FREEDOM IS NOT A CONTINGENT CLAIM.

In response to Tsar Vladimir's attempt to annex Ukraine, the alleged leader of the free world ingested enough coffee and other stimulants to say good things about liberty and freedom.  That didn't impress Reason's J. D. Tuccille.  "Encouraging words about underdogs fighting for freedom against authoritarianism should have been left undiluted by ensuing verbiage contradicting that message."

It might have been expedient for the speechwriters to add that text.  Bear in mind, dear reader, that this is the same politician who scoffed at "freedom" when it involved going out sick in public.  That's what fifty years of deconstructing bourgeois norms gets you.  A civilized person understands that staying home sick rather than spreading contagion is mannerly, you don't have to have an emergency decree or nasal outer-borough scolding from der Giftzwerg.  I suppose we should be grateful that the coot didn't attempt (because he couldn't wrap what's left of his brain?) to argue that "freedom" is an oppressive concept, which appears to have some purchase in Canada.

That's only the most important of several occurrences of members of the political class modifying or abandoning a position in response to events.  Ukrainian civilians are drawing light rifles from state armories the better to make life miserable for Russian conscripts who have been deployed without adequate supplies or clear orders.

Our right to keep and bear arms is something that any invader has to fear.

The networks, however, would rather you not think about that because they want people to view guns only as something to fear, not something that can be used to protect.

Tom Knighton is being polite.  It's rich having this endorsement of Ukrainians drawing light rifles from the same order of people who looked askance at people using light rifles to protect their neighborhood in Crown Point and elsewhere or their businesses in Kenosha.  The right to keep and bear arms is constitutionally protected, and anyone on record as applauding Ukrainian authorities issuing light rifles while denouncing "assault weapons" in these United States ought not be holding public office.

The most spectacular climb-down has been the widespread and almost immediate abandonment of the corona tyranny, almost everywhere, including in the schools.  Perhaps that's being responsive to public opinion, but I'm with Clay Travis: better to support those candidates for public office who stood on principle, whether it is freedom generally or the right to bear arms or entrusting people to do the right thing in the presence of an infectious disease.  "We must never forget this covid cosmetic theater failure and everyone voting in 2022 needs to hold accountable the idiot politicians who allowed school masking and vaccine mandates to ever exist. I want complete and total electoral evisceration of all these politicians."

Again, as Sean Collins notes, there is a partisan dimension to the corona tyranny, and people who "pivot" for fear of losing an election ought be replaced with people whose instincts were better two years ago.  Otherwise, you're risking returning to office people who revert to form.  This form.  "[I]t has been [Biden's] government, his health officials and fellow Democrats across the country who have been needlessly keeping kids out of school, causing them great harm in terms of learning, social development and even health. It has been parents who have pushed to get schools open – and for protests againsts school boards that refused to reopen their doors, these concerned parents were compared to ‘domestic terrorists’ by Biden’s allies."  Keep such people out of elected office, they'd probably abuse dogs as the dogcatcher.

There's a lot of that sort of recalibrating going on.  "Cultural attitudes have changed in the past few years. It began when the pandemic went from something we should be mindful of to a power that we should succumb to, making people who would not lean center-right lean in that direction when they began to question other power moves they never questioned before."  Those culture-studies attempts to nuance freedom away, for instance, don't have much purchase outside the wokest bubbles.  "People grew weary of having everything they thought, did, bought and wore being called racist. That goes for black people, white people and Hispanics who are deeply frustrated that our politics and culture are constantly trying to pit them against each other -- people are simply just done."

It might be that gun-despising, freedom-nuancing politicians, mostly Democrats, are pivoting (recalibrating their positions, acknowledging errors, what have you) to present themselves as more responsive to what voters want.

If you think the violent crime epidemic in our cities hasn't pushed people center-right, then you haven't paid attention to the diversity of new gun owners who purchased their first guns in the past two years to protect their homes and their families -- or have moved out of those cities.

By the way, this is not about Republicans getting things perfect or even semiperfect or even partially perfect -- this is about Democrats overreaching so wide and so far that they can't see the forest for the trees.

What makes it worse for the Democrats is that they have done it in unison with our cultural curators for so long. When corporations and the media amplify this overreach in their advertisements, tweets or social justice positions or opinions, they just push people even further away.

That's how "consent of the government" is supposed to work, and being responsive to changed circumstances is desirable.  But past performance may not be predictive of future results.  Tyrants might choose to tyrannize, as Erick Erickson explains.

It is really hard to tell Americans we need to get past our differences after spending two years maligning those who wouldn't go along with his agenda. A few months ago, Biden said Americans who opposed his agenda were on the side of Jefferson Davis and those who did not get the vaccine were in for a winter of death. Now, at 40% in some polls, he is calling for unity and urging people to stop politicizing COVID-19. But he never offered an apology for his own harsh words and his turn comes only after leaked Democrat polling showing the public is ready to get on with life.

If I face the choice of a candidate who has consistently been in favor of freedom and limited government and another who was not until the polling data brought a change of heart about, I'd rather be represented by the one whose instincts will not be to Do Something and dial it back later.  Stacey Lennox is thinking along those lines.

Democrat politicians and bureaucrats sacrificed [constituents'] well-being on the altar of politics. The leaders who managed those responses must be held accountable. They can’t retcon the past using advice from a memo. And Democrats must not be allowed to claim victory over the pandemic when the evolution of the virus was what ended the emergency.

By their fruits shall ye know them.

This is what you get when you shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline.

This is what you get when you roll back oil and natural gas production and make us dependent on foreign energy.

This what you get when you leave Americans and allies behind as you stumble your way out of Afghanistan like a dyspeptic Boy Scout leader who can’t read a compass and has lost his car keys.

This is what you get when you focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This is what you get when you bend a knee to China.

This is what you get when you become fascinated with gender and genitalia.

This is what you get when you are so narcissistic that you think every dissenting opinion is prelude to an insurrection.

Any seeker of elective office that treats freedom as a contingent claim will make claims on it when it is convenient.  Turf such people out.