COVID-19 Lock-downs: How The Right Got Freedom Wrong
It’s ‘Live Free or Die’, not ‘Live Free and Die’
--
As states across America have extended their stay-at-home orders, a vocal minority of Americans (primarily on the political right) have taken to the streets to declare the lockdowns as ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘tyrannous’. However, while some individual state laws — such as bans on travel outside a state— may be unconstitutional, the lockdowns, in and of themselves, are not. The 1905 Supreme Court ruling ‘Jacobson v. Massachusetts’ — which allowed states to enforce mandatory vaccination — set a clear precedent for the temporary suspension of some civil liberties during a public health crisis (like the Coronavirus pandemic).
However, the right’s evocation of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ in the lockdown debate is an all too familiar ploy from Republicans. Whether it relates to improving healthcare access, passing gun control or, expanding the Government’s size in order to control climate change, the right have consistently used the language of ‘freedom’ to push back against progressive changes; especially when such change threatens to fundamentally change the existing economic system.
If people want to see what overreach looks like, they should look at the President and his “I alone can fix it” attitude
The employment of this tactic isn’t just a lazy attempt at messaging from the right, it’s a deliberate, calculated attempt to protect their vested interests. While Trump centred his campaign in the promise of ‘draining the swamp’, the truth is that he’s no less swampy than any other politician and has just as much vested interest in upholding the current system as any of his predecessors. Indeed, in spite of Trump’s rhetoric, he is both loved by and surrounded with members of the political ‘swamp’. His own HHS Secretary is the former Executive of a large pharmaceutical company, while nearly 10% of all U.S. billionaires have donated to the President’s re-election campaign. These include people like Kelcy Warren, Andrew Beal and Stewart Rahr, who made their money through industries like banking, pipelines and pharmaceuticals.
It is because of these special interests that Trump is surrounded by, that the Republicans persistently use the freedom defence against liberal proposals. The language of liberty is merely the packaging used by Republicans to market to the masses their proposals that protect elite interests. Using this rhetoric is the only way the party establishment can make their agenda of trickle-down economics and small-government capitalism seem reasonable and enticing to regular voters.
After all, it’s clear that the GOP aren’t the staunch defenders of liberty and freedom that they claim to be; both donors and leaders within the party have happily lined up behind the current President, despite his clear, well-documented authoritarian tendencies. Indeed, Trump has long shown a tendency towards executive overreach. From declaring a national emergency in 2019 when there was none, to claiming “total authority” over state’s re-opening decisions, and infamously saying in 2016 “I alone can fix it”, it’s been made clear that Trump isn’t the defender of freedom he claims to be.
It is hard to see how a country can be considered truly free if it’s citizens live in fear of getting ill or falling victim to yet another mass shooting
Moreover, the vision of freedom offered by the Republican Party doesn’t represent a truly free country in any meaningful respect. The vision of the country offered by the most libertarian elements of the right is one without Medicare expansion, gun control or significant Government intervention on climate change. It is hard to see how a country can be considered truly free if it’s citizens live in fear of getting ill or falling victim to yet another mass shooting.
Increasingly, the gulf between what Republicans claim freedom is and what freedom actually means to most Americans is growing. The right’s insistence on re-opening the economy, even if it costs hundreds-of-thousands — if not millions — of lives, is just one more example of this. Small government doesn’t automatically mean increased freedom and liberty, especially if such a reduced size in government results in lowered economic and environmental security.
None of this is to say that people should take an unquestioning approach to politicians trying to expand their power during this pandemic — with millions of lives on the line, this is a time to amp up, not relax, our scrutiny of politicians. However, this lockdown has exposed more clearly than ever that the rhetoric of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ employed by Republican leaders is empty and hollow. If people want to see what overreach looks like, they shouldn’t focus on the Governors locking down their states, or the politicians advocating for gun control and universal healthcare, they should look at the President and his “I alone can fix it” attitude.
