New At YDN

I respond to Tom Lehman's love note to David Souter. Nut graph:

There is a reason why we, as a society, do not entertain, much less enact, any number of proposals -- e.g., collectivization of property, universal indefinite military conscription, forced communal organ harvesting -- which some utilitarian calculus could justify, and which indeed would serve a more obvious public purpose than, say, allowing a private development firm in New London to force lifelong residents out of their homes. The concept of individual autonomy enshrined in our Constitution thankfully restricts what state entities may do to citizens in the name of the public as a whole, and it is that very concept that Kelo v. New London jeopardizes.