The Democrats Didn’t Take ‘Freedom’ Away from the Republicans
It’s more like that the right suddenly doesn’t believe in freedom anymore
Much has been said about the Harris-Walz campaign’s decision to make ‘freedom’ a central theme of their campaign. Some have described it as snatching the word ‘freedom’ from the Republicans, who have been using it extensively for many years. The Democrats’ use of freedom this year is unsurprising, given their focus on abortion and reproductive rights post-Dobbs. However, I think what many people failed to notice is that the Republicans have decided not to talk about freedom much this year. That the Democrats have decided to frame their campaign in terms of freedom doesn’t prevent Republicans from doing the same. There have always been competing progressive-leaning and conservative-leaning cases for freedom, and the Democrats running on a particular progressive case for freedom doesn’t prevent Republicans from running a conservative case for freedom to compete with it. Rather, it is the Republicans’ choice, and their choice alone, to de-emphasize freedom.
In fact, the absence of ‘freedom’ from the Republican campaign this year would be a stark departure from their usual offerings, even if the Democrats didn’t decide to emphasize freedom. Ronald Reagan, the most popular Republican president of the 20th century, built his entire brand on a particular conservative understanding of freedom. His most famous quote is ‘freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction’, and The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation has a ‘Ronald Reagan Freedom Award’, the most recent recipient being Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Even Bush-43, who actually restricted civil liberties as part of his War on Terror, nevertheless talked a lot about freedom. He called his 2003 Iraq War ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, and his supporters invented the term ‘freedom fries’. Bush’s embrace of the word ‘freedom’ despite restricting civil liberties is also proof that one can indeed campaign on freedom even whilst limiting it, and voters aren’t likely to worry too much about the hypocrisy. Even Ron DeSantis made ‘freedom’ a big part of his 2022 re-election campaign, despite the controversies over Don’t Say Gay and the War on Disney showing that he’s not really that into freedom. The point here is, ‘freedom’ has become a reflexive branding exercise for many Republicans, and they are not afraid to use it even when they haven’t truly embraced it, and their base will still happily drink the kool-aid. This of course also means that, despite the post-Dobbs abortion bans in many states, there really is nothing to prevent the Republicans from running hard on ‘freedom’ this time. Dobbs or no Dobbs, whatever the Democrats do, nothing can prevent the Republicans from running yet another freedom-centered campaign.
I think the Republicans not running on freedom this year has to be seen in the context of the recent evolution of the right, more broadly speaking. When Trump was last in the White House, the right was still all about freedom. In particular, given the rise of left-wing cancel culture during that period, right-aligned influencers talked a lot about the lack of free speech on the left, particularly on college campuses. Religious freedom was another one of their favorite talking points, especially in the context of how personal religious belief could interact with gay marriage. When talking about these things, the right would often say that they are just standing up for classical liberal values. Yet around 2021, there was an abrupt change. One by one, right-wing influencers began blaming liberalism, including classical liberalism, for the rise of the ‘woke’ left. They painted a picture where classical liberal values would inevitably lead to the ‘woke’ left, despite it not making sense at all, and going against everything they were saying just a year or two ago. One by one, they began to embrace an authoritarian, conformist version of nationalist ideology, often tinged with very reactionary religious views, the kind that could have come straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale. Of course, they stopped talking about themselves as classical liberals or libertarians completely. In short, a major section of the right was losing its belief in freedom, and doing so very, very quickly. I mean, even a simple reform like gay marriage took about 20 years for the majority of the public to accept. The point is, change naturally comes slowly. Yet a significant number of people on the right were giving up their former commitments to freedom almost overnight, and doing so in a way that frankly looks like it was coordinated. It seems that Reagan was way too optimistic about freedom always being just a generation away from extinction: in some circles, it can go extinct within a year or two. Something very significant, and potentially very horrible, was happening here, I thought.
Trying to dig deeper led me down the rabbit hole of the authoritarian-populist New Right, and their dangerous ideas. It was sort of familiar for me. After all, I had been here before, just a few years earlier, when my frustrations with left-wing cancel culture led me to discover the interlocking network of thinkers and ideas around postmodernism and critical theory. While I had known about the work of Curtis Yarvin and the neoreaction movement for about a decade, I was surprised to know that it has been becoming really influential in some circles. In particular, I was surprised, and indeed terrified, that a Republican candidate running for US Senate that year, by the name of JD Vance, was publicly talking about Yarvin’s ideas in a positive way. (Little did I know that he would go on to become Trump’s VP pick!) I was also surprised to learn about the ‘postliberal right’, a collection of right-wing thinkers who really, really hated all of classical liberalism, all the way back to John Locke, and actively wished for ‘regime change’ in the West. And then, there were the New Right activists who liked berating Republicans who ‘still worshipped Reagan’ for ‘not knowing what time it is’. These people clearly don’t believe in freedom, and they want to take over the right, and then the whole West. And worryingly, Trump himself seems to be listening more and more, as evidenced by his decision to choose JD Vance as his running mate, as well as the general de-emphasis on freedom in his campaign this year.
In politics, almost nothing is accidental, and even the most subtle of shifts could be very important.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
