Federal government to confiscate private property for United 93 memorial

Doubtless the word “hero” gets tossed around far too cavalierly, but I do think it applies to the men and women of United Flight 93.  In many ways, they were the first soldier fatalities in the war on terror, and I think a memorial at the crash site is a fine idea.

But let’s get the federal government involved in a fine idea and see what happens.

It seems there are holdouts (clinging to guns and religion, no doubt—this was the antecedent part of the country for that remark, I believe) who don’t want to sell their land; who have this quaint notion of something called “private property.”  According to this story, if “negotiations” continue to fail, the government intends to use eminent domain to take the land near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Yeah.  So.

First, I find the idea of a sprawling, “destination”-type memorial distasteful anyway.  (“Hey kids, what say we hit the Flight 93 memorial on the way home from seeing the groundhog?”)  I think a granite edifice, a flagpole, and a parking lot of a few dozen spaces would be dignified and appropriate.  What’s wrong with a bigger-budget version of the temporary memorial pictured here?

Also, note that the story says the government has all but 166 acres of the 2,200 “needed” for the memorial.  Think about that.  What in the world can be done on 2,200 acres that cannot be reasonably scaled to 2,034 acres?  That’s a lot of land, folks—more than twice the size of Central Park.  What’s being lost in that last (apparently critical) 166 acres?  The IMAX theater?  The Flight 93 Bar and Grill?  Office space for unnecessary bureaucrats?

Eminent domain is controversial, and reasonable people can disagree about whether it is ever indicated.  However, no matter where you are on the issue, surely this is a poor case indeed for such.  Todd Beamer‘s rallying cry of “let’s roll” should not come to have the additional meaning of “over the private property rights of the citizens of the country we died defending.”

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