Don't let Don, Ron & the GOP decide what freedom & equality mean.
In what free country is okay for Don and Ron to say what they will, but those of us with other ideas get our books banned, our shows cancelled, our ideas censored?
Freedom and equality. Those words, those ideas, even more than places like Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada, are the real battleground where America’s future is to be decided.
Ron DeSantis tells us that Florida is free. Yet he uses the power of government to ban books, to ban entertainment, to undermine private businesses, and to impose a form of official thought throughout the state.
Donald Trump tells us America is no longer free because the deep state has hijacked our government. Yet hard working federal employees only carry out the laws passed by Congress and the policies of elected leaders. Whatever the individual employees of government might think, they do not constitute an independent power: They will tear babies from their parents’ arms under one administration or, in subsequent one, seek to reunite them.
What freedom really means
The philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead described freedom as vigorous self-assertion. I like that. In a big diverse nation, each of us should be able to put ourselves out there, as we wish, not as others wish us to be. We should be able to do this with energy and with the support of our communities and our country. This conception of freedom does not countenance hiding who you are.
In a country that values freedom, we allow Ron and Don to say what they will. But we also allow the less famous and less powerful to express themselves. And it does not matter whether the form of expression is a speech or a drag show or a book.
In a country that values freedom, like minded folks can come together to express their shared sense of self. In a place as big as America, that includes joining hands in prayer at evangelical services every Sunday, and it includes dancing on a float in a Pride parade sometime this month. In a free country, no one is coerced to go either to church or to the parade. But anyone can go. And, let’s be honest, some go to both.
It is a tyrant’s definition of freedom that allows this self-assertion for some, but not for others. In what free country is okay for Don and Ron to say what they will, but those of us with other ideas get our books banned, our shows cancelled, our ideas censored? Conversely, in what free country are you free to go to the parade but not to Church?
In no free country, but in plenty of autocracies.
Now the other side argues that our freedoms encroach upon theirs. They want to bake cakes and sell them to the public, but not if they are going to be eaten at a same sex marriage. They want to be able to live in a world where they never have to imagine that some people do not fit binary gender categories. What about those folks? Aren’t their freedoms important too?
Well, yes, they are. While there’s some argument about platforming, no one believes these folks should be silenced. Anyone is free to express any views at all, however hateful. But can someone engage in commerce and opt to sell only to one kind of American and not another? Can someone, or some group, push other Americans so far into the margins as to become invisible?
No. The baker can bake for whomever he pleases. But the business cannot refuse some of us in favor of others if we are all willing to pay for the cake.
To understand that we have to consider the idea of equality. More particularly, whether freedom is an idea that is severable from equality. What would that look like? Antebellum Georgia or apartheid South Africa? If so, then those who think they are free ignore the damage they do not just to others, but to their own humanity. Chains work both ways.
It is impossible to build a healthy society with only one of these ideas. Trying to do so strips the words of their meaning and turns them into slogans. That’s the situation that George Orwell described so fittingly in Animal Farm when all pretense at freedom falls away and one of the pigs announces that “some animals are more equal than others.”
That’s why today’s GOP sounds so ridiculous. Instead of talking about what equality is, they jump to words like socialism to invoke some fear that the rest of us want to abolish private property. Um, no.
Our idea of equality
And let’s take their other charge off the table too. Democrats do not argue that everyone in America has the same skills, abilities, work ethic, creativity, or temperament. We do not argue that everyone should end up in the same place. On the contrary, it is the Republicans who would have us all be alike. We celebrate diversity. Our idea of equality is that no one gets held back because of it.
Oh, and yes, we acknowledge that American history of is laden with the weight of holding people back, of exploiting them, of stealing their labor or their land. And sometimes, that history still holds folks back. But, in part because our history also kindles the hope a more perfect union, we want to do something about that.
None of us is naïve enough to imagine creating a society where people can be free and equal would be easy. But this has ever been the cause for which Americans “mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
Today’s GOP no longer even bothers to try. Ron DeSantis launched his campaign for President by promising to destroy “woke culture” and consign it to history, a promise he made standing in front of a battleship. In his view, equality means a coercive victory for one group of Americans over another.
Yes, we are fighting in Wisconsin and Nevada and Arizona. But the battleground is the fight for equality and freedom. And the fight is not a fair one. On one side are those who ignore facts, bend rules, undermine voting rights, privilege some voters over others, and hide behind some pretty big lies. The other side, my side, protects the rights of their adversaries for the sake of the democracy they are trying to save.
It is true, we impose limits on ourselves while today’s Republicans do not. But that does not make us weaker. It does not make them tougher. Nor does it give them an advantage in our politics. On the contrary, the advantage is all ours. That’s what they cannot understand.
Talk with the folks working in the battleground states. They will tell you that people everywhere hate book bans, and other tyrannical impositions of power. We all want freedom and equality and the institutions of democracy that make them possible.
Ron DeSantis talked about sweeping folks into history’s dustbin. Here’s a hint, Ron, that dustbin is full of inquisitors, censors, and dictators of all sorts.