Mel Brooks - Sage of Property Rights?

I've updated my profile with two additional movies (and a couple of books). Empire of the Sun is one of Steven Spielberg's more underrated films - a tremendously moving story about a young boy's survival in a Japanese prison camp in China during the Second World War. And Chariots of Fire is a film I've loved since I was a boy - I used to watch it every track season, where I was a 400-yard runner.

But I had the opportunity to watch Blazing Saddles again recently (alright, I was at Target, and the 30th Anniversary DVD was on sale for $7.50!), and I guess I hadn't been thinking about it all the times I've watched it before (call me distracted by the Campfire scene), but at it's core, the film is about private property rights.

In fact, it is entirely relevant to today, because it is about the taking of private property by government officials for private gain, the quintessence of the problem of abuse of eminent domain, as seen in Kelo.

Think about it - all the people of Rock Ridge want to do is keep their land. But state attorney general, Hedley Lamarr, wants to run the railroad through the town and grab the land for himself.

Brooks recognizes that this is wrong - showing just how despicable Lamarr and his brood are, and how good and heroic the people of Rock Ridge (and their saviors, personified by Bart and the Waco Kid) are. They defend themselves, even when the government pulls out all the stops and attempts its final drive to run the people off of their land, and are ultimately victorious.

He captures the realities, albeit in a simplified form, of the lengths to which government is willing to go to take land: subtle threats, subterfuge, naked force. But what makes the film so prescient is one scene in particular: early on, Lamarr realizes that he's going to have this opportunity to take all this valuable land. So he turns to legal precedent - and just as it is today, Lamarr finds what he needs, in the form of Supreme Court caselaw (Haley v. United States: Haley - 7, United States - 0). Yes, of course, Haley is fictional.



The point is, when I speak on the issue of eminent domain, I talk about the historical underpinnings. How we got from there to here, how the Supreme Court was relying on 130 years of precedent and what had happened to make it so. And in reaching way back in the mists of history, we are left with the actions of men like Hedley Lamarr. The condenmation of private property for railroad lines was the meager start of a line of takings that leads to the abuse of today.



So, as funny as Blazings Saddles is (and it is still funny, even after 30 years). I am nevertheless poignantly reminded that for all the possible examples of situations in which townspeople were able to battle with the help of the Barts and Waco Kids of the west, there were a lot of people irreparably harmed.

Moreover, as funnily foul as Harvey Corman's Lamarr was, there all far too many of them still in the world today - even more foul, but not funny in the slightest.

- Andrew Langer