Thomas Fleming
Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina
A thousand thanks for this discussion. Would that millions hear it and take it to heart. Those “conservatives” who fret so vociferously about the destruction and damage of commercial property should turn their ire and concern to the confiscation (and often destruction, too) of residential property by the sovereign city and county.
Thank you for this discussion. I worked for Pfizer in Maywood, NJ for a few months before their research facility in Groton, Connecticut was being built. I vaguely remember the Kelo case and the issue of eminent domain but it didn’t concern me. The facility in Maywood, NJ was small and quite old. The facility in Groton was and probably still is very nice. I believe they have a new research facility in NY bordering NJ. where research on COVID 19 is being done. Perhaps if many people were involved and they had the backs of state senators an representatives the result would be different and Pfizer would have found other land to build their facility that would not impact people. I vaguely think there was land north of where they built the Groton plant but I can’t attest to it.
In 2009 to 2012 I was heavily involved in property rights where I currently live. My whole neighborhood plus about 900 families was going to be affected and our property taken for public purpose by developers. This was not going to benefit my state, NC, but a border state, SC. In other words, SC was going to benefit at NC’s expense. To make a long story short, we won our case but it was not easy.