Wednesday, August 21, 2024
The Freedom Party
Ok, first of all, when I asked the AI image generator for a picture of "pandas at the State Fair," I got this image of one panda apparently beheading another in front of a fair crowd. Which, frankly, seems unnecessarily gory-- I was kind of hoping for a couple of happy pandas eating hot dish on a stick or something.
But that's not what I was going to write about today.
I'm not exactly a cutting-edge kind of guy, but over the past year or so I have been ahead of the curve on politics. I wrote a piece urging Joe Biden to step aside, and then he did. I wrote another piece arguing that Kamala Harris should pick Tim Walz as her running mate, and then she did. And tonight when I heard Democrats describing themselves as the "Freedom Party," I remember a piece I wrote for the Waco Tribune Herald on November 24, 20233, titled "Who is the Freedom Party," where I said this:
Believers in free minds and free markets found a more natural home with Republicans for decades, but that is no longer true. Over and over again, the key initiatives of Republicans work to restrict freedom. Freedom of religion? Donald Trump wants to restrict immigration based on the religious majorities in some countries. Freedom of assembly? Republicans are seeking crackdowns on the lawful protests made on campuses and elsewhere calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Free markets? Most Republican candidates are insisting on greater trade restrictions against China. Freedom of thought? Some conservatives want to ban books. Freedom to vote? Sadly, Republicans have spent a decade pushing for voting restrictions across the country. Even the Republican drumbeat to “crack down on crime” with longer sentences (even as crime has gone way down) is, in the end, nothing other than a call to restrict freedom.
I'm not claiming that what I wrote created any of these things-- it's kind of the ultimate showing of correlation not being causation-- but I was, for once, a little ahead of the curve!
