Jim Hightower

When I think of freedom, I think of it in positive, aspirational terms — our First Amendment freedoms, for example, or FDR's "Four freedoms" or the uplifting songs of freedom sung by oppressed people around the globe.

But right-wing, corporate-funded ideologues have fabricated a new negative notion of "freedoms" derived from individual choice. You're free to be poor, free to be politically powerless or free to be ill and uncared for — it's all a matter of decisions you freely make in life, and our larger society has no business interfering with your free will.