Film on Eminent Domain

I recently attended a screening of a not-yet-released documentary film about the impact of eminent domain laws on individual citizens. It is called “Greetings from Asbury Park.”

The movie focuses on eminent domain’s impact on one woman, the 91-year-old Angie, who had spent half her life in her small home in Asbury Park, since arriving as an immigrant. We see her making phone calls, hiring a lawyer and "storming city hall" to fight for her rights.

Asbury is my old home town and the filmmaker, Christina Eliopoulos, also grew up there. It's a formerly vibrant beach resort town that has deteriorated over the last 40 years due to race riots, corrupt politicians and extreme welfare-statism which moved in large numbers of the mentally ill and of welfare-dependent people. This combined with high property taxes and high crime rates sent most, but not all, of the remaining sane, working, law-abiding residents packing.

As a result, irreplaceable buildings like the gorgeous Mayfair Theatre, which could no longer draw an audience and pay the high property taxes, were torn down. My own brief home movies of its demolition are shown in the documentary.

However, the film is primarily about the current government's use of eminent domain laws to drive out the remaining residents by force, and demolish their homes and businesses, to make way for condominiums.

I was surprised and delighted to see that Dana Berliner, of the pro-property rights Institute for Justice, is featured in the film. (She is the daughter of former Ayn Rand Institute Executive Director, Michael Berliner). Although there are some comments by individuals criticizing the city’s redevelopment plan as “Trickle Down Reaganomics” and someone calls for government-funded low-income housing, overall the movie is clearly focused on the injustice of a government taking over private property, in a moving way.

If you’d like to screen the film or donate money to assist in the film’s final editing, distribution and promotion, please contact Kerry Margaret Butch by emailing her at kerrymbutch@yahoo.com. You may also email Christina Eliopoulos at celiop99@mac.com. Say Greg Zeigerson sent you!

There will be a screening hosted by the Institute for Justice's Castle Coalition featuring guest speaker Dana Berliner at Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove, NJ on June 22nd, 2007.

Racism, Freedom of Speech and Mikko Ellila

Prodos has posted on his blog the English translation of Mikko Ellila’s essay. See http://prodos.thinkertothinker.com/?p=325.

Mikko’s essay has some racist notions. While I totally disagree with those notions, I still uphold his right to freedom of speech. Speech isn’t force. If individual rights are to be respected, everyone must be permitted to express any ideas, no matter how false or unpleasant. In a free marketplace of ideas, the best and truest ideas win out in the culture eventually. Once some types of speech are prohibited, any other type of speech can be next. I uphold the right to freedom of speech for Mikko, as well as Don Imus and Howard Stern, as well as Nazis and Klansmen and even Al Gore and John Kerry, despite the degree to which they all offend me. Every dictatorship controls speech because the dictator knows it is in trouble once the people learn the truth.

For a vision of a world without freedom of speech, see Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451″. (Incidentally, Ray Bradbury has expressed anger at Michael Moore for stealing and distorting his title without permission, for Moore’s so-called documentary film with a similar title).
Having defended Mikko’s right to write anything he wants, I will now comment on why I disagree with his essay. Mikko’s essay suggests that members of a race share the same traits. Even if some members of the same race share certain traits, it is virtually never true that all members do, unless it is a meaningless and irrelevant physical trait that defines the race such as skin color.

In life, one deals with one person at a time, not all members of a race. (Even when addressing a group, you are addressing each individual in the group.) Each person creates his own personality, and achieves what he is able to or wishes to, based on the choices he makes and actions he takes within the context of his level of freedom, knowledge and ability, and the limitations imposed on him by his circumstances. Each person is an individual and his race is irrelevant. What he shares or doesn’t share with other members of his race has no bearing on how you interact with him.

If you recognize reality, you treat each person as an original, unique, irreplaceable self-created individual. There is no collective mind, only individual minds. (There is a Collective Soul, but that’s just a rock group, who has admitted to taking its name from a line in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”)

Individualism is the only way to fight and end racism. Taking each person as unique and respecting each person’s rights equally leaves no room for considering other members of his group. Capitalism is the only system that rewards individual effort and allows anyone to achieve what he can on his own initiative, regardless of any facts about any other members of his race or group. Individualism and Capitalism are the means to end racism.

For a more eloquent discussion of these issues, please see Ayn Rand’s essay “Racism” in her book “The Virtue of Selfishness” excerpted at http://freedomkeys.com/ar-racism.htm ..

See also George Reisman’s Essay “Capitalism: The Cure for Racism” excerpted at http://www.capitalism.net/excerpts/1-931089-07-8.pdf and available at http://www.capitalism.net/gr_pamph.htm .

See also Peter Schwartz’s essay “The Racism of Diversity” at http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3399

Free Speech Threatened; Blogger Persecuted

One of my fellow http://ThinkertoThinker.com bloggers, named Mikko Ellila, is having his right to freedom of speech threatened by Finnish authorities. Although I cannot read Finnish, I completely support Mikko’s right to express any opinions and present any facts. Moreover, all indications suggest that his writings tell the truth.

His blog is at http://mikkoellila.thinkertothinker.com/

Prodos’ May 3, 2007 blog post details the issue: http://prodos.thinkertothinker.com/

Mikkos wrote to Prodos the following:

“I am writing to you because I received a letter from the municipalpolice department saying they want to interrogate me because of theanti-Muslim, pro-Israeli, pro-European, pro-American posts in myblog. According to the letter, I am suspected of hate speech merelybecause I have pointed out that Islam is a fascist ideology thatadvocates killing Jews, atheists, homosexuals etc. …

This is a very important symbolic case, the first of its kind inFinland. Noone has ever been interrogated before in this country forblog posts criticising Islam. Probably thousands of people will be following this case already before I will visit the police station for the interrogation next Monday, because I have told about theongoing police investigation to several other bloggers whose pagesget thousands of visitors per day.”

Some action that you can take on behalf of freedom of speech and Mikkos Ellila, action that blogger Baron Bodissey recommends, includes:

Contact the Finnish authorities. The Finnish embassy has a handy US map with state-by-state contact information here: http://www.finland.org/en/

Here’s the main contact info for their embassy in Washington:

Embassy of Finland
3301 Massachusetts Avenue
N.W.Washington D.C. 20008
U.S.A

Tel. +1-202-298 5800Fax: +1-202-298 6030
E-mail: sanomat.was@formin.fi
Homepage: www.finland.org

Per Baron Bodissey: “Don’t be shy: remind the Finnish authorities how highly-regarded free speech is in their country. It seems that they may have forgotten that.”