In building its shiny new headquarters in Manhattan, the New York Times had the city engage in property theft, better known as “eminent domain.” Thus, we should not be surprised when the “Newspaper of Record” demands that the property of others be seized, too.

In an unsigned editorial today, it attacks the former Bush administration for not sooner turning to coercion and theft in order to secure the land for the Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.You see, according to the editors, actually buying the land was “unseemly,” as that meant negotiations for the price. When one is promoting the Total State, as the Times has done since the era of Walter Duranty, then any tactic will do, just as long as state power is increased. In their own words:

The forest green has long healed in Shanksville, Pa., where Flight 93 crashed as its passengers gave their lives struggling against the hijackers of 9/11. Further healing is at hand with the end of rancorous, shameful delay in creating a memorial to honor the 40 passengers and crew.

A running fight over land prices threatened the planned opening — on 9/11/11, the flight’s 10th anniversary — of the first and most sacred part of the memorial: the precise site where the plane plunged into the earth. Breaking the deadlock required a personal plea from the victims’ long-suffering families to George W. Bush in his final days as president.

Congress had already authorized the memorial; the major obstacle was the government’s reluctance to condemn and take possession of the acreage that would form the centerpiece of the memorial. The victims’ families had worked tirelessly on their own to assemble surrounding parcels through donations. Absent an order for eminent domain, however, the National Park Service and the principal landowner were left to engage in unseemly haggling over prices for the core site — an old strip mine sward that is now, de facto, a cemetery.

Mr. Bush finally agreed that condemnation was the best course and ordered the Department of the Interior to seek a settlement in court. The Park Service agreed to take immediate possession so work can begin on preparing the site in time for the 10th-anniversary opening.

The Flight 93 families should not have been put through all this; having to wait while the contending parties haggled over price was particularly reprehensible. The families’ resolve to fight through to a solution is a memorial in itself to their lost loved ones’ defense of the nation.