What We Mean When We Say "Freedom"

That's the rub. We all want freedom, but some people insist their freedom demands taking other people's freedom away.

Ken in NY at Down with Tyranny:

"Are we less 'free' because we spend money on public schools and student loans, Medicare and Medicaid, police and firefighters, roads and transit, national defense and environmental protection? Would we be 'freer' if government spent zero percent of the economy and just stopped doing things? . . .

"Many of us 'believe in America' because we believe its history shows that our sacred liberties are compatible with a rather substantial government that invests in efforts to expand the freedom from want, the freedom from fear, the freedom from unfair treatment and the freedom to improve ourselves."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his WaPo column (Monday),
"Romney's flawed view of freedom"

Let me say again that it's hard not to love E. J. Dionne Jr., that singularly humane denizen of Punditworld. In today's outing he first pays tribute to Willard's old-school approach to being a presidential candidate:

In an age of media flying circuses where you never know who is running for president and who is just trying to boost book sales and speaking fees, Romney did it the old-fashioned way. He really, really wants to be president, and he offered pretty pictures to encourage us to watch him saying so. It was the venerable liturgy of our civil religion.

Then he notes how Willard "barely got his moment in the sun because dark clouds rolled in," in the form of Princess Sarah Palin and Rudy "The Goof" Giuliani showing up in New Hampshire, "bashing him on health care," but qualifies:

Romney’s travails are about more than the man himself. They speak to the condition of a party that won’t let him embrace his actual record and constantly requires him -- and all other Republicans -- to say outlandish things.

In his maiden campaign appearance, E.J. notes, Willard ran like the wind from his "greatest political achievement, the Massachusetts health-care law" during his time as the state's governor -- "a genuinely masterful piece of politics and policy." Willard garnered "modest cheers" from the assembled Republican faithful for minimizing the program as "a state solution to our state's problem," but "received what was, by my reckoning, his loudest response when he pledged “a complete repeal of Obamacare.”

That’s where the GOP heart is, and Palin and Giuliani both got into most of the Romney announcement stories by bashing him on health care. When you’re forced to tiptoe around your accomplishments, it’s no wonder you get accused of shifting your shape.

Yet it was Romney himself who exposed contemporary conservatism’s core flaw. “Did you know,” he asked, “that government -- federal, state and local -- under President Obama, has grown to consume almost 40 percent of our economy? We’re only inches away from ceasing to be a free economy.”

To begin with, E.J. argues, the 40 percent figure is bogus. "[T]he federal government of which Obama is in charge “consumes” about a quarter of the economy — and this after a severe recession, when government’s share naturally goes up." Which sets him revving up for, well, a whirl of classic E.J.:

But even granting Romney his addition of spending by all levels of government, the notion that we are “inches away from ceasing to be a free economy” is worse than absurd. It suggests that the only way we measure whether an economy and a country are “free” is by toting up how much government spends.

Are we less “free” because we spend money on public schools and student loans, Medicare and Medicaid, police and firefighters, roads and transit, national defense and environmental protection? Would we be “freer” if government spent zero percent of the economy and just stopped doing things?

And once E.J. gets going, you don't have to do anything but buckle in and enjoy the ride.

The logic of what he said points in exactly that direction. We thus confront in 2012 nothing short of a fundamental argument over what the word “freedom” means. If freedom, as the conservatives seem to insist, comes down primarily to the quantity of government spending, then a country such as Sweden, where government spends quite a lot, would be less “free” than a right-wing dictatorship that had no welfare state and no public schools — but also didn’t allow its people to speak, pray, write or organize as they wish.

Many of us “believe in America” because we believe its history shows that our sacred liberties are compatible with a rather substantial government that invests in efforts to expand the freedom from want, the freedom from fear, the freedom from unfair treatment and the freedom to improve ourselves. That, as the politicians like to say, is what this campaign is all about.

Yes! Thank you, E.J.!

Even if WaPo keeps him on only as their token liberal, he certainly makes the most of it, and we are better off for having him there.

What do you mean when you say "freedom?"