According to the Associated Press, the government will soon begin taking land from seven property owners to build a $58 million Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania.

I’m sure most of you remember that Flight 93 crashed in the fields of Pennsylvania after a group of heroic Americans gave their lives in order to prevent the plane from being used as a weapon against the White House or the Capitol Building.  It’s pretty much always been assumed that some sort of memorial would be built for the victims, of course, but I doubt anyone realized the government would stoop to thievery in order to make it happen.

The National Park Service already owns some of the land they need but the government wants about 500 more acres in order to build the planned 2,200-acre memorial for the plane that crashed about 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh nears Shanksville on September 11th, 2001.  The government says that negotiations to purchase the land went nowhere while the landowners themselves dispute that any negotiations have even taken place.

So what is going to happen?  The government intends to take their land by eminent domain.  One man will have to give up land he inherited from his grandfather who bought it during the Great Depression.  A Lutheran pastor will have to give up a cottage where he and his wife planned to retire.  Two other property owners will have to give up businesses. 

The government is actually going to use a process known as “condemnation” to acquire the land.  Condemnation is rarely used. The last time the park service used it was to acquire a tower at the Gettysburg battlefield which was then demolished to return the battlefield to the way it looked in 1863.

The landowners will be compensated for the land, but whether or not it will be a fair compensation remains to be seen.  The government, of course, doesn’t see anything wrong in forcing these folks to give up their land without even bothering to negotiate with them (many of whom were more than willing to give up or even donate land to the project).  The government just wants to make sure they get the whole thing done before the 10th anniversary of the crash. 

According to park service spokesman Phil Sheridan, “We had a group of people who took some very heroic actions. It’s just fitting and right that we get this done in time for the 10th anniversary.”

So, in other words, it’s “fitting and right” that the government forcefully takes the land of some citizens in order to honor the memory and commemorate the heroic actions of other citizens that saved that very government from attack…  Yeah, sounds about right.