Wingnuts have for a long time controlled the discourse on
freedom and liberty, but these are liberal ideals, and we must take them
back…
It says “We the People,” not “We the Evangelical leaders” or “We the corporations”
“Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.”
―John Kenneth Galbraith
Elisabeth Hasselbeck complained last week during a segment on a school that actually dared to teach its students about Islam, that,
A couple of years ago,
the same high school fell under critique, by the way, for passing out a
crossword puzzle to students that defined conservatism as “the political
belief of preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal
freedoms.
She was laughing by the time she finished saying this, as though in disbelief that anyone could suggest something so outrageous.
But it’s true.
Liberalism is about liberty. Conservatism is about defending the status quo, and, as Timothy Ferris writes in The Science of Liberty
(2010), conservatives are “upholders of tradition.” As for liberalism,
“Liberty means the observance of human rights and freedoms.”
No document in history is more dedicated to the idea
of rights and freedoms than the United States Constitution. And to the
idea that we all have these rights and freedoms.
Now granted, as Ferris points out, there are
liberals and there are liberals – classical (“original”) liberals versus
“leftists” – American liberalism that as often as not includes
progressives, and they are not identical because, as Ferris points out,
progressivism values equality over liberty, outcome over freedom of
choice.
To define the two, Ferris provides examples of their
accomplishments: for liberalism, “women’s suffrage and the thwarting of
racial and sexual discrimination”) and for progressivism, “universal
health care and state pension plans such as Social Security.” And of
course, as with most things, the lines are blurred. Many of us are more
or less liberal or progressive or conservative in different areas. The
case of socially liberal conservatives is well known (today they are
called RINOs).
But the truth is, most of us don’t think about
whether or not wanting environmental regulations in the first place, and
demanding they actually be enforced in the second, makes us liberal or
progressive. We just want clean air and water for us and our children.
Definitions are secondary – and often confusing. We just know that if we
grant corporations the freedom to do what they want, they will make us
serfs and poison our air, water, and food.
Conservatives are more than willing to help out with
definitions by imposing their either/or paradigm. They are the ones who
stand for freedom. Liberalism is a mental disorder, something better in
theory than in practice. And indeed, they have controlled “freedom”
discourse in this country for a long time, even while they themselves
are freedom’s greatest enemies.
And look at how it has worked out: Religious Tyranny
disguised as Religious Freedom laws. The right to persecute and to
discriminate, to make some more equal than others, is somehow freedom:
simply put, restricting freedom is somehow freedom, and granting more
freedom is somehow tyranny.
If, in practice, the lines are often blurred, in
theory, and by its very definition, liberalism is the antithesis of
tyranny. And Ferris reminds us that, “Liberalism is inherently
nonpartisan: it means freedom for all, or it means nothing for all.” We
are all diminished when some among us are not free.
Examples are easy to find: freeing the slaves,
giving blacks the same right to a political voice the rest of us
possessed; granting women the right to vote, or to control their own
biological functions; granting equal rights to atheists, or to gays and
lesbians, or to people who are not Christian.
We have, since the Constitution was written, been
inching incrementally forward, spreading that freedom to groups that
once did not have it.
And we are not through: women can now vote, but they
cannot earn as much as a man can in the same position. And to show just
how far we have to go, look at the argument of South Carolina
Republicans that they have the right to discriminate not only against
gays, but against women – a classic defense of the status quo, that
women and gays are lesser people, if they are people at all.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck laughs at the idea that
conservatism is anti-freedom even while Republican Party fights day and
night against freedom. You can hardly look at the news without seeing a
fresh example of Republican repression, from voter suppression laws to
the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana to
David Barton’s call to outlaw “homosexuality.”
The American left tends to see freedom as something
that must extend to everybody if it is to have any meaning, and to that
extent, many who call themselves progressives are classically liberal.
We want everybody to be able to vote. Conservatives want to restrict the
vote, as a whole slew of voter suppression acts demonstrate, or take
Ann Coulter’s recent call to revisit the idea of literacy tests as a pre-requisite to voting.
By the same token, we want atheists to be treated
like people, or blacks, or Heathens like me, or women, or disabled
people, or Latinos, or Muslims, or gays or lesbians or transgenders. The
United States Constitution says (if you exclude the late and unlamented
three-fifths compromise that enshrined slavery) we are all equal before
the law.
To that extent, liberalism and progressivism are
joined as one: equality is mandated by the law of the land: you do not
have the freedom to be “inherently” better than your fellow citizens
because we are all endowed with the same inalienable rights. The problem
is in seeing this laudable goal through to its conclusion and against
the entrenched view that the Bibles makes some people better than
others.
We can differ as to how best get there, we liberals
and progressives, but one thing is certain: conservatism, with its
devotion to the status quo, stands in the way. Conservatives are not
now, and have never been, defenders of liberty or champions of freedom.
The United States Constitution is by definition a
liberal document. A “Constitutional Conservative” is an oxymoron and a
logical impossibility. The American Revolution was a liberal revolution.
It shook the status quo to its foundations to a degree that terrified
even the Founding Fathers, thus one of the underpinnings of the
Constitution itself, to corral these “excesses of democracy.”
Liberals and progressives are sometimes at odds, and
should be. It is part of the discourse of finding solutions to debate.
But in America, right now, the discourse of freedom is the property of a
more or less unified left, and we must put an end to its hijacking by
the right.
We cannot grant the freedoms we want to extend to
our fellow citizens without also taking the word back, and restoring its
true meaning as a counterpoise – and a solution to – an entrenched
status quo.
The revolution is not over my friends.
!['Real Time' host Bill Maher on Feb. 14, 2014. [YouTube]](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bill-Maher-290x175.jpg)
