David McElroy

This picture represents one of my biggest frustrations with what passes for news today. Two local television stations had photographers and reporters at the City Council meeting I went to Tuesday night, but they were both gone after the first few minutes. They can’t actually cover the meeting, because they weren’t there for it.

The next time you see a “news report” about a meeting such as this, please understand this. It’s pretty much standard procedure. They show up and get a few bits of video from a few people before something starts, then they’ll stick around briefly to get some background footage of the actual meeting starting. Then they shoot a wrap-up with the reporter talking to the camera outside of the building (while the meeting is going on inside). Then they leave. They can’t tell you what happened at a meeting, because they aren’t there for the vast majority of it.

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When Barack Obama was elected president, many liberals were ecstatic, because it would mean the end of the George W. Bush policies and practices that they hated so much. With few exceptions, though, Obama and Bush have pursued courses that are remarkably similar.

When Obama said at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, “I have put forward a plan that will get our troops out [of Iraq] by the end of 2009,” liberals believed him. He represented “hope” and “change.” But the truth is that we live in a one-party state that simply presents two faces at election time. Despite major rhetorical differences and a few remaining real differences, what you get under a Republican president isn’t a lot different from what you get under a Democratic president. (Health care is the biggest one I can think of, but Bush was responsible for the biggest single long-term expansion of government since the ’60s when he pushed a program to give free prescription drugs to older people.)

The Humble Libertarian has put together a list of 100 similarities between Bush and Obama in office, some major and some minor. Can you read this list and believe that Bush and Obama are substantively different on the very many issues?

For conservatives, here’s the real question. Do you honestly believe that the next Republican president is going to give you something substantially different from what you got from Bush? Why is it that so many still believe the political system is going to deliver change?

If you have a clear deed  to property, you own it outright and can do whatever you want with it. Unless, of course, the state wants it to build a school or public building. Or to give it to a developer to build shopping centers and fancier homes. Or to build a stadium for a baseball team.

Since that’s true, do you really own property in this country? Or do you just have the use of it until a politician’s whim decides to put it to another use?

Here in Birmingham, the city government is planning to build a new stadium and “entertainment district” that will center around the return of a minor league baseball team that wisely fled to the suburbs 20 years ago. Mayor William Bell said Monday that the city is ready to use eminent domain to force property owners to sell.

In Latin, eminent domain means “supreme lordship,” and that’s exactly what it means in English, too. The state owns you and the property that’s allegedly yours. The state is the supreme lord over you. Don’t forget that. But also don’t forget why you’ll be better off without the state.