A call from Robert Redford

America Wants to Know will now make a confession.

Robert Redford has always melted our glaciers.

So when the phone rang today and a deep, sexy voice said "This is Robert Redford," we listened to the entire robo-call pitch for a vote against California's Proposition 90.

There was a time when we thought we could never say no to Robert Redford.

In fact, when "Indecent Proposal" was in the theaters and people were asking, "Would you sleep with Robert Redford for a million dollars," we thought the only reasonable answer was "I'd pay twice that."

Robert Redford is a fine actor in addition to being, well, you know, all the rest of it, but even he cannot convince us that in the name of protecting the environment, governments should be allowed to slash the value of private property and not pay a dime in compensation to the owners.

Proposition 90 would stop state and local governments from using the power of eminent domain to take property from one private owner in order to sell it to another private owner for more profitable use. You might remember that the Supreme Court said in its 2005 Kelo v. City of New London decision that states had the power to do this if they so desired (see the earlier post "Seizing your house to put up a mall: Why the Supreme Court thinks it's fine.")

But Mr. Redford warned that the California ballot initiative has a hidden provision. It would require governments to pay compensation to property owners if a new rule or law causes substantial economic losses.

Environmentalists fear that this will inhibit governments from taking aggressive action to protect land and water and plants and insects and wildlife and views and trails.

Environmentalists are much less interested in protecting private property, which is misguided, because private property is the foundation of freedom.

Sir William Blackstone, the eighteenth-century English legal scholar who was a powerful influence on the framers of the U.S. Constitution, wrote that the absolute rights of Englishmen were life, liberty and property. Blackstone said a man has the right to his life and limbs, the right to move freely from place to place, and the right to own and enjoy his property.

If the government has the power to wipe you out financially by taking your property, you are not really free.

That's why the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment says "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

That's why the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 after the Civil War, specifically stating that all inhabitants of a state shall have the same right "to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property." At the time, the former Confederate states were passing laws to prohibit former slaves from owning or even renting land. Judiciary Committee Chairman James Wilson stood on the floor of the House and read Blackstone's fundamental rights out loud to explain why the Congress was putting a stop to that practice.

The Thirteenth Amendment had ended slavery, but it wasn't enough to guarantee freedom. The Southern states were demonstrating that there could be no freedom without property rights.

California's Proposition 90 does not stop the government from regulating land use. It simply recognizes that when government puts new restrictions on private property in order to protect the environment, it has effectively taken that property for public use.

Proposition 90 strikes a reasonable balance between the need to protect the environment and the need to respect property rights in a free society.

If you live in California, vote for Proposition 90 with a clear conscience.

If you're Robert Redford, the two-million-dollar offer still stands.



Copyright 2006

Editor's Note: For more information about the post-Civil War Black Codes and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, please see "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," the appendix to "The 37th Amendment: A Novel" by Susan Shelley.

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