DJ Says...

No, not the Peter Rabbit that Beatrix Potter created. This Peter Rabbit is a 32 year old horse being kicked off his birthplace in the latest example of the loss of property rights in the U.S.

The owner of a 32-year-old horse named Peter Rabbit wasn't able to buck a local ban on livestock within city limits.

After widespread publicity of the ban that threatened to kick Peter Rabbit off the pasture where he was born, the Hickman City Council considered an ordinance Tuesday night that would allow horses inside city limits. But council members ultimately voted 4-2 against adopting it, leaving the ban intact.

Lest you think this is simply urban progress, consider that Hickman has a total population just over 1,000 and is supposed to be a retreat from that 'urban' center of Lincoln, NE, population roughly 250,000. And yet, they were able to annex property that had been in this family since 1935 and dictate what the property can be used for.

I'm very sadfor Peter Rabbit but I am much sadder that this once great nation has all but eliminated private property rights. Or, as Thomas Sowell would phrase it, "Property Rites".

According to the Constitution of the United States, the government cannot take private property without compensation. However, judges have been letting governments get away with doing just that for about half a century now. So long as the title to the property remains in the hands of its owners, the courts let local, state and federal governments do pretty much what they please, even if that destroys much of the value of the property.

He further identifies the root cause of the abandonment of the Constitutional protection of property rights.

One of the reasons property rights do not get all the protection that the Constitution prescribes is that they are seen as special benefits to the affluent, which must give way to the general welfare. The old leftist phrase "property rights versus human rights" summarizes this mindset.

This ignores the value of property rights to the society as a whole, including people who own no property. Most Americans do not own agricultural land, but they get an abundance of food at affordable prices because farmers own both land and its produce as their private property, and therefore have incentives to produce far more efficiently than in countries where the land is owned by the government. The Soviet Union was a classic example of the latter, with hungry people despite an abundance of fertile land, inefficiently used under government control.

He's a fairly bright fella, isn't he? Unlike this city councilman.

City Councilman Richard Harms said before Tuesday's meeting that he didn't plan to be swayed by all the talk.

"I'm not giving them breaks anymore," Harms said. "They've had opportunities in the past."

Besides, Harms said, "a horse is a horse and a mule is a mule _ it's all livestock."

No, Mr. Harms, it isn't all livestock. It is, ultimately, the deterioration of a free society in favor of a collectivist one.