There’s been plenty of talk about the radical right
lately, involving both the United States and Europe. This is
unfortunately necessary, as ideas we thought we’d left behind
— socialism, protectionism even anti-Semitism — are
back again.

But let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that the only
threat to liberalism is the alt-right. Many forces on the left
support some of those old, bad ideas, and they’re not all
masked antifa.

Take protectionism, for instance. The Washington Post
reports that “rather than jeer Trump’s protectionist positions,
Democrats are echoing them and amplifying them.” The
Democratic platform in 2016 rebuked President Bill Clinton’s trade deals, and
former secretary of state Hillary Clinton reversed her support for
a trade deal with Asian countries.

And socialism. A democratic socialist who praised Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela came darn near
defeating the Democratic party’s anointed presidential
candidate. And both Hillary Clinton and Democratic National
Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz were either unable or
unwilling to explain “What’s the difference between a
socialist and a Democrat?”

Now comes New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, a favorite among
“progressive” Democrats whom New York Democratic voters
easily nominated for a second term on Tuesday,
to explain to a friendly interviewer that the obstacle to economic
progress is private property:

What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to
favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every
background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building
goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the
rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I
hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like
things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would,
too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of
years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to
the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of
development….

Look, if I had my druthers, the city government would determine
every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there
would be very stringent requirements around income levels and
rents. That’s a world I’d love to see, and I think what we have, in
this city at least, are people who would love to have the New Deal
back, on one level. They’d love to have a very, very powerful
government, including a federal government, involved in directly
addressing their day-to-day reality.

This is mind-boggling. The mayor of the world’s financial center, the hub of
American and global capitalism, thinks that the obstacle to
progress is private property, the institutional system that has
brought billions of people around the world out of back-breaking
poverty. Thinks that politicians should determine where building
should be built and “who gets to live in it.” Thinks
that the people of enterprising New York City have a widespread
impulse toward socialism and comprehensive, coercive central
planning.

But let’s not fall into
the trap of thinking that the only threat to liberalism is the
alt-right.

Mayor de Blasio says he’d like to have the power to
determine what happens on every piece of land in the city. Other
leaders have had such power, in the Soviet Union and China and
Venezuela, and those systems did not produce progress. Or even
toilet paper.

The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism says, “Of the different
configurations of property rights, only private property provides a
workable basis for a free society, a productive economy
and justice.” And, “Private property restricts
government power and decentralizes decision making. It confers on
an individual the right to use and dispose of some good.”

That’s just what irks Mayor de Blasio: Property rights
limit his power and give individuals, not him, the right to decide
how to use their property.

Private property is necessary for freedom. It divides and limits
power. It allows markets and trade to happen, creating economic
growth. It protects freedom of the press because ideas are
expressed through property — printing presses, auditoriums,
billboards, audio equipment, broadcast frequencies, computer
networks, web servers and so on.

Countries that have comprehensively denied private property
rights have found themselves without freedom or prosperity —
and with plenty of inequality. Mayor de Blasio’s ideas are
deeply dangerous, all the more so because he’s not an
internet troll or a perennial losing candidate but the mayor of a
great city built on the foundation he wants to destroy.

Like the ideas animating the new radical right, the new radical
left is embracing ideas that have brought human misery wherever
they have been tried.