RNC and DNC conventions offer three visions of freedom
Good, bad, ugly
Jeffrey Denny
Freedom, oh freedom, well that’s just some people talkin’ — Don Henley and Glenn Frey, “Desperado”
The Republican and Democratic national conventions are over and the verdict is in:
We’re not such a divided nation after all. We’re united on what becomes our nation most: Freedom.
But of course, freedom enjoys the Rashomon Effect: Everyone sees it from their own personal identity, agency and experience, which now matters more than anyone else’s. That’s fine until your freedom threatens mine or vice versa. As the old saying goes, my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.
To me, the RNC and DNC conventions were especially constructive because, like civics teachers who taught what it takes to make America work, they offered three versions of freedom. Discuss:
Good freedom
Freedom from government invasion of privacy — who you are, who you love, what your kids learn, and your most private personal decisions such as medical.
Which the Constitutional privacy amendments — the first, third, fourth, fifth and ninth — protect. The Peeping Toms of today’s conservative Catholic Supreme Court may disagree in their Constitutional originality, but it seems the Founders thought privacy was such a big deal they made it 50% of the Bill of Rights.
Even if most Americans don’t know the Constitution like citizenship-seeking immigrants do, they do know their privacy rights. Privacy of religious beliefs and associations. Privacy in our homes. Privacy against unreasonable searches. Privacy of personal information from self-incrimination. (The Ninth protects privacy rights implied by the others.)
The funny thing is, certain Americans who hate government intrusion in their private lives the most want to sic government on other Americans to intrude in their private lives and impose their superior values.
But good freedom’s just another word for “mind your own damned business,” as Tim Walz said. Or as Billy Joel declared, “Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.”
Bad freedom
This is the freedom to abuse anyone.
Like sending people hate speech, death threats or harmful or riling disinformation. Like how Covid was a normal flu or the election was stolen.
Bad freedom is also, of course, “patriots” who attacked our Capitol in the name of freedom. And who wave anti-American Confederate flags celebrating when freedom meant the right to enslave people for free labor.
Bad freedom is religious rights twisted into government anointing Christianity as the official U.S. faith. Or unlimited speech for me but banned books for thee. Or flipping hard-fought civil rights and voting rights into taking those away and calling it fighting for equality. As if Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts who led Trump’s Mein Kampf Project 2025 was the new Dr. Martin Luther King for enslaved white people.
Bad freedom is descendants of old immigrants demonizing the new immigrants — even the legal, legally seeking asylum, or caught in between by politics — because they’re not European white like them.
Bad freedom is distorting the Constitution to demand unlimited mass-murder weapons that threaten children and presidential candidates alike.
Bad freedom is unlimited free enterprise even when it hurts the very people and planet it depends on to thrive.
Bad freedom is the infinite Möbius strip of conservative populism. You demand cuts in government, regulations and taxes that our democracy delivers to protect and provide for you. Then you hate government if it fails to protect and provide for you enough.
And yes, sorry progressives, bad freedom is demanding the rights of the violently murderous “justice involved” to walk free and without the stigma of being called a felon over the rights of their victims and families.
Bad freedom is the right to punish even liberal allies who balk or can’t keep up with your ever-changing proper language dictats.
Bad freedom is also elite students shutting down elite universities and trumping the freedom of fellow students to get the education they’re paying and working for because you know or care more about Gaza than anyone.
Ugly freedom
This is clinically narcissistic freedom that reveals deeper emotional issues bordering on sociopathic and demanding therapy, stat.
Like saying my gun rights and paranoid fantasies about winning a shootout with ethnic criminals or government troops invading my home to take my guns trump your rights not to get shot by a weirdo. Your weird take on the Second Amendment floods the nation with guns in deadly hands.
Ugly freedom is when you spin like the politicians and lobbyists you normally hate that the flood of guns has nothing to do with the national epidemic of gun deaths. And you take weird satisfaction in urban gun deaths by teens as your president and media calls cities you’ve never seen except on Fox News dangerous and disgusting.
Ugly freedom is also weird “patriotic” chicken hawks who never served smearing or sneering at the troops and military leaders. Modeled by a certain former “commander-in-chief” who pulled elite strings to avoid service and his craven VP pick who tried to steal valor from a fellow vet for political power.
Ugly freedom refuses to accept the people’s vote and parrots the loser who calls it rigged.
Ugly freedom is weird. It feels free of responsibility, accountability and sacrifice that freedom demands. And plays victim when held accountable for infringing on the freedom of others.
The RNC and DNC conventions gave us a clear choice: Weird freedom that divides us or normal freedom that unites us.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
