At the conclusion of last November’s midterm election, numerous political forces challenged the presiding administration in its endeavors over the second half of its tenure.
Democratic loss of the House of Representatives to a Republican landslide the likes of which we have not seen since 1948, a diminished majority within the Senate and the awakening of a populist uprising in the form of the Tea Party all seemed to have stripped away the varnish from the mandate once thought inherited by Democrats in the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election.
Upon the wings of victory that the Republicans rode to power was the messianic rhetoric extolling the sanctity of liberty and the majesty of freedom. This could have been seen within the recent literature authored by prominent conservative critics of Obama, from Newt Gingrich’s “To Save America” to Jim DeMint’s “Saving Freedom” and David Limbaugh’s “Crimes Against Liberty.”
With Constitution in hand and opportunism at heart, it seemed as though the Republicans were poised to restore the freedoms lost under the tyrannical rule of the iron-fisted Democratic Party. However, the Republicans’ interpretation of liberty as a condition of free markets, limited government and maximum constitutional freedom is an incomplete one, not only to the nation’s history but also to their own party’s legacy.
What is too often forgotten in contemporary politics is that liberty exists in both the negative and the positive realm, between what one shan’t do to another and what one cannot do for oneself but should be free to have nonetheless. And though one form of liberty might inhibit the other, it must be stated that both are circumscribed within the mandate of our federal government since its beginning.
The tortured script within our Constitution reflects the founders’ duplicitous desire to see government remain the vanguard of both forms of liberty.
Negative liberties can be found within the Bill of Rights and powers denied to the legislature, whereas positive liberties can be extrapolated from the general welfare, elastic and supremacy clauses, as well as in the implied powers vested in the Congress. For the founders understood that man can only be truly free when he has attained sufficient liberty of both kinds.
America’s Constitution remains a charter of two liberties so that her citizens might pursue their happiness uninhibited by their personal limitations or social circumstances.
Republicans conveniently forget the history of their own party in arguing simply for negative freedoms of speech, press and religion while ignoring positive freedoms to employment, health and education. Republicanism, originating under the banner of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, traces its lineage from the Federalist Alexander Hamilton’s “energetic government” to the Whig tradition of Henry Clay’s “American System.”
With such a proud legacy of accomplishments, why would it now flee from such greatness? As political animals we must recognize the utility of both forms of liberty, for only then may we be truly free to pursue the happiness our founders wanted so greatly for us.
The Republican Party was founded on the extension of positive liberty to the masses, whether it be to poor whites (homesteads), businesses (tariffs) or farmers (railroads), and after the abolition of slavery, opportunities for blacks (Fourteenth Amendment). Recent Republican rhetoric makes a mockery of their party’s accomplishments and has warped the very nature of freedom’s definition in contemporary politics.
For today, the Republicans have two concepts of freedom, but rather than being positive and negative, they are for the rich and poor. For the rich, Republicans believe that the affluent have the freedom to spend as much money as possible to drown out everyone else’s voice in the political system. For the poor, Republicans believe the destitute are free to fend for themselves and the scraps that trickle down from the wealthy they serve.
Before the next GOP presidential debate, rather than accept the defense of freedom the candidates give you, question their definition of liberty, because it turns out that freedom means different things to different people.