The triumph of access over ownership has changed the way we think about rights. Rather than a right to health care or abortion, people assert a right to access those things. Rather than contenting themselves with the right to a free press, journalists increasingly focus on securing access to the people they cover. Access has become a master commodity, an experience that can be granted or charged for but never owned.
That benefits elites—big time. And elites with ambitions in national politics are learning to electioneer accordingly.
We, for instance, have begun to think of the internet itself as a right—something without which life isn’t worth living—precisely because it confers such vast access without requiring any ownership. On cue, a new generation of Democrats is lining up to sell us on the idea that they’ll guarantee it…
Republicans have already run up against the first harsh realities of this change. Even if they cannot clearly articulate the insight, many of them intuit that it’s difficult even to think up an idea like political freedom in a culture unmoored from the habits of responsible maintenance that property ownership inculcates.
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