Democrats are not the party of freedom

Party of Freedom? Democrats make it hard for me to own a gun. They make it hard for me to buy a gas stove or use the dishwasher I'd like to have. Last year, Democrats in my town tried to impose a tax on every single Amazon delivery that arrives at my doorstep. They keep legalizing weed but then denying dispensaries the ability to operate within the law, so I still buy on the black market. During Covid-19, they essentially made gathering for Mass illegal and imposed capacity and distancing restrictions on people who simply wanted to pray. Don't even get me started on the taxes I have to pay—money I've earned but can't use at my own discretion—or the fact that once I start homeschooling my son, I'll have to ask the state for permission.

So forgive me if I don't accept the whole “Party of Freedom” thing that you are now dropping. If you define Freedom as “the ability to cheaply and easily obtain an abortion,” then the Democrats are great at it. If you define Freedom as “the ability to migrate across borders without proving one’s identity or developing a plan to secure legal residency,” then the Democrats are in a good position on this issue (though they are now more belligerent).

“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices, even if we wouldn't make those choices for ourselves,” said vice presidential candidate Tim Walz on stage at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last night. “We have one golden rule: Mind your own shit.”

If the Democrats actually stuck to that, I would prefer them a lot.

In the Democrats' narrative, which stretched over several nights of the DNC and was delivered by a wide range of speakers, they just want people to be left alone to live good lives, sometimes with government assistance (welfare, health care, government mandates to lower drug prices) to benevolently support them in their quest. Meanwhile, the Republicans – these enemies of freedom – want to ban your books. They want to put themselves between a woman and her doctor. In fact, the Democrats' narrative goes, they have such a fetish for control that they want to not just limit their interventions to abortions but ban a whole range of other things, including in vitro fertilization and possibly contraceptives. And they keep it all organized in a kind of evil script, this “Project 2025” book, which contains all their plans.

Fear and Popularity: The atmosphere last night was very oh crap, politics shouldn't be so bitter coupled with aggressive fear-mongering that Republicans will take away everything the American people know and love.

On the one hand, this is a welcome departure from the Democratic Party of the last eight years or so, which was consumed by identity politics and fixated on America's past sins to its own detriment. This new message is more hopeful: Politics doesn't have to be so toxic. You deserve better than the bullying of politicians. You should define the good life for yourself and have the means to pursue it.

Unfortunately, this is all just a farce. It is not that these Democrats believe deep down in their hearts that people should really be left alone; it is that they want the Right People who get involved, not the wrong ones. They want to be able to decide which issues are righteous and just. They want to define what constitutes a good life and use the power of the state to enforce it.

“Investing our souls in the fate of politicians is not the habit of a healthy civic culture,” wrote ReasonMatt Welch wrote earlier this week: “The people competing for the right to control $7 trillion in money bilked from taxpayers under threat of prison time are not your friends. The executives who sit at the top of the Justice Department and control the most powerful military in history are not responsible for your hopes, your dreams, your healing. Giving elected officials such spiritual power is a recipe for self-infantilization, disappointment, and terrible executive branch governance.”

Walz is not Coach Taylor. He is not your father. He is not just a nice old Lutheran from Minnesota. He is someone who ultimately wants to tell you how to live your life and who may even have the power (or at least the influence) to do so.

Scenes from New York: “Shortly before a conversation between a Jewish author and a liberal rabbi, a manager of the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn banned the rabbi from attending, saying: ‘We don’t want a Zionist on stage,’” it says in The New York Times.

FAST HITS

• “As economic freedom increased in China,” writes Chris Freiman, “poverty decreased.” (Chart attached.)

• More from Freiman:

• “The [anti-Israel DNC] The protesters were, if you will forgive my vulgarity, what my late ex always called ‘young, stupid and full of sperm’,” writes Nancy Rommelmann for Reason. “They were keen on confrontation, and if that meant facing the police, they did. And they did, provoking a scuffle that lasted perhaps three minutes, during which several protesters were arrested before everyone went back to their seats. It was completely bizarre – an over-the-top staged rebellion in which nothing new happened. Maybe it was our fault for not paying attention. During the break – which lasted almost the entire time – I spoke to reporters from The New York TimesThe New York PostABC and other media: Had the protests for social justice passed their peak? And were those of us who covered them doing little more than taking bait?”

• “Hungary has indicated that it may transport migrants who show up at its border directly to Brussels if it cannot resolve a dispute with the European Union over penalties for its asylum policy,” reports Bloomberg. (For context: “The European Court of Justice has fined the country 200 million euros ($223 million) plus an additional fine of one million euros per day because Prime Minister Viktor Orban failed to comply with an earlier court ruling protecting asylum seekers.”)

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