Even a blind pig...

I've been largely dissatisfied with Sandra O'Connor's unpredictable performance in that Conspiracy of Dunces I now call the Supreme Communists of the United States but... Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing in dissent on the 5-4 decision in Kelo et al. v. City of New London, 04-108 emits a a rare—for her—bit of lucid prose: "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory." Well, duh. And that's exactly the point the purer commuists on the court were attempting to make: "Your land ain't YOUR land; your land is OUR land... " is now the song of any political hack who can find a semi- halfway almost plausible enough excuse for the Supreme Communists to grab YOUR land. A strange manifestation of Woody Guthrie's view of property rights in the fourth verse of that old Wobblies—International Workers of the World—protest song, "This Land is Your Land" (usually unsung nowadays, except by politicians who want to steal YOUR land and Supreme Communists handing down edicts): Was a high wall there that tried to stop me A sign was painted said: Private Property, But on the back side it didn't say nothing -- That side was made for you and me! Yep. Private property is now a thing of the past and Woody Guthrie's 1930s commuist view is now come to pass in a way he could not have envisioned: the priviledged are revoking private property rights of the underclasses, not the underclasses appropriating the private property of the priviledged, as Woody dreamed. (My very insincere apologies to those whose bubble I've burst by revealing that Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land is Your Land" as a communist protest and rally song of the 30s.) NOTE: Woody sang the song with various words over the years including this (and other) variations of the verse cited above: As I went walking, I saw a sign there; On the sign it said NO TRESPASSING, But on the other side it didn't say nothing-- That side was made for you and me! According to some reports (which I read years ago and can't locate right now), in later years, Woody almost entirely stopped singing most of the verses, including the ones cited above. Familiarity with the song's mostly-unsung verses has resulted in my enjoyment of it on an entirely different level than before. Yeh. Now, I can just barely listen to instrumental-only arrangements. A Blowdlerized version of Guthrie's authorship of the song is here. How sweet. Full lyrics here. It's always amazing to me to see how the dreams of statist utopians come true fail to convince them of the evil of their statist views. Guthrie could have seen how things were turning out with his communist fellow-travelers in Russia (millions killed; poor made poorer, etc.), but chose to hold onto the dream of the State being run by the little guys, tearing down the walls of private property, giving the fat cats' land to "the people" etc. And now, of course, he's simply painted as a simple soul with his finger on the pulse of the working class. A working class now, thanks to the Supremes' endorsement of statist land grabs (an idea endorsed by Woddy's anarcho-communist views and his Wobblie associations), more than ever firmly under the thumbs of the fat cats. And how ironic is it that Sandra Day O'Connor, a scion of the wealthy Day family of El Paso, Texas and Arizona (huge 155,000 acre ranch, etc.), should be speaking in defense of that one truly important "little people" right— private property—while folks unwittingly continue to sing a communist protest song denigrating private property rights at patriotic rallies...