In the movie, "The Bridge on the River Kwai," after seeing the magnificent bridge he built with military slave-labor, blown to smithereens, Col. Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness, exclaims, "What have I done?"

Don't we all wish that Supervisor Dianne Jacob would also experience such an epiphany and exclaim, "What have I done?" when surveying her contribution to the gradual murder of private property rights? What has her one additional straw on the camel's back -- the back upholding the miracle of the America Dream done?

Oh, how we wish she would have an epiphany understanding that communities don't have rights -- only individuals have rights -- and that without property rights no other rights are possible. Not the rights of free speech, press, religion, etc.

Oh, how we wish the America she loves would be more important to her than pandering to the non-property-tax-paying voters and self-proclaimed environmentalists. That she would renounce those who do not want their own property, but other people's.

In the last million years there's been an incredibly short period of time, a couple hundred years at best, when it has been discovered that freedom is absolutely dependent upon private property ownership. And in America there has never been a more congenial spot for happy ever-aftering (while freedom's never more than one generation away from fading).

The property owners and members of CPPR in Dianne's district stand in disbelief at what she is doing when she says she wants to balance community interests. Her words do not portray a legitimate concept; they betray it. Her words hijack the positive connotations associated with an idea to mislead enthusiasm. Jeremy Bentham called such words "impostor terms." They are deceitful.

Jacob using impostor terms says she respects "everybody's property rights, people who own property today and community members that live in the communities, they have property rights, too." She elaborates: "I try to balance those rights ... those who own property and those who live in communities ... the community's interests, which are the people's who live in the communities and balance their rights too, the community as a whole."

Dianne is befuddled. The first purpose of government is the protection of individual rights, not community rights. Community rights are not only vague, undefined, but impossible to define. Most politicians when using "community" mean that segment of the population they expect to vote for them. The proper function of government however, is the prevention of the looting of one portion of the population for the benefit of others regardless of votes. If Dianne cannot comprehend the difference between paying for land and not -- there's little we can do about it in the short term.

Dianne Jacob by far is the government's most enthusiastic supporter of the new General Plan. She is oblivious of the "Little Soviet Dictionary's" definition that "planning" is a synonym for “socialism." Although in this country we sanitize planning to mean socialism only when an "entire economy" is planned -- a distinction without a difference -- which nonetheless causes planners to have conniption fits.

There are five members of the Board of Supervisors, not bad people, people neither uneducated, or unintelligent, or irrational in ordinary matters, who seem absolutely unfitted by nature to have the right or the power to rule over others. They may think they know everything about planning, can plan 30 years into the future, even plan the unknown future. Except the new General Plan Update is not about planning -- it's about controlling -- controlling where you and I will live -- how we will live 30 years from now. Which of them have ever even planned their personal futures 30 years hence?

Who among the supervisors will defend us? Defend our property rights? Defend the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our children? Milton Friedman often said we have the right people in government -- the trick is how to get them to do the right thing.

How do we get Dianne Jacob to do the right thing?

Lastly, who does Dianne Jacob really represent? Her supervisorial district has a population of 570,543 of which 285,980 are registered to vote. In 2008 she was re-elected with 24.3 percent of those registered to vote (or about 12 percent of the population by which her district is formed).
 

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                                     Schnaubelt, president of Citizens for Private Property Rights, has been a commercial real estate broker
                                     for 39 years and was a San Diego City Councilman from 1977-81.

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