FREEDOM IS TAX SLAVERY.

During last week's infomercial convention in Chicago, Democrat orators, when they weren't asserting Donald Trump was the incumbent, rabbited on a lot about freedom.  It was all too much for Miami Herald contributor Ryan Rusak.

In the transcripts of speeches at the 2024 Democratic convention, every appearance of the word “freedom” should come with an asterisk.

The key should read: * — applies to abortion rights only.

Democrats have worn out the word freedom* all week, trying to convince voters that they are the party of America’s primary founding virtue. But they can only muster real enthusiasm for limiting government’s power and influence over the individual when it comes to what they euphemistically call “reproductive rights.”

He has a point, and New York's Times reports from Chicago in a way that reinforces his complaint.

“In 2016, people felt they had the luxury of equality in the law and reproductive freedom in the law, and I think many people didn’t see risk ahead of them,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

The Supreme Court’s decision to wipe out Roe two years ago unleashed a cascade of far-reaching abortion bans in many states across the country. Democrats quickly harnessed shock and fury over the decision into political momentum in key races that year and since. At the convention this past week, Democrats offered their clearest signs yet of just how central the issue will be to their fall campaign.

There might have been an offsetting cascade of laws and amendments expanding abortion as well, but don't expect Pravda-on-the-Hudson to acknowledge that.  Abortion is among the mixed bundle of freedoms the Walworth County Democrats touted on their bannerline a year ago.  It's that mixed bundle that I focus on this afternoon.

A constitutional republic is about citizens regulating politicians, and that idea has not yet died in These United States.  Richard Ebeling notes what can go wrong when politicians abridge freedom in the name of freedom.

The year 2020 demonstrated very clearly, unfortunately, the embeddedness of political paternalism in American society, in terms of both the arrogant presumption of those in government to impose nearly a comprehensive restrictive command and control system over the country, and the willingness of so many Americans to passively and obediently follow those in power down a road to economic disruption and destruction as long as politicians and government “experts” chanted the phrase “follow the science.”

The “science” has been found to be faulty and full of exaggerations and factual errors that have ruined the livelihoods and everyday lives of tens of millions of people. Shunted aside were any notions of “costs,” or “trade-offs” in the economic sense and meaning of these things. In the 20^th century’s central planning tradition, a one-size-fits-all response was imposed on people, and with all the usual irrationality and arbitrariness seen in the actual centrally planned societies of the last century. The irrationality and arbitrariness were seen in the fact that different state governments, all claiming to be following the same “science,” implemented patterns of shutdowns and lockdowns and restrictions on retail business different from the others, but often with the same inconsistent results in terms of Covid-19 cases and reported deaths.

And yet, national standards on school curricula or price gouging are all the rage.  But wait, Mr Ebeling notes, there's more!

[W]hether there is a Democratic-controlled federal government or a divided government with the Republicans holding a slim majority in the Senate, the worst of the collectivist fads and fashions will be pushed over the coming years. Climate change-based controls and centralized planning will be pushed aggressively; demands will be made for more regulation of business in the name of “social justice” and corporate “social responsibility;” calls will be made for increased taxes on “the rich” and not so rich to cover more of the redistributive plunder games that are the mother’s milk of political power and privilege; race and gender warfare will be ratcheted up on college campuses, corporate boardrooms, and the shop floors of private enterprises, great and small.

Pajamas Media contributor Rick Moran will have none of it.

Democrats allow the government to make everything their business that they don't much agree with. When the government makes it its business to shut down kids' lemonade stands or regulate garage sales, that's as intrusive as anything Democrats accuse Republicans of doing.

All elections are about "freedom" in some ways. Some definitions of freedom are more expansive than others. The Democrats' idea of "freedom" masks a cloying desire to control. It would be nice if someone at that convention said something about it.

Between Donald Trump being his worst enemy during the Georgia runoffs and his informercial convention in Milwaukee carrying on about security rather than liberty, the Donks had an opportunity to present their own version of freedom, and that was more than some Beyoncé bumper music.

Below the jump we will establish, dear reader, the basis for my gloomy post title.  The Wall Street Journal's editorial board correctly asserted, "Democrats in Chicago hijack the word to disguise a coercive agenda."  Power Line's Steven Hayward correctly characterizes their invocations of freedom as "positively Orwellian."

Reason's Matt Welch, though, catches precisely the talking point on the Walworth County bannerline, which, no doubt, Dementia Joe would have been as prone to run on as Kamala Harris.

Pennsylvania governor, veep pick runner-up, and professional Barack Obama impersonator Josh Shapiro ladled out the freedom thicker than a 1980s direct response television commercial.

"We are the party of real freedom," Shapiro (or as former President Donald Trump calls him, "the highly overrated Jewish Governor") assured Democrats. "That's right, the kind of real freedom that comes when that child has a great public school with an awesome teacher, because we believe in her future. Real freedom, real freedom that comes when we invest in the police and in the community so that child can walk to and from school and get home safely to her mama. Real freedom, real freedom that comes when she can join a union, marry who she loves, start a family on her own terms, breathe clean air, drink pure water, worship how she wants, and live a life of purpose where she is respected for who she is. Real freedom. Real freedom comes when she can look at madam president and know that this is a nation where anything and everything is possible. That is real freedom, and that is what we are fighting for."

Paid for, presumably, with taxes on unrealized capital gains.  Nikita Sergeyevich emphasized the same themes.

With that dystopian record on your resume, it takes a Lake Minnetonka–sized reservoir of shamelessness to proclaim, as Walz did last night, that "when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love, freedom to make your own health care decisions…[and] freedom to live the life that you want to lead."

Making your own health care decision to gather outdoors with the people you love is a freedom as fundamental as it gets. And Walz criminalized it.

Mr Welch concludes with the libertarian argument. "Democrats, and Walz in particular, demonstrated during COVID-19 that not only do they lack sound public health judgment, but that when the chips are down they will sacrifice precisely the fundamental American virtue they have branded themselves as defending this week: your freedom."

There are, however, two systems of belief about freedom.  Time's Richard Stengel reminds readers of the concept as modified by no less than Franklin Roosevelt.

To Beyoncé’s soundtrack, Vice President Kamala Harris announced her campaign in an ad that used the word "freedom" four times. She framed her messages about the economy, gun violence, and abortion as “the freedom not just to get by, but get ahead:” “the freedom to be safe from gun violence;” and “the freedom to make decisions about your body.” At her Delaware campaign headquarters, she talked about the “sacred freedom to vote.” “Our fight for the future,” she added, “is also a fight for freedom.”

For half a century, that word “freedom” has been mostly absent from the vocabulary of Democratic campaigns. The word and the concept, as well as its cognate, liberty, have been coopted by Republicans since Ronald Reagan was a candidate for president. (“Freedom,” Reagan said, “is never more than one generation away from extinction.") But Republicans did not just commandeer the word, they also changed the concept. They altered our sense of its meaning from a vision of equality (which Beyonce calls on), to a more limited, “negative freedom” -- freedom from state power, from regulation, freedom from any obstacle put in the way of free enterprise. Harris is remaking the sense of freedom from the negative freedom of overcoming constraints to the positive freedom of self-realization and achievement.

That quadruple invocation of freedom is no accident, dear reader.  The distinction between positive and negative freedoms is a political tussle of some import, as it gets to how the Federal Constitution is a charter of those negative freedoms: and that word salad about "overcoming constraints" and "self-realization and achievement" is a blank check for more governmental actions.  Tax slavery.

From there, the Complex Propositions proliferate.

It was the philosopher Isaiah Berlin who first made the distinction between positive freedom—freedom to—versus negative freedom, freedom from. Positive freedom is the ability to exercise choice, to act on one’s free will. Negative freedom is the freedom from constraint imposed by others or the state, a limit that restricts one’s goals or potential. In their traditional belief in small government, modern Republicans embraced the idea of negative freedom, freedom from the power of the state. Berlin noted the age-old tension between freedom and equality, and that the pursuit of absolute freedom, especially freedom from any restrictions, can often undermine equality and promote authoritarianism.

I doon't know, between the corona tyranny and the talk of expropriating patents, the Democrats come off as pretty authoritarian. Alas, Donald Trump is unlikely to be Ronald Reagan at calling attention. Perhaps J. D. Vance and Robert Kennedy can do the intellectual heavy lifting.

In the manner of all professional politicians, though, Kamala Harris wants both, and Mr Stengel sees it, and the logical challenges to come.

The Framers mostly emphasized positive freedoms, the freedom to worship, and freedom of speech and expression. They believed their creation of a constitutional republic was the best means of protecting individual freedoms. It was Lincoln who first coupled the notion of freedom with the idea of equality. He saw the infringement of freedom for some as undermining freedom for all, and viewed emancipation as expanding freedom for all Americans, not just formerly enslaved Americans. The Progressives in the early 20^th century continued this idea, and saw government’s role as freeing people from economic exploitation while creating more economic opportunity.

It was Republican Herbert Hoover, by popularizing “rugged individualism,” who portrayed freedom as liberty from an overweening government. Franklin Roosevelt went in the opposite direction and saw the prospect of our freedoms being crushed by global Fascism. To ensure the perpetuation of liberty, he proposed the Four Freedoms. Two were positive freedoms, speech and religion, and two were negative freedoms, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy saw freedom through the lens of the Cold War, and tried to ensure that Americans were free from tyranny. It was Reagan who revived Hoover’s notion that government impeded freedom more than it protected it (“I love my country but fear my government”), and pushed the word out of the Democratic lexicon.

But Vice President Harris’s revival of “freedom” was not something that came out of nowhere: Since the 1960s, Democrats grasped the idea of positive freedom as self-realization, the ability to fulfill one’s potential without constraints. This had its public side in the civil rights movement, which was the freedom to not be discriminated against, and the personal freedom of achieving one’s potential. Joe Biden mentioned freedom 15 times in his 2024 State of the Union, and said “freedom and democracy” four times. (Obama used the word a total of four times in his final three States of the Union.) Harris is performing the same trick of combining the narrative of saving-our-democracy with protecting and enlarging upon our freedoms. That’s a more inclusive message, and a winning one. Listen for a more liberal use of the word and idea of freedom this week at the Democratic Convention, not just by the candidate but all her surrogates.

The Vice President has even started using the word liberty, a staple in the conservative vocabulary and combining it with freedom. “We want to have the pride all people have to freedom and liberty,” she said to the United Auto Workers, “to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home and not have their government telling them what to do.” Those are words that could have been spoken by Ronald Reagan; Harris is commandeering those ideas of both positive and negative liberty for the Democrats. Rather than campaigning on abortion rights (which an ultra-conservative Supreme Court made an immediate issue) she links freedom and liberty with personal choices about “heart and home,” embracing another traditional conservative notion: that culture, not politics shapes a nation. That’s how parties expand their tent and their base.

The Great Society was Lyndon Johnson's attempt to continue the New Deal and the "freedom from want" part of Franklin D's four freedoms, and Dementia Joe, with delusions of being as consequential as Roosevelt and Johnson, is continuing the pretense that giving more power to the administrative state expands freedom.  That's only valid if you consider freedom as paying your taxes and having Washington give you some of them back.