Eminent Domained…

Fascism is fundamentally about economics – not racism. It is when Big Business “partners” with Big Government (it’s no accident we hear that word routinely now) to steal money rather than earn it through the free exchange of goods and services.

Examples include Elon Musk and his Tesla electric car operation – but also GM and the mainline car companies, who are just as guilty of “partnering” with the government as Tesla to mulct the citizenry for their benefit – even if their product (unlike Musk’s) is fundamentally sound and could sell on the basis of free exchange.

The bailouts circa 2008 are the obvious example. Rather than take their lumps GM filched our pockets, using the government’s hands in our pockets. (Whether the money was “paid back” is irrelevant to the moral issue at hand; a guy who mugs you in street but sends you a check later on has still mugged you – even if he includes an apology note with the check.)

Another example of American fascism – and one that’s even worse than subsidizing Tesla or bailing out GM – is the use of eminent domain to steal people’s land using government’s guns (and courts, to rubber stamp the theft) for the sake of private gain.

It is happening here in The Woods, rural Southwest Virginia – home of your Libertarian Car Guy. The Politically Incorr... Thomas E. Woods Jr. Best Price: $1.51 Buy New $8.71 (as of 06:15 UTC - Details)

A private company demands that private landowners stand aside and watch as the company sends men with chainsaws onto their land, to cut down swaths of forest, followed by heavy equipment which will install a natural gas pipeline that will deliver no natural gas to anyone in the county or any county in the vicinity of the county. Instead, the gas will flow far, far away – to be sold for the private profit of the gas company.

When the landowners said no, the pipeline company called up its “partner” to make them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Armed thugs arrived. The landowners were forced to step aside.

Like taxes (theft of money) eminent domain (theft of land) was initially justified by limiting it.

Property was only to be seized for the “general good” (as defined by those doing the taking). But it usually meant things like right-of-ways for roads, which did at least provide some plausible benefit to the people in the area – even though that it no way changes the fact that a crime has been perpetrated under color of law against the former owner of the land.

Taking is taking – just as theft is theft.

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