Published: June 14, 2007 10:28 am         

Donation box or not, Flight 93 Memorial is wrong

Controversy rages in Somerset County as a local property owner, Mike Svonavec, refuses to sell his land to organizers of a forthcoming federal memorial to the victims of Flight 93, a hijacked airliner that crashed there on Sept. 11, 2001.

Congress has authorized up to $10 million to purchase land for the memorial. On top of that, the National Park Service will be responsible for building the project once the land is acquired. The total price tag? At least $58 million.

Svonavec insists that his land is worth $50 million, but he would be willing to part with it for $10 million. That would put the project well over its land budget limit, since it has already paid for adjoining parcels from other owners and has a lot more left to buy.

Thus the parties are locked in a standoff.

Organizers of “Families for Flight 93” were particularly incensed not only at Svonavec’s decision to hold out, but also at his placement of a donation box at the site.

Although the box says “Flight 93 National Memorial,” money donated actually goes to Svonavec, who said he needs to pay for his security costs of $10,000 per month, for which both the government and Families for Flight 93 refuse to reimburse him.

Probably the two sides will negotiate further, and Svonavec will sell his land. If not, though, Families for Flight 93 President Ed Root threatens that the use of eminent domain to forcibly take the property is not “off the table.”

Whatever the merits of a Flight 93 memorial – and however questionable Svonavec’s taste may or may not be in handling this situation – such an outcome would be a disgrace.

Politicians have already used the Sept. 11 tragedies as a pretext for destroying our liberties in countless ways. To now attack private property rights for a monument would be yet another step in the wrong direction, and another cost of that day’s events.

Further, in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Americans have shown that they do not approve of government taking one person’s property to benefit someone else’s pet project. A Flight 93 memorial shouldn’t be tainted by association with such injustice.

But even if the government doesn’t have to resort to eminent, one might question whether a memorial is something the federal government should be funding at all.

After all, tax dollars will fund the purchase regardless.

This simply means that even if the government does not steal land from Svonavec to build the memorial, it will still steal money from all of us to pay for it, through taxes.

Compared to that, what’s so wrong with a donation box?

And it’s not like building memorials is anyone’s idea of a necessary function of government. Although the government has paid for plenty of memorials in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere over the years, the power to do this appears nowhere in the Constitution.

It’s also unsavory and un-American that, as a result of a terrorist attack, Svonavec’s land will be taken out of productive use forever. Until Sept. 11, that land was used for surface mining. Now, instead of being used for mining – directly and indirectly serving countless consumers in the United States and around the world – the land will be kept out of the productive sector of the economy, and instead will leech off taxpayers. If this land is forever kept out of beneficial economic use, haven’t the terrorists won at least a limited victory?

One might also ponder the necessity of a $58 million monument. What would be wrong with a simple, tasteful marker, maybe with a list of names? When else has disaster, or even a few individuals’ heroism, warranted such an enormous display?

I wouldn’t presume to speak for the Flight 93 victims, but if I’m ever killed by terrorists, I do not want any landowner or taxpayer to be forced by the government or my relatives to honor my memory with a macabre tourist attraction. The best way to honor my memory, and those of all victims of terrorism, would be to take care to see that our liberties as Americans continue to be protected as much as possible – from terrorists and government.



J.H. Huebert is a lawyer and adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.

     

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