Biden’s Concept of Freedom is the Path to Slavery

“Freedom” is a broad term. In a political context, it simply means to act without coercive restraints. Left unanswered is the question, What if your actions coercively interfere in another person’s freedom of action? For example, are you free to kill another person in cold blood? Or pick his pocket? Or stand in his way, physically blocking him from going on his intended way? Most people love freedom. But what do we mean by the term, freedom? 

Clearly, you can’t have a free society under this broad definition of freedom. So the question is, what limiting principle makes a free society possible? The Founding Fathers of the United States of America knew the answer—the principle of individual rights. Individual rights is the principle unpinning the Declaration of Independence. Its promise of equal, inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the limiting principle. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, put it well:

"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.

It is with this in mind that I read with interest E.J. Dionne’s Washington Post op-ed,Biden is inviting us to argue about freedom. We should. Dionne’s opening paragraph:

When President Biden announced in a video last week that he was seeking reelection, he opened the possibility that the 2024 campaign will involve a genuine — perhaps even searching — philosophical debate over the meaning of freedom.

Biden’s video opened with the word “freedom,” used it four more times and threw in a mention of “bedrock freedoms” for good measure. During a 90-second campaign ad that followed, the word was mentioned six times. In addition, the video declared: “Joe Biden has made defending our basic freedoms the cause of his presidency.”

So far, so good . . . and so vague. Freedom, freedom, freedom. But what does Biden actually mean by “freedom.” Let’s continue:

You can get a feel for where Biden is going when he explains what “basic freedoms” he has in mind: “The freedom for women to make their own health-care decisions, the freedom for our children to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to vote and have your vote counted. For seniors to live with dignity, and to give every American the freedom that comes with a fair shot at building a good life.”

Note Biden’s disingenuousness. Our semi-socialized health care system denies our freedom to choose the medicines we use, of pharmaceutical companies to bring drugs to market without FDA approval, the freedom to opt out of Medicare taxes. Who guarantees the freedom of seniors to live in dignity?—indeed, whose definition of dignity do we use? It’s nice to have the freedom. But what if that freedom is guaranteed by forcing young people to pay taxes to support Social Security or Medicare for seniors? What is the freedom to have a “fair shot?” Perhaps, an education? Will a fair shot be guaranteed by forcing children into government schools and taxpayers to pay for those schools, while denying parents even the freedom to choose alternatives to government schools they believe are failing their children? What about the freedom of people not to choose to pay for other people’s pensions, healthcare, or schools?

By now, you can get the flavor of the article. Dionne goes on:

Freedom, of course, is as American a word as you can imagine, and Biden is certainly not the first Democrat to run with it. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in one of his most important speeches, committed himself to “the four freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Now we get to Biden’s, and Dionne’s, idea of freedom—and it’s not at all “as American a word as you can imagine.” Far from it. FDR’s Four Freedoms is a vague characterization of his totalitarian designs on America, a design still integral to the Democratic Party philosophy. FDR’s “freedom from want [and] fear” was laid out in no uncertain terms in his proposed “second” Bill of Rights, an Economic Bill of Rights. The original Bill of Rights enumerates rights to your own actions and property. FDR’s second Bill entitles you to other people’s actions and property. It emasculates the U.S. Constitution, claiming for the Federal government a power the Constitution does not grant—the power to regulate private economic activity and seize private wealth for redistribution to those who did not earn it. How else can the state fulfill FDR’s economic rights, which include items like “the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation,” the “right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition,” the “right of every family to a decent home,” the “right to adequate medical care,” the “right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment,” the “right to a good education,” and other economic “rights.” Such “rights” can only be secured by forcing others to provide and/or pay for them, thus violating their freedom to decide whether or not they will provide/pay those benefits. It is a blueprint for totalitarian socialism. 

Dionne’s article continues in this vein. It is interesting not so much for what Dionne says, but for what he doesn't do; define freedom. In America, freedom is the individual living in the absence of physical coercion, whether initiated by private or governmental action. The principle of individual rights is the standard that defines the scope and limits of the individual's rightful freedom—and of the government’s actual purpose to secure these rights. But in the entire article, individual rights are not even mentioned. Why? 

Without rights, freedom is open-ended—anything goes. Without rights, for example, FDR's "freedom from want" is a rights-violating trojan horse, because it allows the government to seize any amount of anyone's wealth, and redistribute it into the pockets of anyone the state decides has unfilled wants. Without rights, the government can force you to pay for government schools, and compel you to send your children to their schools, whether the parents/taxpayers consent or not—a massive violation of individual rights. In the article, confinement is described as the opposite of freedom. Yet what is government public schooling, if not confinement to a government monopoly? Without rights, there is no limit to the government’s power to violate our rights to liberty and property.

Individual rights are guarantees to freedom of action, so long as the individual's actions don't violate the same rights of others. Rights are NOT guarantees to material values that others must be forced to provide. Rights are, as the Declaration of Independence states, inalienable guarantees to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you understand the Founders, you'd know life and liberty implies rights to property, legitimately acquired. Inalienable means what it says—cannot be violated, by anyone.

This understanding of freedom as defined by individual rights is the only understanding that leaves people truly free—free from state compulsion, coercion, confinement, and dominion of any kind. Biden wants to initiate genuine, philosophical debate over the meaning of freedom. Very well. I’m not counting on the Republican Party to mount a meaningful defense of individual rights. But as to Biden and, based on Dionne’s failure to connect individual rights to freedom, the Left, it’s obvious that the Democrats will double down on their totalitarian socialist designs on America. Their slogan might as well reiterate Orwell’s mantra, “Freedom is Slavery.” Because slavery is ultimately what Biden’s and his Democratic Party’s conception of freedom amounts to. 

Remember Jefferson’s understanding: 

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

Observe Jefferson’s precision: “I do not add 'within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant's will.” Biden’s vagueness in reference to freedom, and his failure to include individual rights in his conception of freedom, highlights his tyrannical designs. Law, to Biden, Dionne, the Left, and their ilk, ”the tyrant's will”—law, rather than the moral principle of individual rights—as the limiting factor, regardless of “when it violates the right of an individual.” Don’t believe the Democrats’ ode to freedom. It is a statist Trojan Horse. Their excommunication of individual rights from the concept of freedom is specifically designed to empower government, not citizens. Jefferson would have called them out immediately and loudly. We who support genuine freedom should also. 

Related Reading:

A Right to Pursue versus a ‘Right’ to Provision: The Declaration and its Reactionaries

My Challenge To the GOP: A Philosophical Contract With America

The ‘Rights’ of Land, Rivers, and Ecosystems: Why it is Imperative to Understand Rights

The U.S. Constitution is About Individual, Not ‘Human’, Rights

Collectivized Rights—Ayn Rand

Moral Rights and Political Freedom—Tara Smith

Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society—Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty – Timothy Sandefur