Democrats Aren't the Freedom Party

Party of freedom? Democrats make it hard for me to own a gun. They make it hard for me to get a gas stove or use the dishwasher I want to. Last year, the Democrats in my city tried to implement a tax on every single Amazon delivery that makes it to my doorstep. They keep legalizing weed, then failing to permit dispensaries so that they can operate within the bounds of the law, so I still buy on the black market. During COVID-19, they made gathering for Mass essentially illegal, forcing capacity and distancing restrictions on people who simply wanted to worship. Don’t get me started on the taxes I’m forced to pay—money I earned, but can’t direct as I see fit—or the fact that, once I start homeschooling my son, I’ll have to ask for permission from the state.

So forgive me if I’m not buying the whole “party of freedom” line that they’ve just now decided to drop. If you define freedom as “the ability to cheaply and easily procure an abortion,” then Democrats are great on it. If you define freedom as “the ability to migrate across borders without proving one’s identity or putting a plan in place to secure legal residency,” then Democrats are great on it (though more hawkish now).

“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make, even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves,” said vice presidential nominee Tim Walz onstage last night at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). “We’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”

If Democrats actually abided by that, I’d like them a lot better.

In Democrats’ telling, spread across multiple nights of the DNC and conveyed by a wide array of speakers, they simply want people to be left alone so they can pursue the good life, sometimes with government assistance (welfare, health care, government mandates that drug prices be made lower) to benevolently aid them in their pursuit. Meanwhile, Republicans—those enemies of freedom—want to ban your books. They want to get between a woman and her doctor. They even, in Democrats’ telling, have such a control fetish that they don’t want to limit their interventions to abortion, but make a whole host of other things illegal, in vitro fertilization and possibly contraceptives included. And they keep it all organized in some sort of evil scripture, this “Project 2025″ book, that contains all their plotting.

Fear and folksiness: The vibe of last night was very aww shucks, politics shouldn’t be so acrimonious coupled with aggressive fearmongering about how Republicans will take away everything the American people know and love.

On one hand, it’s a welcome pivot from the Democratic Party of the last roughly eight years, which has been co-opted by identity politics, fixated on America’s past sins to its own detriment. This new messaging is more hopeful: Politics doesn’t have to be so toxic. You deserve better than harassment by politicians. You ought to define the good life for yourself, and have the means to pursue it.

Unfortunately, it’s all a sham. It’s not that these Democrats believe, deep in their hearts, that people should truly be left alone; it’s that they want the right people meddling, not the wrong ones. They want to be able to decide which causes are righteous and just. They want to define what a good life consists of, and use the power of the state to enforce that.

“Investing our very souls into the fortunes of politicians is not the habit of a healthy civic culture,” wrote Reason‘s Matt Welch earlier this week. “The people who compete for the right to control $7 trillion of money extracted from taxpayers upon threat of imprisonment are not your friends. The executives who sit atop the Justice Department, who have control over history’s most powerful military, are not responsible for your hopes, your dreams, your healing. Imbuing elected officials with such spiritual potency is a recipe for self-infantilization, disappointment, and terrible executive-branch governance.”

Walz is not Coach Taylor. He’s not your dad. He’s not just a nice old Lutheran from Minnesota. He’s someone who, at the end of the day, wants to tell you how to live your life and may in fact amass the power (or at least influence) to do so.

Scenes from New York: “Shortly before a talk between a Jewish author and a liberal rabbi, a manager at Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn barred the rabbi from participating, saying, ‘We don’t want a Zionist onstage,’” according to The New York Times.

• Rumors have been swirling that RFK Jr. is going to drop out of the presidential race and endorse former President Donald Trump. Betting markets have responded accordingly:

Trump is favored to win again (following news that RFK Jr is planning to drop out and endorse) pic.twitter.com/AmXDAA1bNj

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) August 22, 2024

• This is a fair point:

Three days into the DNC, there has been almost no discussion of foreign policy. Almost nothing about Ukraine, nothing about China, very little on Israel-Gaza. I get that foreign policy is rarely the number one issue in a presidential election. But this feels like an intentional…

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 22, 2024

• “As economic freedom increased in China,” writes Chris Freiman, “poverty decreased.” (Chart included.)
• More from Freiman:

A reminder that far more of your tax dollars go to things like topping off retirement incomes and paying interest on debt than to things like SNAP benefits

— Chris Freiman (@cafreiman) August 22, 2024

• “The [anti-Israel DNC] protesters were, if you’ll excuse my vulgarity, what my late ex used to call ‘young, dumb, and full of cum,’” writes Nancy Rommelmann for Reason. “They were horny for confrontation, and if that meant getting in the faces of some of the cops, they’d do it. Which they did, creating a maybe three-minute scuffle during which several protesters were arrested before everybody went back to their places. It was utterly bizarre—an over-orchestrated rebellion where nothing new happened. Maybe it was our fault for paying attention. During the downtime—which was almost the whole time—I spoke with reporters from The New York Times, the New York Post, ABC, and other outlets: Had social justice protesting jumped the shark? And were those of us covering it chewing on little more than chum?”
• “Hungary suggested it might start transporting migrants who show up at its border straight to Brussels unless it can resolve a dispute with the European Union on penalties for its asylum policies,” reports Bloomberg. (For context: “The European Court of Justice has slapped a €200 million ($223 million) penalty, plus an extra €1 million daily fine, on the country for Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s non-compliance with the court’s earlier judgment on the protection of asylum seekers.”)

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