What the Government Taketh It has not Tooketh
Don A. Bright
Ernest Hemingway once said, “All our words from loose using have lost their edge.” Today, I might go a little further than Hemingway did. I think all of our words, from loose using, have lost their worth. What, after all, is a word worth? And does that worth have moral quality? I’m old enough to think the answer to the latter question is yes. They used to. Words, to have any worth at all, must have defining limits and a purpose. Today we have stretched those limits and that purpose to such a dishonorable degree that the moral use of them is laughed at. Like a lot of things in this country today, words are becoming relative. Consider the following:
take (tāk) verb: To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice, especially: a. To capture physically; seize: take an enemy fortress. b. To seize with authority; confiscate.
tak·ing (tāʹkĭng) adjective: 1. The act of one that takes.
The above definitions (Dictionary; Microshelf Bookshelf, 2000 edition.) make clear what the word “take” and the word “taking” means. Only a person or persons possessing enormous dictatorial powers have the capability to wave their magic revisionist whip and decide that a word does not mean what it means. And our government – in particular the Executive and Judicial branches – has been busy doing just that. They have used the bastardization of words to not only obfuscate but to actually legislate and adjudicate.
I have chosen the two words above as an example of how this has been accomplished.
According to our government masterminds it is possible to “get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice, especially: a. To capture physically; [or] seize” private property without it being “The act of one that takes.” In other words they have the power to take your stuff without taking your stuff.
Let me explain. First read this excerpt from the 5th Amendment guarantee of the right to own and keep private property:
“…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
The 5th Amendment is part of our Bill of Rights wherein we instructed, no, demanded the government to keep its hands off of the rights we inherit without its help and limit itself to those powers they received from us.
Sadly, governments are made up of humans. Humans are greedy for power as well as wealth. To some power is wealth. So what happens when that greed manifests itself in a desire for power forbidden to a government? Greed is more powerful than honor and soon the greed leads to dishonorable acts. In other words all governments will use any means imaginable to override the will of the people. Even redefine words.
Notice that the above excerpt from our 5th Amendment uses the word “taken” to describe the action of the government when it uses its power to appropriate private property. So by official definition, when this happens it is defined as a “taking’. Makes sense, doesn’t it.? Well, actually, no…not to those who crave power. All they have to do is change the meaning of the word “taking”.
Removing private property from its owner may or may not be a “taking”. Who says? One of our all powerful lawmakers of the bench. (They used to be called judges.)
Although the takings clause in the 5th Amendment of our Constitution does not refer to levels of takings or percentages of takings, activist judges have taken (pun intended) it upon themselves to redefine the word and adjudicate on their new meanings of the word.
Over the past few decades judges have made decisions based on the “value” of the appropriated property, the percentage of same or some “environmental” concern usually made up by some uncontrolled anti-private property environmental subgroup.
In other words if you lose the use (value) of part of your property and some black robed socialist doesn’t think you have been “damaged” very much then you will not get the Constitutionally mandated recompense for your loss. And this has been the “ruling” in many cases where the property owner has lost half or more of the use (value) of his property. The judge simply rules that this loss of your worth was not “taken” from you and therefore does not constitute a “taking”. And as an added bonus you will still be allowed to pay property taxes on the property that, by any sane person’s definition, is no longer yours.
Let’s boil this outrage down to a simpler example. Suppose I gave you a hundred dollar bill to pay off a debt I owed you. But before you could get it into your bank or begin to spend it I returned and tore, say, one third of the dollar bill off and took it home with me. Would I have “taken” anything from you? Has your property (the hundred dollars) been damaged in terms of its value to you? If your answer is yes, think again. According to our new form of government it may or may not be theft or a “taking” if a judge arbitrarily ruled it was not a “taking”.
Recently, various environmental special interests have forced our government to utilize this twisted (more aptly crooked) law-reading to steal private property by regulatory takings.
An example of this is the use of the undemocratic Clean Water legislation to forbid private owners from using their land for up to five hundred feet on either side of a river, stream or creek that runs through their land. In many cases this type of value appropriation has forced the owner of property to lose his livelihood.
And there need not even be water in the creek for it to qualify as water. Same ole stuff…just change the meaning of the word dry so you have this:
dry (
drī) adjective: 1. Wet. 2. Full of water. 3. Easily navigated by boat. (See "Emperor's Clothes")You don't suppose we peons could use this tactic, do you? It has been suggested many times that Congress should be forced to give up their obscenely generous retirement benefits and join Social Security like the rest of us. I’m all for that idea. Let’s do it. If they complain we could simply explain that we are not “taking” anything from them. Fair is fair.