"Individual liberty and the free market are paramount"

Matt Welch, pursuing John McCain like an avenging Krampus, quotes the senator's own maniacal words. I believe it's the same speech about being "ready on day one to be Commander-in-Chief of our economy"--oh sorry that was someone else. Here, however, is a passage from a 2007 McCain speech:

"Property," John Adams wrote, "is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty." Yet today property rights come under attack from regulations that affect every conceivable aspect of property ownership. Mr. Adams would be shocked to learn what both the United States Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Connecticut did to Susette Kelo, an American homeowner, in allowing the government to seize her home for economic development and gain under the guise of "valid public use."

The protection of property rights lies at the heart of our constitutional system. The Framers of our Constitution drew upon classical notions of legal rights and individual liberty dating back to the Justinian Code, the Magna Carta, and the Two Treatises of John Locke, all of which recognize the importance of property ownership in a governmental system in which individual liberty and the free market are paramount.

Then again, I guess if you're libertarian enough, the John Adams citation is damning, too.