There's Freedom, and There's Freedom

I obviously had a little fun with my AI bot, which generated some symbolic images of Lady Liberty to emphasize my point. Yes, of course, it is biased; I've never pretended to be anything but a progressive. We need to understand what each party means when they use the term freedom, and they will use it a lot during this election year.

I've recently coined a new acronym for our not-so-loyal opposition on the right; make that the extreme right, which increasingly seems to encompass most of the GOP.  That acronym is CFMS and stands for Control Freak Misogynist Separatists. As an alternative, we could make that CFMI, with "I" standing for isolationists. Extreme? I don't think so. Let's look at what both the Democrats and GOP mean when they say freedom.

Generally, when Democrats define freedom, they mean all the stuff the Constitution talks about, PLUS the many civil and personal rights we've added in the last 250 years. Remember when our founders, as clever as they were, wrote that Constitution, slavery was legal, and owning slaves was enjoyed by far too many people. Women had few rights in society; they couldn't vote or own property in many states, and in some, they were legally the property of their husbands. Ben Franklin and the rest of the old guys didn't get it all perfect. Absolutely, give them a break; they were still peeing in chamber pots next to their beds at night. It was a different world back then.

So, what do the Republicans mean when they say freedom? It appears to mean the freedom to own assault weapons and open-carry in the streets of our cities and, maybe, even in the halls of our schools and universities. It means they get to decide what history is taught in schools and whether a woman has the right to decide if she wants to be a mother or if they can force her to bear children.

Furthermore, it means the freedom to bust unions and eliminate things like the minimum wage for workers. It means the freedom to dismantle the many protections for the less affluent classes in our society, like ending social security, returning healthcare to the giant for-profit insurance companies, and ending many of the government agencies like the FDA and others put in place to protect consumers from fraudulent and often harmful products and business practices.

They want to return to somewhere in the early 20th century when few, if any, civil rights existed. They want to re-outlaw things like marijuana and probably a host of other drugs. Some of the Republicans most likely want to bring back prohibition. They want a society that looks more like a theocracy, where the 2,000 year-old words of the Christian Bible supplant our civil laws. Vance has said in no uncertain terms that women belong at home in the kitchen having babies, not in the boardrooms of our corporations.

Finally, they want to build a wall around our nation and keep immigrants - that's generally code for people of color - from coming into our country to do the shit jobs none of us wish to do. Under their plan to eliminate unions and the minimum wage, they figure they can force the poverty classes into the fields to harvest the crops at near-slave wages. They want to pull out of the United Nations, abandon Ukraine's fight for freedom, and with probably the exception of some fossil fuel-producing countries, we just abandon any pretense of being a participant or partner in world affairs.

Now, let's look a little closer at what the Democrats, or Progressives if you will, generally mean by freedom. It seems to me that we are getting much closer to the dream of our founders, who wrote in the preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The Democrats believe in "We the people." We believe in not only justice but equal justice for all classes of people. We believe in the common defense, not just inside our borders, but for all our friends and allies around the world. We believe in "the Welfare" of people. That has to mean that we care as much for the homeless as we do our celebrities and politicians.

A major hot button in this election, and an issue that has been roiling since our inception, is that of immigration. No one in their right mind can deny that immigrants have made a major contribution to the greatness of our nation over the last 200 years. They have toiled in the fields and built our railroad and much of our infrastructure. Their way of thanking us for welcoming them into the United States is to do the jobs we don't want to do. They pick our crops, clean our offices in the dark of night, clean our homes, tend our yards, and clean our bathrooms. They are the majority of workers in much of our medical system, especially in the senior care industry. Yes, we need to find a solution to managing immigration, but it is not slamming the door or building walls. It has to be a humane and compassionate approach, not a ball-and-chain solution.

Finally, liberty, the lady I chose to represent this discussion and who I asked AI to develop an image of. What do we mean by liberty? You know me; I like definitions and words, so here's how Merriam-Webster defines liberty:

1: the quality or state of being free:

a: the power to do as one pleases

b: freedom from physical restraint

c: freedom from arbitrary or despotic control

d: the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges

e: the power of choice

Naturally, a nation the size of the United States will be difficult to manage. We are a diverse nation with diverse wants and needs. We can't just focus on what the corporations, millionaires, and billionaires want. We must take the welfare of everyone into account and govern in a way that provides maximum benefit to all classes without ignoring one or more classes. And, knowing that as humans, we are flawed, we have common-sense laws and redemption programs to address those who color outside the lines. That, it seems to me, is the essence of government, and I see nothing in what the Republicans are offering that even comes close to smelling like freedom and democracy.