Politics & Power Quote by Jim Ryun

The line lands like a javelin throw at a policy debate: clean, forceful, and aimed at the gut. Ryun, an athlete-turned-politician, isn’t arguing eminent domain in legal terms; he’s recruiting a crowd instinct. By citing a Wall Street Journal poll and the almost-comic ratio "11 out of 12", he turns a complicated civic power into a simple morality play: ordinary people versus an overreaching state. The number is doing rhetorical heavy lifting. It implies near-unanimity, leaving opponents not merely wrong but marginal, the lone dissenter against the nation.

The phrase "even if it is for public economic good" is the tell. It anticipates the best defense of taking property - jobs, tax revenue, revitalization - and preemptively calls it insufficient. Subtext: economic development is a tempting excuse politicians use to pick winners, often at the expense of people without leverage. Ryun’s framing also nudges "public economic good" into scare quotes without needing to add them, hinting that these projects mostly serve private interests dressed up as public benefit.

Contextually, this sits squarely in the post-Kelo era, when the Supreme Court decision allowing takings for economic development sparked bipartisan outrage. Ryun taps that backlash by translating legal nuance into an American identity reflex: property rights as personal dignity. It works because it offers clarity where the real issue is murky - and because it channels suspicion that "public" can become a synonym for "connected."