Suddenly, Kamala Harris’ favorite word is freedom. She and Tim Walz are crafting a campaign strategy to hijack the “freedom” mantle from Republicans, a brand that the GOP has claimed since the Reagan era.
Traditionally, American freedom has meant that personal liberty is sacrosanct, and that big, intrusive government tramples it.
Harris is cleverly rebranding the term to mean a more activist government and an expanded entitlement state.
Freedom, she says, is the ability “to get ahead,” “to be safe from gun violence,” “to control your own body,” and to be assured the “sacred right to vote.”
Her running mate has picked up on this theme.
When Republicans “talk about freedom,” Walz explains, “they mean the government should be free to invade your exam room, should be free to pollute the air and water; banks should be free to take advantage of the least fortunate.”
Of course, no reasonable person is for any of that.
And for better or worse, many, if not most, Americans now believe that abortion is a woman’s personal decision, at least in the earliest weeks of pregnancy.
But that only reinforces the point that an overbearing government is the antithesis of personal freedom.
The enduring lesson of history is that the worst episodes of tyranny and evil — from slavery, to famine, to genocide, to Jim Crow laws, to severe poverty — are due to too much government power, not too little.
Since the nation’s founding, most Americans have defined freedom as the right to make their own choices about how to live their lives.
On this score, Harris and Walz are best described as the anti-freedom ticket, with dismal records on personal liberty.
For example, Harris and Walz are staunch opponents of the growing school choice movement, which allows families to select the school best for their children.
Doesn’t freedom mean that everyone, of all incomes and races, has access to great schools?
Harris says she will secure “freedom from gun violence,” but crime rates and fatal shootings are much higher in cities run by progressive Democrats, including Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and her hometown of San Francisco.
These cities already have the strictest gun laws.
She’s against a common-sense bill being blocked by Senate Democrats that would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
But when non-citizens vote, their ballots cancel out the “sacred right to vote” of eligible citizens.
Harris favors regulations that would eventually outlaw gas-powered cars.
Isn’t the right to the drive the car of your choice a basic freedom?
Harris backs bans or restrictions on a slew of products, from lightbulbs to air conditioners to gas stoves.
Doesn’t freedom mean keeping government out of the bedroom and the kitchen?
Harris is in favor of the “PRO Act,” a first-ever policy forcing workers to join unions against their will, or lose their jobs.
How does that advance freedom?
Harris has advocated Medicare for All.
Isn’t freedom the right to choose and keep your own health-care plan?
Harris and Walz were among the strongest advocates of severe lockdowns of schools, businesses, and churches during the COVID pandemic — even as evidence mounted that the restrictions were not working to end infections.
Isn’t freedom the right to keep your business open, to attend religious services, to earn a paycheck, and for kids to go to school?
Harris and Walz both supported mandatory COVID vaccinations, even when their safety was in doubt.
So much for the “freedom over your own body.”
Harris favors much higher tax rates on businesses and estates — and even wants to tax unrealized capital gains on the value of a farm, a ranch or a family-owned business.
Doesn’t freedom mean the right to keep your own money without excessive taxation, and the right to pass your life savings to your children and grandchildren?
(Remember: confiscatory estate taxes were a key plank of Marx’s Communist Manifesto.)
At her rallies the Harris campaign blasts the song “Freedom” by Beyoncé.
One of her lyrics: “Freedom, cut me loose / Singin’, freedom! Freedom! Where are you?”
Good question. Where did freedom go over the past four years of rampant government spending and debt in the face of declining take-home pay for workers?
The election may come down to this: whether Americans swallow the lie that big government will put our nation on the road to freedom, or realize that it will keep us hurtling down the road to serfdom.
Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is an economic advisor to the Trump campaign.