A great deal of noise has been made over the infringement on individual rights by one or another foreign government. It is therefore important we do not overlook basic rights being waived aside here in DeKalb on what may become part of our campus.

I refer to the “eminent domain lawsuit to acquire land west of the Psychology/Math Building” appearing in a story in the Feb. 22 issue of The Northern Star and again this week.

What makes the United States unique among nations is the high degree of freedom its citizens enjoy. The basic right to own property is the necessary base for exercising the political and economic freedoms we as a nation laid claim to in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The act of giving property owners “fair compensation” for their land is a farcical attempt to disguise the porousness of the argument that government can infringe on its citizens’ basic rights. The job of government is to protect, not infringe on, these rights.

If truly just compensation were given to property owners, it would include the increased value of the property due to the speculation of the piratical governing unit, in this case NIU.

A private company, for instance, cannot claim to have eminent domain over an individual. If a company could say to a land owner that since oil was just discovered under the individual’s land, and as it is in the company’s interest to utilize this resource, the property owner has no right to this land other than a sum of money equal to the pre-adjusted value of the land.

The land owner would, of course, realize that his property was worth more with the discovery of oil. It may occur to him to protest this hostile takeover on the grounds the property is his to sell or not to sell at what he feels the market will bear.

I think the point is well illustrated that eminent domain is a disgrace to a great country which was built on individual freedoms our forefathers were denied in the Old World. As citizens we cannot allow the erosion of these rights which are a natural part of the human condition.

As a centerpiece to the proposed “attractive and identifiable entrance to the campus” we should erect a statue showing not a hero, as the Martin Luther King Jr. statue for the King Memorial Commons will, but one symbolic of a government with delusions of prerogatives outside those of protecting the rights of its citizens.

Michael Engstrom

freshman

la & s