It does not require a particularly profound insight to point out that the Democrats have made “freedom” a central theme of their party convention this week in Chicago.
Less carefully examined is the question of why Democrats talk so eagerly about freedom. The answer says more about the American electorate and the current state of the Republican Party than it does about Vice President Kamala Harris, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz or any other Democratic dignitary who graced the stage at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this week.
This is partly because the Democrats’ attempt to portray themselves as the “party of freedom” is as incoherent nonsense as ReasonMatt Welch and Liz Wolfe have already described in detail (with support from New York Times Columnist Jane Coaston in the current issue of I just ask questions). Pick a few examples: COVID-19 lockdowns (including Walz’s creepy lockdown hotline) and school closures, bans on gas stoves, tax hikes, price controls, and so on. We don’t need to belabor this point; it’s pretty obvious.
But political rallies are more about show business than serious politics, and Democrats clearly believe there is a lot of money to be made in advocating freedom, even if only rhetorically. So it’s interesting to ask: Why?
The obvious reason: voters like freedom!
This is not a subtle or complicated point. Freedom does very well in polls. Look at the list of items in this Cato Institute poll that score “extremely well” with a majority of Americans: freedom of speech (74 percent), freedom of religion (68 percent), freedom of assembly (67 percent), freedom of the press (62 percent), and so on.
In this April Associated Press poll, the pro-liberty numbers are even stronger.
On the other hand, most Americans are also concerned about lose these freedoms. “In most groups, at least 60 percent say there will be a net loss of freedoms and rights over the next decade,” the APM Research Lab found in a survey several years ago. In the Cato survey released in July, 74 percent of respondents made a similar statement.
This isn’t rocket science either! Freedom sells, baby. And at a time when support for both major parties is waning (and was never particularly high to begin with), it makes perfect sense for either major party to invoke the banner of protecting freedom – a cause many people cherish and fear losing.
Is that honest? Absolutely not! But it’s definitely an opportunity to get some of the double haters on their side.
That possibility exists in part because Republicans have given up that moral high ground. For as long as I can remember, Republicans have been better at talking about freedom. A lot of it was empty rhetoric, too, but some of it was translated into policy. The right to bear arms. School choice. Religious freedom. All that good stuff.
If you had told me that there would be a political congress where one of the evenings would be under the motto “A fight for our freedoms” and the word would be mentioned almost 100 times FreedomI would have bet a considerable amount of money that it was the Republicans.
That was not the message heard at the Republican National Convention (RNC) last month. Not even close. When Donald Trump’s campaign isn’t focused on the former president’s personal grievances, it’s full of populist right promises to use the power of the state to control larger parts of American life. To stop immigration. To raise tariffs. Some leading New Right intellectuals are even trying to convince Republicans of the merits of raising taxes.
It’s not that most Republicans no longer believe in gun rights and school choice, but rhetorically the focus is clearly on other issues. In short, you could say that Republicans have traded their focus on “freedom” for a main message based on “safety” – in fact, one of the four nights at the RNC was dedicated to making America “safe” again. “Freedom” was not explicitly on the agenda.
Of course, there are still some conservatives who want to maintain the movement’s long-standing connection to freedom. But they currently stand far outside the movement’s power structure, not least because they are skeptical of Trump’s rise and the accompanying power politics on the political right.
And if Republicans give up on freedom as a concept, why shouldn’t Democrats try to grab it?
That’s the thing about majorities of Americans who value liberty: Many of them would disagree with you on many other things. Most of them wouldn’t call themselves libertarians, by the way. One of the cool things about America is that those labels don’t matter as long as large majorities believe it’s important to protect freedom of speech, action, religion, etc.
It would be great if there was a major political party that was genuinely interested in maximizing freedom. We don’t have one, but it is a certain comfort that the Democrats talk so eagerly about freedom because they are more popular than any other political party.
