Gary Wisenbaker, Valdosta Today Opinion Contributor
“Most of the time, they just want money.”
So, there it is: Donald Trump’s incisive analysis of the owner’s motive for fighting to keep their property when the eminent-domain-Kraken of government is released to take it from them.
That the targeted property may have been handed down generationally within a family or, perhaps, where a couple started a life, raised a family, celebrated and marked life’s triumphs and tragedies is of no account.
No room for that kind of “loser” thinking in Trump Towers.
As Trump explained in his nationally broadcast Fox News interview, “Sometimes [the owners will] get four or five times what their property is worth . . and could buy a house that’s five times bigger, in a better location.”
Money and profit, bigger and better: the breakfast of champions, like Trump.
The eminent domain discussion centered on the Supreme Court Kelo decision in 2005 and opened a garage door sized window into Trump’s thinking about government and individual rights.
While the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment permits “a taking” of private property, the government can only do so if it is for a “public use” and so long as the property owner is “justly compensated.”
Eminent domain has its place. When a private landowner refuses to engage in good faith negations and sell property for a legitimate public benefit, the procedure is legally justified. Without it the United States interstate highway system and airport network may well have been cost prohibitive.
The Kelo decision, however, greatly expanded the government’s power by recognizing a government’s right to take private property for a private use, that is, to promote a private development of dubious benefit, so long as the new use generated more taxes than the prior use.
According to National Review’s Robert Verbruggen, “[That] decision now allows developers and the government to gang up on homeowners. The developer gets more land, the government gets more tax money. The only losers are the original owner and his property rights.”
Conservatives went berserk. States rushed to pass legislation limiting the effect of the ruling.
Trump, however, believes this application of eminent domain is “wonderful.” And he attributed the conservatives’ anathema to the fact that they didn’t understand it.
“But I don’t think it was explained to most conservatives,” he said.
Oh, so that’s it. A government sanctioned taking of private property for private use just needs to be “explained” better. Got it.
The interview, however, tied some loose ends together.
Just like the Kelo decision, Trump’s goal of mass deportation of illegal immigrants requires expanding the size and scope of government and ignoring the individual rights of American born citizens.
Perhaps more disturbing is this: if Trump can be so cavalier about dispossessing property owners from their land under the guise of the Fifth Amendment, how much more so would he be about restricting gun ownership rights in violation of the Second Amendment?
“Eminent domain is wonderful,” Trump declares. Indeed it is for those who endorse an expansive government and disdain the concept of liberty and private property rights.
It is not so wonderful for believers in individual property rights and limited government, two of the touchstones of conservative doctrine.
Equally disturbing is that the prism through which Trump views the average American’s motive is faceted by his own solipsistic hand thus diffusing a light spectrum of greed and egocentrism.
Put another way, Trump’s motivation is what drives all others because his is all that counts and his thinking is all that exists. As money, profit and self-centrism are the sine qua non of his existence, so it must be for all others.
Such cynicism is wholly unworthy of those who support him as well as the conservative movement.
Perhaps the “Trojan Horse” Trump brays so loudly about has more to do with his entrance into the Republican camp than Syrian refugees into America.
Gary Wisenbaker, B.A., J.D. is a native of South Georgia where he practiced law in Valdosta and Savannah for 31 years. He has served as state chairman of the Georgia Young Republicans and Chairman of the Chatham County (Savannah) Republican Party. Gary is a past GOP nominee for State Senate, past delegate to the Republican National Convention and has consulted on numerous local Republican campaigns as well as chaired or co-chaired campaigns for President and US Senate on the county and district level. He is the principal and founder of Blackstone, LLC, a corporate communications and public relations concern as well as Wiregrass Mediation Services, LLC, a general civil litigation mediation firm.
Gary hosts his own blog at www.garywisenbaker.com and recently published his first fictional work, “How Great is His Mercy: The Plea”, on Amazon.com. His columns are regularly published on ValdostaToday.com and the Valdosta Daily Times.
