Reclaiming the Ideal of Freedom For Progressivism and the Democratic Party

[imurhuckleberry]

Standing on the steps of the capitol, just before the House voted on its health-care reform bill last November, House Republican leader John A. Boehner proclaimed: “This bill is the greatest threat to freedom I’ve seen in the 19 years I’ve been here.” He used the very same terms four months earlier when he declared war on the Obama cap and trade bill: “The fight we have between the two (political parties),” he said, “boils down to one word—freedom: the freedom to allow the American people to live their lives without all these extra taxes and all this bureaucracy. I say to my colleagues… let’s trust the American people, let’s allow America to flourish, and, most importantly, let’s allow freedom to flourish.”

That is the core of the conservative message, and it has strong legs. Consider what happened to the single-payer plan in the health-care reform debate. President Obama and most progressives believed a comprehensive single-payer system provided the most effective foundation for reform, and they often said so. However, they also knew it was politically out of the question. So they settled for a “robust” but optional public plan instead. That already represented a substantial compromise for them, more than half a loaf. Yet, what they got in the House was far weaker still, a public option so eviscerated that a mere 2-3 percent of Americans would be eligible, most of them with such poor health conditions that insurance companies didn’t want to cover them anyway. They ended up with nothing in the Senate. An opposition asserting the cause of freedom and raising the specter of big government, as much as anything else, brought that result about. The cap and trade bill that Boehner attacked as an assault of coercive government on freedom is currently experiencing a similar fate.

Read more: http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2010/04/the_ideal_of_freedom_in_americ.php

Polls show that individual freedom is a highly potent value for Americans across the ideological spectrum, among strong partisans of both sides and independent swing voters as well. (Center for Policy Alternatives, “Findings From a Nationwide Survey,” Lake Research Partners, November 2006; p.31-32; Center for American Progress, “The State of American Political Ideology, 2009: A Study of Political Values and Beliefs,” p. 40 ) We see our country as the land of the free. We identify ourselves as the free and the brave. Freedom has been the battle cry behind the adamant reaction that has grown against raising taxes. It has been the clarion call in town halls and tea parties everywhere across the country. By rallying around the contrast between individual freedom and government oppression, the Republicans are advancing an emotional appeal with deep and powerful resonance.

The same message has worked with profound effects many times before. For decades, conservatives hit liberals over the head as uncaring about individual freedom and personal responsibility, given their repeated advocacy of big governmental programs and regulatory planning. The attacks succeeded with such thoroughness that not only were liberals put into a perpetually defensive position, but the word “liberal” itself actually became an unmentionable political pejorative—the “L” word. Unless President Obama and the Democrats learn how to counter the opposition’s call for freedom effectively, it will continue to delimit them and the country in advancing the nation’s agenda over the years to come no differently than it proved able to demonize liberalism, emasculate the public option in the health-care reform bill, and make increasing taxes to finance government practically prohibitive.

What is supremely ironic here is that President Obama and the Democratic majority actually are the real defenders of American freedom. It is they, not the Republicans, who represent the true ideal of American freedom. They need to make that case strongly, for all to see, both for their own success and for the nation’s ability to build the stronger foundation required to move forward effectively. They must defeat the opposition on what it has come to presume is its own home turf.