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You will hear a great deal during the campaign from
the Defenders of Citizens Rights, Inc. ("Defenders") , a group of extremist,
militant, reactionary, pro-developer anarchists. The Defenders oppose reasonable
restraints on land use in order to make the most profit they can from developing
or selling their land for development. They disregard the effects that unbridled
growth has on neighbors and the community as a whole (traffic congestion,
overcrowded schools, raw sewerage, polluted wells, etc). Their extreme concept
of absolute property rights lies outside the mainstream, is at odds with
the social contract upon which organized society is based and is unknown
in a thousand years of Anglo-American legal history:
"[T]he liberty secured by the Constitution
of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not
import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances,
wholly free from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which
every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis
organized society could not exist with safety to its members."
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 26 (1905); Kansas v.
Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346, 356-357 (1997); Syska v. Montgomery County
Board of Education, 45 Md. App. 626, 633, 415 A.2d 301, 305 (1980) (emphasis
added).
"[T]he Constitution does not recognize an absolute
and uncontrollable liberty." West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300
U.S. 379, 391 (1937).
The Defenders are well organized and well financed.
The group's stated intentions are to provide political contributions to
candidates in exchange for favorable votes on zoning matters. The interests
of the Defenders are generally aligned with other pro-developer groups who
want to bulldoze and pave the county all the way from the Mouth of the Monocacy
to the Mason-Dixon Line.
