Democrats Recaptured "Freedom" Back from Trump and Republicans

One hears constant blather and bloviating from Republicans and those on the far right about "freedom," yet their version of freedom translates to being free to discriminate against and mistreat others, rolling back the civil rights of racial and sexual minorities, taking away women's autonomy over their own bodies, censoring and banning books, and eliminating safety regulations so that corporations can pollute and abuse workers in their quest for ever higher profits.   The right's version of "freedom" equates to rights and freedoms for the few - particularly racist, white supremacists and Christofascists - and the loss of freedom for everyone else.  In a stunning turn of events, Democrats are recapturing the battle cry of freedom from the right wingers, fueled in part by the growing recognition by those excluded by the right of the existential threat that Trump and Republicans and, of course, the MAGA base pose for the majority of Americans. For Democrats, freedom means an expansion of rights and liberties for all, including the historically marginalized - while the Republican version means the shrinking rights for the many so as to advantage the few. Fortunately, the Republican push for abortion bans, book banning, restriction on voting rights, and desire to police bedrooms has made the Democrat pitch for "freedom" all the easier.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

In 2006, linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff published a book to address a striking political development: The quintessentially American concept of “freedom” had recently been commandeered by the right.

“There are two very different views of freedom in America today, arising from two very different moral and political worldviews,” he wrote. The traditional view of freedom, as he saw it, was inherently progressive, all about broadening and upholding opportunities and rights for a growing range of Americans. But in the second view, freedom was a way of describing the case against this expansion, casting it as an imposition by government against an older libertarian, imperialist, pro-Christian way of life to which we needed to return.

After the patriotic rallying that followed 9/11, freedom became a “frame,” as Lakoff used the term — a metaphor that shapes how we think about things — associated primarily with conservatives. The era gave us Operation Iraqi Freedom and “freedom fries,” renamed to mock the French for their resistance to the invasion, and later the far-right Freedom Caucus in Congress.

By the time Donald Trump was elected, Democrats had to accept “freedom of religion” as a basis on which to contest same-sex marriage, “freedom to bear arms” as an argument for Americans’ having to live under an omnipresent threat from assault weapons and “freedom from regulation” as a reason to let corporations pollute waterways. To some extent, they ceded the case.

But since Biden stepped aside in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris — incredibly, just over a month ago — “freedom” has come roaring back into fashion for Democrats, part of what seems to be a wholesale renovation of the party’s persuasive language. . . . The Harris campaign received the gift from Beyoncé of a banger of an anthem called “Freedom,” whose defiant refrain is now heard in ads and rallies: “I’m a keep running, ’cause a winner don’t quit on themselves.” That traditional, progressive vision of freedom, it seems, is back in style.

Why is this resonating? One reason is what’s on the other side. With decidedly restrictive Republican measures proliferating — bans on emergency abortion care, censorship of topics and books in schools, proposed political loyalty tests for federal bureaucrats, support for autocrats abroad, “Mass Deportation Now!” signs at their convention — the Trump campaign is having a harder time arguing that what they’re proposing is, in fact, freedom. American voters, with their attachment to their votes actually being counted, were mostly not fans of Trump’s refusal to accept election results in 2020 or a potential second loss in 2024. To many, Trump doesn’t sound like an avatar of liberty or self-determination. He sounds like an autocrat.

The overnight reembrace of freedom among Democrats pushes all of that back into its place. What if freedom was, all along, the bending-toward-justice model so many generations of Americans fought for?

This reclaimed vision of American liberty fits comfortably with other slogans that have come with Harris’s rise to the top of the ticket. “Mind your own damn business!” said Tim Walz at the Democratic convention, to roars of approval: That’s a cry for privacy, historically a priority of freedom-minded, small-government Republicans. “We’re not going back!” said Oprah Winfrey: That’s a direct rejection of “Make America Great Again” from the people whose rights gains over the last century are being targeted for reversal.

Honestly, this is a situation where Harris is better-off listening to the “feral 25-year-olds” running her social media accounts, as one deputy campaign manager described them this week. When we all live on the clapback-happy internet, are you really going to convince voters afraid of losing their liberties that they should just smile?

That’s the thing about freedom: Generations of people have died for it. Though “freedom” stands to do for Harris what “hope” did for Obama, it’s more than inspirational — it is a galvanizing signal to people who feel like they barely made it through one Trump administration that Harris sees and shares their fears.

Elections are not won on messaging alone. But snatching back the mantle of freedom after nearly a quarter-century suggests that Democrats have, at this late date, found a clear statement of purpose.