The question of. who owns what has been around forever. Our cave-dwelling ancestors enforced their claims with clubs and rocks. Modern neanderthals do so with a poisonous mix of pseudo-science and words with no clear definition. They are no less evil and no less deadly.

Other than this self-contradicting phrase, "...constitutionally mandated unalienable rights...", it was a good and interesting piece.

The defining moral issue of our time is property rights, starting with self ownership. It encompasses, taxes, regulations, gun control, environmentalism, political correctness.

John Locke defined Property Rights in the 1590's and Adam Smith codified their value in 1776.
Excessive governance, any extravagance beyond Thomas Jefferson's "Who governs best, governs least." is the absolute antithesis of Locke and Smith's standards. Our Constitution supported those standards, however our Founding Fathers and Mothers, failed in their consideration of their progeny. They thought, mistakenly, that our government would always be run by patriots who took literally the meaning of Kennedy's words on January 20th 1961. The "Torch was [not] passed to a new generation," it was passed to a new generation of crooks: witness what the Kennedy's did for themselves in the dissolution of the natural monopoly that was the American Telephone & Telegraph Company and how much money RFK wasted in his prosecutions of Hoffa and the Teamsters at the behest of the commercial banking industry. Hoffa and the Teamsters were not ethically correct, doing business with Sam Giancarna and the Cosa Nostra, but the 11 percent interest paid on pension fund loans was 10.975 percent better than what was being paid by the Bankers.
Our government first went off course when Andrew Jackson favored some rich business interests who rewarded him in a princely fashion for using Federal Authority and Military Power to vacate 1.5 billion acres of legally held Native American Land.
Virtually everything since, except the 13th, 14th and 19th Amendments have been similar miscarriages of Human Rights, and are violations of the sacred trust given us by our forefathers.

If you see one of these "Progressives" stones toss it in the nearest lava pit.

"Sustainability' is just another progressive excuse for the control of your life by an "expert" opinion, with the elites getting to determine who the "experts" are! It's a rigged game from the beginning.

I never let anyone else define for me what things mean. That's why most logical arguments go off in the weeds in the first place: they start with a bad definition.

The goal is for government to control land, and where the people live on it. It has nothing to do with science, just about control. Our oxymoronic Prez tells his black voters they deserve mortgages, and he will stand up for their getting homes. With the other hand, he is signing on to the UN sustainable idea of Agenda 21, which will then strip them of that home ownership. They lose, government wins. The whole idea is to get people herded into urban high rises, no cars, no A/C, no refrigeration, and no red meat. That makes them beholden to government for their existence, slaves of sort. It will destroy the economy, but that also is a goal. Read the Earth Charter or the content of Agenda 21.

so, Jan, "sustainability" plus eminent domain equals
the death of physical property rights ... as though
the progressives needed another excuse. -- j

The genius of the progressive's stone is that it masquerades as doing good for humanity even as it enslaves it. Everyone is willing to say sure I want clean air -- or whatever other cause is put forth. But hidden just below the surface is the price that must be paid whenever the state takes on the task, no matter how seemingly beneficial. The price is always a loss of freedom, no matter whether it manifests itself via property, money, or speech as in political correctness.

I love WUWT, best site for GloBULL warming information and the comments are intelligent, too.

Good analogy. Thanks.

the good doctor is a very bright man. thank you jlc for posting this article.