The whisper of revolution has been in the air for quite some time now, and it's becoming more audible, at least among the ever-shrinking minority known as 'informed Americans'.
It’s not only local, state and federal governments that are stealing our land from us, under the (completely convoluted from its original intent) right of ‘eminent domain’. The so-called legal/justice system is using all manner of wicked precedent to commit major, obscene private land grabs as well … all such crimes tracing back to a desire for more wealth and power on the part of those who already wield more than you or I.
Before inserting the precious words ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ into the Declaration, our Founders seriously considered using the wording ‘life, liberty and property’ (as originated by John Locke). I believe the latter to be a more powerful representation of our inalienable rights, but apparently the modern American government/judicial system vehemently disagrees with either expression.
Not sure whether you’re yet familiar with the plight of the Kirlin family of Boulder, Colorado. If not, get ready to spit nails.
Don and Susie Kirlin own a lucrative business in which they acquire foreign fighter jets from around the world to sell to wealthy aviation enthusiasts and to help train U.S. Navy pilots. Wired magazine ran a 2005 profile of Don Kirlin entitled, 'Building Your Own Air Force, One Mig at a Time'. Kirlin enjoys a reputation among aviators, both private and military, because of his collection of foreign fighter jets, which he often uses in training missions in co-operation with the U.S. Navy.
Don and his wife, Susie, own a vacant lot, worth roughly a million dollars in today’s market, on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado. They purchased it about twenty years ago with the idea of eventually building their retirement home there. It is located just down the road from their current home, they walk by the land regularly, and have been paying taxes on it faithfully for the past two decades.
Unfortunately for the Kirlins the couple that owns a home adjacent to their lot consists of a county judge, Richard McLean, and his wife, Edith Stevens, who is also an attorney. It seems that this ambitious couple has been using a portion of the Kirlins’ land to occasionally hold their own private parties, and, in doing so, they have also created worn pathways through portions of that land.
As a result, McLean and Stevens have invoked the doctrine of ‘adverse possession’, which allows a citizen to claim another’s property simply by virtue of using it for a specified period of time, in order to declare one third of the Kirlins’ land as their own.
When the Kirlins attempted to build a fence on a portion of their vacant land before beginning construction on it, McLean and Stevens had a restraining order issued against them, stating that, since they had been using the land themselves for some time, they had become ‘attached’ to it. The restraining order was issued within a few hours of their request for it. Apparently the wheels of justice move at lighting speed, if the person requesting the moving has the right connections.
As if the preceding weren’t evidence in itself of unmitigated chutzpah, McLean and Stevens are not only claiming to ‘own’ a large portion of the land in question (without ever having paid a penny for it, or any of the taxes incumbent in its ownership), they are also asking the court to rule that the Kirlins must pay any legal fees that they incur in order to achieve this particular theft.
Thus, as is becoming increasingly common in Amerika 2007, two people in power have decided to use a corrupt system to steal from someone else of lesser political stature -- in this case, out in the open, and without conscience or remorse.
Needless to say, the Kirlins are appealing the ruling (and amassing large, and no doubt growing, legal fees in the process). But I wouldn’t be taking any bets on their success. ‘Fighting city hall’ is fast becoming an empty phrase anymore, because the concepts of government of, by and for the people -- originally made possible by public servants who value individual rights more than government power -- is fast heading for extinction, as corruption, greed, and lust for power achieve a momentum that has become virtually relentless and unstoppable. Not to mention the fact that both the eighth (re: coveting) and tenth (re: stealing) of the Ten Commandments have essentially been declared null and void.
This case vividly portrays the battle between the average American citizen and our modern American 'ruling elite'.
That elite is gaining an increasingly strong foothold in the fabric of our society, and robbing you and me of our individual liberties (among them, the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to private property) daily.
But too many of us are more interested in the comfort of our couches, and the proximity of our remote controls, than we are in the plight of the likes of the Kirlins -- victims of a system gone awry.
How many of us who have read this account have done anything at all to see that justice is done -- even if our action only involves forwarding our own synopsis of it to as many people as we know?
I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that, unless we start giving a damn about the abuses that our neighbors suffer under tyrannical government dictates, those abuses will someday affect us, and there will be nobody left who can turn the tragedy around.
The only difference between appeasement and surrender is the passage of time.
Contact information for Boulder, and Colorado state, officials (thanks to John Cooper) can be found here.
~ joanie