Eminent Domain, A socialist value?

Isn't the concept of "for the greater good" a socialist value. Everything for all? The individual be damned.

Eminent Domain is being abused. Taking private property away from someone and giving it to another private concern is nothing more than legal theft. I don't think our forefathers intended for the concept to be used the way it is being (ab)used today.

To me, public use is highways, libraries, courthouses, NOT Walmarts, townhomes, marinas or shopping centers.

It is sad, no, shameful, when an elderly woman is forced to move from a home that has been in her family for a hundred years.

THIS MUST STOP!

But how? The Supreme Court is no longer the sounder of individual rights. Lately it has catered to the far right and has begun to ignore the wishes of the masses.

There is only one way. We must begin a petition to strengthen individual rights in the excercise of Eminent Domain. Better yet, let's abolish E.D. altogether.

Make these privateers have to negotiate with people for their property.

MAKE THEM WORK FOR IT.

You Are Here

“God” has set in motion a very large and very old universe. We as humans can only pretend to understand it's vastness and age.

We believe things about it that may or may not be true. Some believe we are the only beings that god hath wrought. I find it difficult to understand why a god would create such a marvelous thing and then place us on a "Small Blue Marble" somewhere on a lonely edge of an unfathomably large galaxy.

Cosmologically, we are in the Boondocks of the Milky Way Galaxy in a spiral arm called the Orion Arm. It is lonely out here.

Some thrive on this isolation and are content to just live out their lives in quite solitude. Others allow it to consume them with fear and mistrust of what is outside. Others are spurred to want to leave and see what else is going on in the limitlessness of space. I am among the latter.

There are those "out there" that must also feel this urge to see what else God has created. It is well within reason to believe that there are civilizations that are much, much older than ours and far, far more advanced, both technologically and spiritually, than ours. There are probably those that may well be more advance technologically but are spiritually bankrupt. Then there may be those that are, so far, stuck on their marble in their corner of their Galaxy.

There is nothing to stop them from coming here but for their ingenuity. There is nothing to stop us from going there but for our ingenuity.

I know we are trying.

"Justified True Belief?"

In a comment in another blog (now defunct) someone suggested that I learn something about "Justified True Belief".

That is damn near an oxymoron. Truth is not to be believed it is to be known. Belief is nothing more than a glorified opinion. Belief is not even the bottom rung of the ladder of truth. Belief and faith are bandied about as if they are the cornerstone of existence. They are the cornerstone of man's attempts to justify his actions.

Al-Qaeda believes the more infidels they kill will secure their place in heaven. They have "Justified True Beliefs".

George Bush believes that the war in Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein was not a nice guy. Dubya has "Justified True Beliefs".

Belief is the beginning of the search for truth. It is not the end.