Where Have the Property Rights Defenders Gone?

As long as I can remember, political conservatives have been the unabashed champions of property rights. Regardless of the issue, if it pitted property owners against anyone else, those on the Right came to the immediate aid of the property owner. Yet, as the mortgage scandal unravels, I've seen almost no evidence that conservatives are going to bat for all the property owners who are losing their homes across the country. What gives?

I'm not the only person noticing this trend. Joshua Holland of AlterNet is posing the very same question.

Ever since the financial crisis hit, conservatives -- at places like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, joined by some prominent Tea Party groups -- have fought tooth-and-nail to deflect new regulation of Wall Street’s wheeler-dealers...So there’s a certain amount of irony in new revelations that the banks, in their quest for easy profits, appear to have undermined one of the Right’s most important principles: the sanctity of property ownership.

“If you own something,” George W. Bush explained in a 2004 speech, “you have a vital stake in the future of our country. The more ownership there is in America, the more vitality there is in America, and the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country...”

The cynical answer is one that Holland saves for the final sentence in his article: "It’s yet more evidence that despite conservatives’ self-proclaimed adherence to “principles” -- like private property rights -- the one that rises above all others is protecting the privilege of the wealthy."

This is right in line with what I've thought for quite some time. The wealthy elite clothe their arguments in populist terminology to draw in the little people, but it's nothing more than a giant facade to cover-up what they genuinely are after -- total and undeniable control of everything and everyone.