Democrats Aren’t the Freedom Party
Party of freedom? Democrats make it hard for me to own a gun. They make it hard for me to get a gas stove or use the dishwasher I want to. Last year, the Democrats in my city tried to implement a tax on every single Amazon delivery that makes it to my doorstep. They keep legalizing weed, then failing to permit dispensaries so that they can operate within the bounds of the law, so I still buy on the black market. During COVID-19, they made gathering for Mass essentially illegal, forcing capacity and distancing restrictions on people who simply wanted to worship. Don’t get me started on the taxes I’m forced to pay—money I earned, but can’t direct as I see fit—or the fact that, once I start homeschooling my son, I’ll have to ask for permission from the state.
So forgive me if I’m not buying the whole “party of freedom” line that they’ve just now decided to drop. If you define freedom as “the ability to cheaply and easily procure an abortion,” then Democrats are great on it. If you define freedom as “the ability to migrate across borders without proving one’s identity or putting a plan in place to secure legal residency,” then Democrats are great on it (though more hawkish now).
“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make, even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves,” said vice presidential nominee Tim Walz onstage last night at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). “We’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”
If Democrats actually abided by that, I’d like them a lot better.
In Democrats’ telling, spread across multiple nights of the DNC and conveyed by a wide array of speakers, they simply want people to be left alone so they can pursue the good life, sometimes with government assistance (welfare, health care, government mandates that drug prices be made lower) to benevolently aid them in their pursuit. Meanwhile, Republicans—those enemies of freedom—want to ban your books. They want to get between a woman and her doctor. They even, in Democrats’ telling, have such a control fetish that they don’t want to limit their interventions to abortion, but make a whole host of other things illegal, in vitro fertilization and possibly contraceptives included. And they keep it all organized in some sort of evil scripture, this “Project 2025” book, that contains all their plotting.
Fear and folksiness: The vibe of last night was very aww shucks, politics shouldn’t be so acrimonious coupled with aggressive fearmongering about how Republicans will take away everything the American people know and love.
On one hand, it’s a welcome pivot from the Democratic Party of the last roughly eight years, which has been co-opted by identity politics, fixated on America’s past sins to its own detriment. This new messaging is more hop
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