On Which Road Will We Go

Thomas S. Monson, one of the leaders of my church, once related a story about how he was driving in his car and observed a young man with his thumb up attempting to hitch a ride. Upon pulling over he asked the young man where he was headed.

“Anywhere”

“Here was one who was content to travel in any direction, according to the whim of the driver who stopped to give him a free ride. What an enormous price to pay for such a ride. No plan. No objective. No goal. The road to anywhere is the road to nowhere, and the road to nowhere leads to dreams sacrificed, opportunities squandered, and a life unfulfilled.”

This past week the Supreme Court Justices have changed the path of our country from one where the rights of individuals to own property have been effectively transferred to government. Whether or not that was ever intended by our Founding Fathers when the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights was written to include the Eminent Domain clause is a matter for historians; personally I do not think that Eminent Domain was ever intended to have such broad powers as to strip away individual rights to own property, and surely not to transfer ownership from one individual to yet another individual or group of individuals based on something as arbitrary as the latest definition of greater good of the community. I suppose we might be likened to the fellow with his thumb out, tagging along with the established rules and laws, the interpretations of those laws determining our destiny; however, this past week’s decision would more closely resemble a hijacking.

We have a choice to either permit the hijacking of individual property rights to go on without putting up a fight or we can hold them accountable for the crimes for which they are guilty of committing. I know where we have been, what is expected of us and what road we should be going down. It would be a terrible waste of our heritage to permit these black robed criminals to take us down a dark ally and steal our country out from under us in this way. I have no intention of going along for the ride on this one.