striking out the marriage statutes -- it would NOT ban private marriages for those folks that prefer to call their relationships by such name. Would I be a "judicial activist" were I to sit in the position of Judge Bearden and strike down the marriage laws? No!

This is why I believed that the splitting of people into classes for availability of M37 claims was of greater concern than the semantics of the defining property rights. It fundamentally disregarded the larger role that is played by protecting private property -- in protecting individual liberty FROM government. The oath of office, any office in the country, includes a pledge to protect individual liberty -- which is the very thing that government has a monopoly on power to attack. Shall I attack the adventurisms of folks like Rex, which are wholly dismissive of individual liberty, as deferential to the "will of the people" -- at least for a mere majority (as was the very reasoning of the Oregon Supreme Court in upholding statutory M37 against the claim of a violation of the constitutional Equal Privileges and Immunities clause).

"10. The rapid installation of major organic farms at the edge of every city and town across America. In addition to this, the rapid planting of millions of trees across America."

Rex would convert me into an organic farmer, under the threat of the use of force to stop the use of my parents land on the fringe for anything that he does not approve of, as would be consistent with the will of his voting base. I am not the least bit comforted by the so-called property rights activists that coughed up M37 for it was they who relegated land ownership to a ceremonial thing like having one's name on a brick in Pioneer Courthouse Square.

In the Jackson County M37 case -- consider reattaching rights to development with the ceremonial title holder by interpreting the law to mean that the seller MAY sell the whole damned property, lock stock and barrel, including the ceremonial ownership. What would that really mean? It would mean that government may buy land from one class of owners, whereupon it would be removed from the property tax rolls, leaving only the excluded class to pay all taxes associated with operation of government -- and purchase of the M37 covered property. It is and was a sinister sort of violation of the Equal Privileges and Immunities clause. The complete repeal of SB100 would have reduced government power, rather than ENHANCED it as with M37. When I see James Huffman defend M37 in The Oregonian, and advocate payment to Plum Creek, I see the same sort of government corruption as existed in the late 1800's when Plum Creek obtained the very property that they today seek compensation. (Plum Creek is just a spin off from one the grantees of land gifts to encourage the building of railroads. Which itself was the sort of graft that spawned the enactment of constitutional limits on the authority of government and for which the word Railroaded is derived.) Rex Burkholder and James Huffman are much more alike than they are different, in my opinion.

The support for M37 was not a vindication of an individual right in property but rather a vindication of one class against another, via the political process. It is and was upsidedown. This should be self evident, but sadly it is not. I can safely call James Huffman a charlatan with all the vigor I would attack any politician (public figure) that injects their views and credibility into the public space for consideration. His actions are certainly supportive of advancing the notion of the tyranny of the majority.