Unbalanced Kopel (Submitted 3/30/05)

Dave Kopel identifies "liberal" as the "left" in his 3/26 column, "On balance, Post has less." His rationale? That "many leftists today are not liberal (that is, open-minded and tolerant)."

Just because many liberals are intolerant of Kopel's single-minded, far right, "privatize everything" libertarian ideology doesn't mean they're not open minded. On the other hand, closed-minded libertarians want to virtually eliminate government and even privatize many military functions.

In contrast, liberals realize that while generally free markets are best, some situations require government intervention and can only be addressed collectively. The true opposite the "privatize-everything" ideology of the right isn't "liberal." It's the "nationalize-everything" ideology of socialism and communism. Because liberals don't advocate that all businesses should be government-owned and government-run, they are clearly NOT the "left."

Everyone is on Kopel's (economic) left. To promote "intellectual diversity," he must lobby for his true opposite: communist columnists. The liberal middle only appears to be on the "left" because this country has moved so far to the right that there is no "left" left.

It's telling that Kopel thinks Al Lewis' column "almost invariably leans left." Most of Lewis' columns expose corporate fraud and corruption. Evidently, Kopel sees that as something the right doesn't do.

Both extremes are out of touch with reality because it's not "either-or", it's "both-and." We exist both as individuals and as a collective. Kopel's extremism on the right, the "libertarian menace," is as dangerous as the "communist menace" on the left. That's because libertarians oppose collective or governmental solutions to society's problems even when individualistic or privatized solutions are doomed to fail.

Libertarian ideology denies society the right to effectively address its problems. Freedom, which they claim to espouse, is about more than the ability to freely act. True freedom is about the ability to take effective action. Libertarians and economic conservatives would rather have someone who wants to exit a room be free to run into walls than be truly free and able to find the door.

That's not freedom. It's tyranny.

Bob Powell
Colorado Springs