Freedom is abused in the election campaign

Have you noticed? When election season rolls around, no one talks about freedom anymore. Sure, the word still crops up sometimes in campaign speeches, sprinkled like salt on a bland plate of political platitudes. But freedom is never the main theme, let alone the goal, of modern political messages. It's just a rhetorical gimmick that disappears from the scene as quickly as it appeared.

Why do you think that is? What does that tell us about the personal beliefs and motivations of most of the political candidates who flicker across our television screens? What hearts beat in their chests? What passions and convictions guide their souls?

Maybe we are asking the wrong question. Yes, politicians have their own beliefs and agendas. A few have beliefs deep enough not to be shaken. But most politicians are pragmatists. Their goal is to win elections. They are, above all, a reflection of the political market on which they sell their services.

If candidates have nothing profound or important to say about freedom, that may say more about us than it does about them. The salesmen conclude that freedom, beyond being a quaint abstract issue, has no buyers. That freedom and independence are irrelevant to us voters – mere speeches. Nothing to really think about and embrace, let alone apply to today's problems.

When we lose our desire for freedom, we simultaneously lose respect for the freedom of others, and the hostility and social chaos we see around us should not surprise us. Freedom has been replaced by the mundane, the superficial, and the selfish. When the flame of freedom in our own hearts is extinguished, who but ourselves is to blame for a culture of control that now stifles free speech and free thought? Is it not the utter disregard for the freedom of others (upon which our own freedom depends) that has brought us to a place where corporations, city governments, and college campuses dictate to employees, citizens, and students exactly what they are not allowed to think, hear, and say? At the same time, we are signaling to politicians that freedom is no longer so important.

Perhaps we do this because we no longer understand the meaning of the word itself. As it is uttered, it is deeply corrupted by the political establishment of both parties, but especially by the Democrats and the political left. For it is the ideology of the left, which is geared towards expanding the size, power and coercion of government over our lives – the extreme opposite of personal freedom. The ideology of taking away anything you want from others and calling it a “right.”

Case in point: the Montana Democratic Party's Montana Freedom Rally, held the same night as the Trump rally in Bozeman. The main freedom they were advocating for was something they called reproductive freedom. Maybe I'm stupid, but I can't think of a single politician who wants to stop men and women from reproducing. The last I heard, America isn't even achieving a reproduction rate equal to its population. So go ahead, reproduce!

But no. The Democrats' message is not about pink and blue baby shoes. It's a much darker issue, the color of death. They've turned the word freedom on its head to mean the denial of human life to another human soul. It's the assertion that your personal desires and demands are more important than the life of another human being. Jefferson said, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty,” so the first liberty is life itself, otherwise all our other God-given liberties are meaningless.

Freedom requires faith in a free society and in our ability to thrive and prosper in an unplanned state of freedom under the law. It requires faith in something much bigger than ourselves and requires that we respect the freedom of others as more important than our own. The miracle of freedom is that it brings out the best in all of us and creates a foundation for mutual respect and genuine peace, without government spying on us and without angry elites telling us how to live.

Maybe we need to start reaching for something higher, something nobler than just asking politicians what the government can do for us today. Maybe we need to start talking about freedom again.

Roger Kooperman is a former small business owner from Bozeman and chairman of the Montana Conservative Alliance. He served four years in the Montana House of Representatives and eight years as Montana's Public Service Commissioner.