Why the Right-Wing's Cherished Idea That Your Liberty Is Your Property Is a Danger to Us All

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http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/why-right-wings-cherished-idea-your-liberty-your-property-danger-us-all

There is a considerable degree of historical irony in the fact that the word "Republican" derives from the Latin res publica— which means the public thing—yet Republicans are privatizing, and thereby eliminating, every public thing they can get their hands on.

From the privatization of public utilities, and public broadcasting (recall Mitt Romney's campaign promise to cut funding for PBS?), to the charter school movement which aims to privatize public schools, to ongoing lobbying efforts to sell off public land to mining and other industries, Republicans (though not just Republicans) and conservatives are determined to convert the public thing—the res publica, or the commons—into a private thing, transforming the public good into fiscalized, private goods.

While it is questionable whether such policies do much aside from further concentrating wealth into ever fewer hands, one of the conservatives' main rationales for pursuing such a path is that privatization of the world leads to greater and greater "liberty." Among the more vocal proponents of this view is the conservative radio host and author Mark R. Levin.

In broadcasts of his popular radio show, and in the pages of his best-selling books, Levin consistently invokes not only the notion that " private property and liberty are inseparable," but that a person's right to live freely and safely is inextricable from his "right to acquire and possess property." In spite of his and others' tireless proclamations, this so-called right to acquire property is more often than not hostile to actual liberty.