I & I Editorial BoardKamala Harris’ first presidential campaign ad focuses on “freedom.” This might be the most absurd political claim in our lifetimes. The Democratic Party is not interested in liberty. It is concerned with nothing more than expanding its power.
When Harris says in her ad “We choose freedom,” what liberties is she referring to? She never says. Because she can’t. She mentions a few examples – the freedom to “get ahead” and to “be safe from gun violence” – and both are meaningless.
The first “freedoms” is part of our American DNA. What has kept people from getting ahead is a federal, state, and local government framework, whose foundation was laid by Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, then reinforced in the mid-1960s by Democrat Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty. It is a leviathan that intrudes remorselessly into private matters and over-regulates what should be the free flow of commerce.
Can Harris or any of her defenders point to a single example in which she has fought for deregulation to help Americans “get ahead”? For authentic economic liberty? For individualism? For freedom from government?
The second is simply nonsensical in terms of liberty. True freedom is independence, unrestricted choice to live our lives as we wish without violating the freedom of others, the absence of government interference.
And how can this freedom from gun violence be provided for anyway? This is especially curious coming from someone who has supported defunding the police. So maybe she’s talking about shredding the Second Amendment?
Well of course she is.
Is it possible that freedom of speech is one of the unnamed liberties Harris refers to? No, the Democratic Party turned its back on free speech quite some time ago. The political left’s urge to censor speech that it doesn’t like reached new heights when the administration that Harris still works for created a Disinformation Governance Board. Its stated mission was to do the “critical work across several administrations” of addressing “disinformation that threatens the security of our country.”
But as we said, it was established to punish the speech the Democrats don’t want the public to hear.
She’s certainly not talking about economic freedom, either. Harris is a progressive Democrat who believes that taxes must always be higher, even as she and others from that party hide behind false promises that they won’t hike income taxes on the middle class. False because when taxes are raised elsewhere, particularly on corporations, the middle class takes the hit.
The “freedoms” Harris wants require government action rather than limit what government can inflict on an ostensibly free people. We can call this a battle between positive rights and negative rights, but the inescapable truth is positive rights require someone else to give up their individual rights to provide that “freedom.” They are entirely incompatible with negative liberties, which allow individuals to live their lives without the boot of government on their necks. There is no way to ensure positive rights without the boot.
So the misleading ad campaign has begun and there’s no reason to think it will ever stop. This is the party that is built on institutional fabrication and will lie about anything.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
This is the counter narrative that more people, most specificlly those in the Democratic party cocoon, need to hear. I wish this site had more readership! Carry on the good work.
It’s ironic that one of the slogans Kamala refers to. as she advocates expanding freedom. is to pass more stringent gun laws.
She might begin with upbraiding the drug peddlers that generally inhabit the street corners of our cities. However, she doesn’t because she probably doesn’t want to offend her constituency.
I’m sure that any swaggering politician claims that he/she wants to expand freedom. That’s how they attain their crowds. Stalin and Xi, for example. The words, though, don’t matter if the pol uses the freedom moniker to contract freedom.
Using the word “freedom” shows, though, that that pol is “for the people.” All Communists and Fascists are “for the people.” The people, though , they are for are usually the secret police that they institute in their alleged “free society”.
Democrats-and especially Progressives, spray their words like bullets. They mean the opposite of what they want to imply-but to those who believe the words, they could be-and are often- fatal.