Property Rights as a "shrine"?

Jon sent me a link to a brief CBC article on Martin's criticism of property rights:

Liberal Leader Paul Martin said property rights is the "shrine at which the U.S. conservative movement bows."

He said enshrining those rights in the Constitution would allow the government to attack a range of laws.

"If property rights were enshrined in the Constitution then probably you would not be able to ban handguns," Martin said.

Harper said he has no desire to strike down those kinds of laws.

"We believe the Charter of Rights should reflect the right to own property, the right not to be deprived of property without due process of law and just and timely compensation."

First, it's interesting that the CBC is now referring to Paul Martin as the "Liberal Leader" rather than as "the Prime Minister". I don't read enough CBC posts to see if there's been a change in that since the campaign started to get interesting.

Second, I don't see the US conservative movement as being particularly worshipful of property rights . . . see the ongoing issue of eminent domain for a pretty clear example. It's one of those motherhood things, I suspect, in that it only gets cursory attention before the real debate gets rolling. Over the last few years, you would have difficulty painting the US Republican party as being a defender of the right to own property.

Third, Harper saying that gun bans are the kind of law he doesn't want to strike down is disturbing. Theft of private property is theft of private property, whether the perpetrator is a criminal thug or a government thug. The principle should be that legally obtained property cannot be arbitrarily taken without compensation (at the absolute least . . . it'd be more consistent if we could just cut that statement at the end of "taken"). Gun bans are exactly this sort of taking without compensation.