What real freedom includes

Dear America, universal health care is what real freedom looks like

Frank Luntz tells GOP politicians to use the word freedom a lot. Unfortunately, the only freedom they really represent is for the wealthiest to get wealthier and put their boots directly on the necks of the working class, with an emphasis on people of color. (Corporate Dems differ only in that they are willing to drop most of the racism and bigotry, and are generally too stupid to claim the word freedom.)

The wealthy know where their interests lie, and vote (and more importantly invest their political donations) accordingly. The blue-collar white working class that has become the GOP base generally confuses freedom with license. For instance, to them it’s freedom to ride their ATV wherever they want, destroying everything in their path and ignoring their dependence on oil from people they say they hate. Most of their “freedoms” do seem to involve some sort of dependency, on Middle East Oil, on health insurance companies and Big Pharma saving their asses (and bankrupting them) after a lifetime of indulging in the crap produced by Big Ag.

Not at all the freedom the Founders envisioned, which was the ability to support your family without having to kowtow to a monarch and the aristocracy or the bishops of a state-sponsored church. A few even looked askance at the growing power of newfangled joint stock companies. They certainly didn’t see the self-government they bequeathed to their progeny as a substitute target for ire. Nor did they provide the Second Amendment as a way to let the populous revolt more easily. Democratic participation was the means they saw to avoid tyranny and the militias were to defend the self-government from rioting tax revolters without the expense of a standing army. (As in the Whiskey Rebellion.)

Our history, until about 40 years ago, has been an expansion of democratic tools and access to them. They are still inadequate as is that access, but the purpose of the progressive movement is to return to moving forward on expanding them.