Dems Redefine ‘Freedom’ to Mask Their Contempt for It
The DNC’s most deceitful theme was intended to hide the fact that Democrats are still the party of slavery.
Veritas vos Liberabit — “The truth will set you free.” The Latin version of Jesus’s quote in John 8:32 has been our motto since our inception in 1996. Not to pat ourselves too hard on the back, but we think we understand and convey the truth, and we know what it means to be free.
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Democrats, by contrast, do not know the truth, and they don’t like freedom.
Arguably still the party of slavery, Democrats take the meaning of the word “freedom” and turn it on its head. The same goes for “rights,” and the two are related. And few Democrats would know the truth if it knocked them in the head.
Constitutional conservatives view this question through the lens of the Founders and the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Democrats routinely show contempt for those things. Life? They’ll do anything to protect the holy sacrament of abortion, including dressing up as and distributing free abortion pills outside their convention hall. Liberty? They are the true believers in pandemic mandates and myriad other coercive measures. Pursuit of Happiness? They push hate and division based on immutable characteristics, and now they also demand the “right” to change some of those characteristics.
It’s beyond strange, then, that Democrats went to Chicago this week and framed themselves as champions of “freedom.” In fact, as Rich Lowry notes, “The anthem of the convention was the Beyoncé song ‘Freedom,’ and the Harris campaign unveiled a new ad, ‘We Believe in Freedom.’”
Wednesday was “Freedom Night,” and Minnesota Governor, vice presidential nominee, and stolen valor champion Tim Walz used the word “freedom” eight times in his speech.
“When Republicans use the word ‘freedom,’ they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office, corporations free to pollute your air and water, and banks free to take advantage of customers,” Walz said. “But 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 healthcare decisions, and yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot.”
Everything about that is backward. I mentioned pandemic mandates, and Walz was one of the worst COVID tyrants in the country. Never mind “invade your doctor’s office,” Democrats wanted adults fired from their jobs if they didn’t submit to putting a vaccine in their bodies. We couldn’t even go outside in some places without a mask. Walz’s inference is about two cultural hot buttons. First is the “transgender” craze, which means mutilating one’s body. Doing this to kids isn’t “freedom”; it’s a special kind of evil. Second is abortion, which entails a woman’s destruction of someone else’s body — someone else with a God-given right to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
As the Wall Street Journal editorial board put it, “Recall how the Little Sisters of the Poor had to go all the way to the Supreme Court — twice — to vindicate a religious liberty not to have to buy health insurance that financed abortifacients. Is this what Mr. Walz means by the ‘freedom to make your own healthcare decisions’?”
The overarching takeaway from Walz’s comment is that Democrats view government as the provider of freedom and the decider of who gets it and who pays for it. They decide who exercises freedom and who doesn’t.
In Democrats’ formulation, the “freedom to make your own healthcare decisions ” means that the government must make you buy health insurance and force taxpayers to subsidize it. The “freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot” implies that the government must infringe on American citizens’ right and freedom, guaranteed by the Constitution’s Second Amendment, “to keep and bear arms.”
In fact, Kamala Harris has previously called for confiscating tens of millions of AR-15-style rifles, which would have to be done at the point of rifles. Some freedom.
The Democrats’ contempt for freedom goes back to slavery, of course, but it ran through the 20th century, too. Woodrow Wilson viewed our Founding documents with disdain, and he believed an administrative state composed of “experts” was best equipped to run citizens’ lives. Franklin Roosevelt popularized “positive rights,” a list of things that everyone ought to have. In order for everyone to have those things, however, someone else often has to pay. Today, in order for one couple to have the freedom and right to marry, another person is forced to bake their cake.
There’s a word for coercing one person to serve the “needs” of another: slavery.
Here’s a fun game: Ask your Democrat neighbor why, if we have a right to keep and bear arms, it doesn’t mean the government should buy a gun or at least ammunition for every citizen.
Here’s another not-so-fun game: Try posting an Unapproved Idea™ on Facebook and see how long it takes for leftist speech suppressors to silence your right to free speech in the public square. Remember that time the White House colluded with Facebook to silence certain speech about COVID? That’s what Democrats mean by “freedom.”
There’s a reason George Orwell’s 1984 soared in popularity during COVID and after Joe Biden’s election. Orwell framed The Party’s tyranny through the manipulation of language: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Few pictures better illustrate today’s Democrat Party.
