What Does Freedom Really Mean?

by Rep. Ron Paul, MD (R-TX) - Montreal, February 15, 2005

We’ve all heard the words democracy and freedom used countless times, especially in the context of our invasion of Iraq. They are used interchangeably in modern political discourse, yet their true meanings are very different.

George Orwell wrote about “meaningless words” that are endlessly repeated in the political arena (Politics and the English Language, 1946). Words like “freedom,” “democracy,” and “justice,” Orwell explained, have been abused so long that their original meanings have been eviscerated. In Orwell’s view, political words were “Often used in a consciously dishonest way.” Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language. As a result, Americans have been conditioned to accept the word “democracy” as a synonym for freedom, and thus to believe that democracy is unquestionably good.

The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this, as evidenced not only by our constitutional system, but also by their writings in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere. James Madison cautioned that under a democratic government, “There is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” John Adams argued that democracies merely grant revocable rights to citizens depending on the whims of the masses, while a republic exists to secure and protect pre-existing rights. Yet how many Americans know that the word “democracy” is found neither in the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence, our very founding documents?

A truly democratic election in Iraq, without U.S. interference and U.S. puppet candidates, almost certainly would result in the creation of a Shiite theocracy. Shiite majority rule in Iraq might well mean the complete political, economic, and social subjugation of the minority Kurd and Sunni Arab populations. Such an outcome would be democratic, but would it be free? Would the Kurds and Sunnis consider themselves free? The administration talks about democracy in Iraq, but is it prepared to accept a democratically-elected Iraqi government no matter what its attitude toward the U.S. occupation? Hardly. For all our talk about freedom and democracy, the truth is we have no idea whether Iraqis will be free in the future. They’re certainly not free while a foreign army occupies their country. The real test is not whether Iraq adopts a democratic, pro-western government, but rather whether ordinary Iraqis can lead their personal, religious, social, and business lives without interference from government.

"If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion."

Simply put, freedom is the absence of government coercion. Our Founding Fathers understood this, and created the least coercive government in the history of the world. The Constitution established a very limited, decentralized government to provide national defense and little else. States, not the federal government, were charged with protecting individuals against criminal force and fraud. For the first time, a government was created solely to protect the rights, liberties, and property of its citizens. Any government coercion beyond that necessary to secure those rights was forbidden, both through the Bill of Rights and the doctrine of strictly enumerated powers. This reflected the founders’ belief that democratic government could be as tyrannical as any King.

Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive. If nothing else, government action requires taxes. If taxes were freely paid, they wouldn’t be called taxes, they’d be called donations. If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion. So when a politician talks about freedom for this group or that, ask yourself whether he is advocating more government action or less.

The political left equates freedom with liberation from material wants, always via a large and benevolent government that exists to create equality on earth. To modern liberals, men are free only when the laws of economics and scarcity are suspended, the landlord is rebuffed, the doctor presents no bill, and groceries are given away. But such “freedom” for some is possible only when government takes freedoms away from others. In other words, government claims on the lives and property of those who are expected to provide housing, medical care, food, etc., for others are coercive – and thus incompatible with freedom. “Liberalism,” which once stood for civil, political, and economic liberties, has become a synonym for omnipotent coercive government.

The political right equates freedom with national greatness brought about through military strength. Like the left, modern conservatives favor an all-powerful central state – but for militarism, corporatism, and faith-based welfarism. Unlike the Taft-Goldwater conservatives of yesteryear, today’s Republicans are eager to expand government spending, increase the federal police apparatus, and intervene militarily around the world. The last tenuous links between conservatives and support for smaller government have been severed. “Conservatism,” which once meant respect for tradition and distrust of active government, has transformed into big-government utopian grandiosity.

Orwell certainly was right about the use of meaningless words in politics. If we hope to remain free, we must cut through the fog and attach concrete meanings to the words politicians use to deceive us. We must reassert that America is a republic, not a democracy, and remind ourselves that the Constitution places limits on government that no majority can overrule. We must resist any use of the word “freedom” to describe state action. We must reject the current meaningless designations of “liberals” and “conservatives,” in favor of an accurate term for both: statists.

Every politician on earth claims to support freedom. The problem is so few of them understand the simple meaning of the word.

Is Obama Already a Lame Duck?

Right now, I think Obama's chances of getting re-elected are less then 50-50. He has come through on barely any of his campaign promises (and that's if you count closing Guantanamo, which is still open), and in fact has done the opposite of many of his campaign promises: he extended the Patriot Act, and he bailed on the public option that he once said it was crucial to healthcare reform. He was dealt a bad hand with his presidency--there's no denying that--but his motivations seem to be corporate-minded, and right now, that's the last thing we need.

His cabinet is made up of corporate execs and lobbyists, his economic team is made up of the very people who put into play the investment "strategies" that brought this country to its knees: Geithner from Goldman Sachs and Citibank who was the real force behind Paulson's bailout, and Summers was instrumental in getting derivatives contracts deregulated, which was the core corrupt decay which cratered the economy.

Ultimately, Obama's term will be remembered for having a close to "super-majority" in congress and still getting nothing of any merit or worth passed. The health care reform bill, if it emerges in the shape it is now, will cement Obama's reputation as corporate capitulator, since it contains more perks for big pharma and the heath care insurers than benefits for the people.

He ran on a platform of "HOPE and CHANGE". Now, we just "hope" he doesn't "change" things to make the country even more of a corporate oligarchy than it already is. I think we expected the first black president to be someone of the caliber of Martin Luther King: someone transcendent, someone visionary, someone exceptional; but what we got was just a normal, typical politician, beholden to his corporate benefactors. While saying all the right things about "the people", when the TV cameras are off, "the people" no longer matter.

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Is Obama Already a Lame Duck?
By STEWART J. LAWRENCE

Barack Obama's presidency is barely a year old, and the November mid-term elections are still nine months away. Yet despite the brave face worn by the White House in recent weeks, Democrats are facing a disaster of mounting proportions. If current trends hold, they may well lose control of the House of Representatives – a stunning collapse given their current 40 vote lead. Even worse, what seemed like a near-impossibility just a month ago - a GOP reconquest of the Senate – has become increasingly "thinkable” also. Political handicapper Charlie Cook, not one for wild-eyed predictions, has identified 11 Democratic Senate seats Republicans might win based on current polling. If they win at least 10, and also retain control of their current 41 Senate seats, which seems likely, the Senate is theirs.

The White House, still obsessed with its manifestly unpopular health care reform bill, is in a state of political denial so deep that not even Senator Evan Bayh's (D-IN) shocking retirement two weeks ago – following similar announcements by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) in recent months - has managed to pierce its defensive wall.

A growing number of critics are urging Obama to fire his top staff, including White House advisor Rahm Emmanuel, whom they blame for the health care debacle, and DNC chief Tim Kaine, who funded the Democrats’ failed election campaigns in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Those failures have allowed Republicans to regain the political initiative, and have caused deep disenchantment among House Democrats who must now face the music with voters. All 435 House seats are in contention this fall, but at least 100 seats held by Democratic incumbents are considered “competitive,” sources say.

For all their recent posturing, Obama and his team know they're in trouble. But their reliance on legislative window-dressing - like the proposed $15 billion “jobs” bill, which is anything but one, in fact – suggests they continue to underestimate the depth and source of public discontent. The current conjuncture is reminiscent of two earlier pendulum “swing” periods in American presidential politics. Ronald Reagan in 1982 and Bill Clinton 1994 both faced angry voters during mid-term years and their respective parties lost control of one (Reagan) or both (Clinton) legislative chambers. Clinton was so chastened by his party's defeat that he quickly tacked right, embraced welfare reform and NAFTA, and drove a stake into the heart of American liberalism.

Obama is approaching his own Clinton-like crisis, but his predicament is worse. Most of the base groups that helped him win in 2008 – labor, Latinos, peace activists, and most recently, environmentalists – feel demoralized and betrayed. Labor never got the “card check” legislation it wanted, but Obama went ahead and signed three new free-trade deals that lack the domestic worker protections he’d promised during the campaign. Latinos who were hoping for serious action on immigration reform are also bitterly disappointed. First they were first promised reform during Obama’s first year in office; then, in 2010; now the issue appears to be dead. Obama has also caved into his generals on Afghanistan and backed the right-wing golpistas in Honduras. More recently, he broke a campaign pledge by publicly embracing nuclear power.

Liberal base groups aren’t ready to break with Obama – and Obama knows it. But without their enthusiastic support – and money, especially labor’s - dozens of House Democratic candidates – and now, quite a few Senate candidates – will have to fend for themselves. Moreover, younger voters, 18-29 years of age, whose turnout made such a critical difference in 2008, are fast cooling toward Obama, and won’t show up in large numbers to vote this fall, even if Obama asks them.

Of course, Obama is not the first Democratic president to disappoint liberals. But there’s usually a pay-off for abandoning your base – increased support from the center. But independents, especially white suburban voters, are abandoning Obama in droves. In November 2008, Obama enjoyed approval ratings of 70% or more, including 65% among independents. But a poll conducted by Marist earlier this month found that Obama’s overall approval rating at the lowest of his presidency – 44% - with the figure just 29% among independents. Obama’s personal popularity, or “favorability” rating, among independents, is also slipping – to just 39%, compared to 50% among the population at large.

There are two reasons why a Clinton-like shift to the center-right probably won’t help Obama. First, the country is not in a “normal” recession, or even a deep structural one of the kind that threatened Reagan’s presidency in 1982. It’s a borderline depression, and the unofficial jobless rate, currently at 18-20% and getting worse, may not improve substantially by 2012. Reagan also faced double-digit unemployment in 1982, but the official rate was back to 7% within a year. Without such a quick turnaround, Democrat Walter Mondale, who was leading Reagan in the polls throughout 1983, might have won the presidential election in 1984.

Clinton, like Obama, also faced an economic slump early in his first term, on top of a health care reform debacle. But unlike Obama, he learned from his mistake. Clinton shelved health care reform and focused on priming the economy, which recovered. He then consolidated support from independents, and like Reagan, went on to a landslide re-election. The longer Obama holds onto health care - on the desperate assumption that passing anything is better than nothing – the more swing voters are likely to punish him at the polls.

But it’s not just the persistent recession – and health care reform - that’s hurting Obama. The nation’s politics are also in a deep funk - the deepest since Watergate. Confidence in the US Congress – and indeed in any federal political institution save the military - is at an all-time low. A new mood of populist angst and disenchantment is sweeping much of the country.

Symbolized by the sudden rise of the Tea Party movement, the new mood is distinctly conservative, but still oddly non-partisan. Despite receiving early financial support from conservative interest groups, the Tea Party it’s not (yet) beholden to the GOP but is following a political dynamic all its own.

The closest analogy – in spirit and substance – might be the populist anti-establishment revolt led H. Ross Perot in 1992 that morphed into the most successful independent presidential campaign in US history. Perot shocked the American political establishment by running neck-and-neck in the polls with Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, eight months before the presidential election. Then Perot stumbled, briefly pulled out of the race, and urged his supporters to back Clinton, which they largely did. Though Perot rejoined the race, he never recovered his earlier level of support, but neither did Bush.
Republicans, perhaps mindful of the Perot "precedent," are desperately trying to channel the grassroots energy of the Tea Party movement into their own efforts to revitalize the GOP. And so far, it’s working. Sarah Palin just headlined the national Tea Party Convention in Denver where she extolled the movement’s political independence but still urged its members to work with the GOP. Back in Washington, meanwhile, organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual conservative GOP convocation, handed their podia over to Tea Party Senate primary candidates in Arizona (J.D. Hayworth) and Florida (Marco Rubio). Their more well-known GOP opponents, John McCain and Charlie Crist, were snubbed. Some in the Tea Party are likely to resist a longer-term marriage with the GOP – or with any party, for that matter - but the foundation for a broad conservative “convergence” is now being laid.

There are other, equally disturbing, signs that a conservative sea-change is underway that could threaten Democratic control not only of Congress, but of the White House. For example:

For the first time in years, major corporate funding is shifting away from the Democrats and back to the GOP. This means that the “smart” money is no longer riding on Obama. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a national watchdog group, the wealthy securities and investment industry went from donating 2 to 1 to Democrats over Republicans at the start of 2009 to a 50-50 distribution by the end of last year. Commercial banks, meanwhile, have returned to their traditional tilt in favor of the GOP after a brief dalliance with Democrats, giving nearly twice as much to Republicans during the last three months of 2009. Most of these shifts pre-date Obama's rhetorical attacks on Wall Street, suggesting growing corporate doubts about Obama's “viability.”

A new “think tank” – the American Action Foundation (AAF) – has emerged to start churning out conservative policy dogma, much like the Heritage Foundation did in the early 1980s to support the incoming Reagan administration. Fred Malek, a super-rich Texas Republican who helped launch George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, is providing most of AAF’s start-up funding. Veteran GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie are spear-heading the group’s political direction. AAF plans to downplay the right’s social issues agenda while offering up “new” Republican approaches to the economy that can keep the GOP on a roll, eventually wooing independents to a “center-right” presidential candidate like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty.

Dovetailing with these developments is the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on election financing that lifts the ban on massive corporate funding of U.S. political campaigns. Most of the new corporate-funded candidates are likely to be either Republicans or ultra-conservative Democrats, further marginalizing progressive ideas and voices. By 2012, the large money advantage that Obama and the Democrats enjoyed in 2008 – largely through Internet fund-raising - will vanish.

In short, for all the talk of a shift in the nation’s “zeitgeist” that occurred in 2008, it’s not clear that Obama and the Democrats will inherit this shift. With the left largely demobilized, passively awaiting “friendly” executive action, the right has stepped into the political void to co-opt the “change” mantle, while casting Obama and the Democrats as agents of the status-quo.

If the liberal-left were less wedded to Obama, and to “statist” politics generally, it might be possible to enjoin the Tea party in a broader debate about the current crisis in US politics – its sources, and possible solutions. Instead, the Tea Party’s growing “convergence” with the GOP is eerily reminiscent of the way the 1980s New Right, libertarian Republicans and neo-conservative Democrats joined forces to sweep Ronald Reagan to power.

The Right still lacks a compelling Reagan-like figure – and an over-arching political agenda – to compete with Obama in 2012. But if current trends hold, that may be only a matter of time. In a recent Gallup poll, 73% of respondents said the country was “moving in the wrong direction” – a sentiment that just two years ago helped catapult Obama to the presidency. In the same poll, a “generic” GOP candidate – in effect, any Republican - was viewed as a more attractive presidential candidate than Obama. In fact, 52% of the country – including a growing percentage of Democrats – now says Obama “doesn’t deserve” to be re-elected.