In my August 11, 2024 blog titled, Kamala's Freedom Fallacy, I took Vice President and 2024 Presidential candidate Kamala Harris to task for her flawed and flippant interpretation and misapplication of freedom. In the following passage from my aforementioned blog, I rely on history to expose how Harris's shallow and misguided approach to "freedom" does violence to everything the Founding Fathers said and did to promote freedom as American cornerstone virtue.
Joseph Loconte's timeless article Faith and Freedom: The Missing Link, written in 2000, can be used to expose how Kamala's intellectual recklessness runs roughshod over America's founding principles. In the follow-up to his unpacking of the importance of faith and political liberty to a post-Revolutionary War America, Loconte brilliantly makes the following deduction:
The reason goes back to the Founders' view of democracy. Freedom depends on citizens who can govern themselves, which means freedom requires virtue. But it takes more than laws to sustain morality. It requires religion - not the enfeebled variety of an established church, but the muscular faith of individual believers and congregations exercised in the public square.
For Kamala, freedom is primarily defined within the context of Democratic Party political ideals and priorities. Case in point: During her Presidential acceptance speech, Harris clearly articulated her freedom philosophy with the following:
And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom, as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into. law.
In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence—in our schools, communities, and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others. The freedom to vote.
It is undeniable that Harris's acceptance speech was her freedom-defining moment, where she elevated the politics of freedom as the prevailing narrative for America's identity. Hers, however, is a gross distortion of freedom that is fundamentally at odds with the Founders who coupled freedom with character, virtue, and integrity.
On the other side of the equation, freedom for Republicans is more rooted and grounded in what the Founders envisioned principally. Take for example the Republican Party Platform of 1860. Herein is one of the most historic, important, and self-defining statements on freedom and humanity:
8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.
9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic
Their Constitutional convictions are expressed with uncompromising and unambiguous passion and commitment to Constitutional integrity. The dignity of America for the Founders was not going to be ruined by the inhumanity of slavery because America was built on standards and principles that valued life which was to be honored and upheld by government and citizens throughout the Republic.
Perhaps one of the best Republican quotes on freedom that captures the meaning and spirit of the Founders comes from the late, great President Ronald Reagan, where he succinctly states the "freedom formula" that dominated early American political thought: “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”
Compare Reagan's quote with one from then President Trump's during his first term, when he spoke at the 2020 Salute to America event on July 4th.
The beauty and the glory of our constitutional system is that it gives us the tools to fight injustice, to heal division, and to continue the work of our Founding Fathers by expanding and growing the blessings of America. If you believe in justice, if you believe in freedom, if you believe in peace, then you must cherish the principles of our founding and the text of our Constitution. It is our founding and our Constitution. It is a firm foundation upon which all progress is achieved. That’s why our country is so strong, even despite terrible things that happen over the generations.
For Trump, freedom is enshrined in America's history and founding documents and is to be treated and respected within this context. However, as much as Republican's revere America's history, the Founding Fathers, and our founding documents as conduits to freedom and liberty, there is an unhealthy conceptual compromise that must be addressed.
On February 7th, a despicable racial incident took place in Cincinnati that involved Neo Nazis protesting above an interstate highway adjacent to the predominantly black community of Lincoln Heights. The Village of Lincoln Heights is known as the first self-governing African American city north of the Mason-Dixon line. As such, the Neo Nozi radicals came to this community masked from head to toe, armed with automatic rifles, and flying Nazi flags while spewing racial hatred. Days later, when I called a local talk show about this incident, the host quickly appealed to their First Amendment freedom to protest. While he affirmed my calls for moral condemnation by local and federal political leaders, I find this rush to the First Amendment extremely troubling and disappointing because it fails to honor and elevate the foundational principles of the Founding Fathers discussed above.
To no surprise, however, this experience was repeated when I went to a Congressional office to speak about this evil and the need for political leaders to morally condemn this act of racial hostility as opposed to the typical hands-off approach offering no comments whatsoever. Again, there was the same mixed response that acknowledged the moral and legal improprieties that I raised but with the same appeal to the first amendment with the added disclaimer that they prefer not to say nothing in order to avoid rewarding the racist group with attention from a high-level elected official. That might make political sense, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Ironically, Republicans have been very vocal in condemning and legislatively opposing issues like DEI, CRT, and antisemitism on college campuses and yet, antisocial Neo Nazi racial aggression merits total silence and unresponsiveness from too many Conservative political leaders, at least that is the case for Cincinnati versus Nashville where the Governor and Mayor condemned Neo Nazis and a resolution was filed by the Governor publicly repudiating and admonishing what happened. I am convinced that the racial hatred by racial hate groups along with moral impotence by political leaders will NOT Make America Great Again because both failings are a fundamental rejection of what the founders believed and their courage to confront moral evil with moral truth, moral suasion, adherence to Natural Law, and deference to divine authority.
One of the best articles I've seen on the Founders and freedom does an excellent job of explaining this and what it all means. Without Virtue There Can Be No Liberty by David Gowdy is rich with historical quotes and analyses that for me convincingly makes the case that Republican leaders at all levels need to reconnect the legalisms of our freedom governing documents with the Founding Fathers' essential requirements of character, integrity, and virtue that must necessarily be coupled with our beloved freedoms in order for governance and citizenship to work in America's best interest. Gowdy makes this perfectly clear with the following quotes:
John Adams stated it this way, “Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private Virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.
George Washington said: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,”[6] and “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.”
Benjamin Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
Samuel Adams said: “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue.”
Gowdy concludes with the following profound and highly relevant statement that reaffirms my blog title and, more importantly, my expectation for Republican leaders today.
Virtue ennobles individual character and lifts society as a whole. Virtuous principles eschew prejudice and discrimination, confirming that “all men are created equal.” Virtue encompasses characteristics of goodwill, patience, tolerance, kindness, respect, humility, gratitude, courage, honor, industry, honesty, chastity and fidelity. These precepts serve as the cornerstones for both individual happiness and societal governance.
Given Kamala's egregious freedom fallacy and the Republicans' failure to fully honor and apply the fundamentals of the Founders comprehensive understanding of freedom as both Constitutional and character requirements, the time is now for a freedom refresh to make freedom work the way the Founders intended. If we truly want to "Make America Great Again", then we must make moral dignity the moral expectation for all and thereby promote a renewed emphasis on character, integrity, and virtue to create a thriving and morally decent culture that values humanity and the Constitutional freedoms as the Founders understood and believed. Given the current paradigm, the soul of America is dangerously at risk, and selective outrage combined with silence and moral and political impotence is not in America's best interest, especially when racial hate groups like Neo Nazis increase their racial antagonisms in and around African American communities.
In order to rescue American greatness from moral decay and leadership ineptitude, we must have a freedom refresh through a revival of conscience, responsible political leadership and community engagement, and principled community cohesion paved by leadership that thoroughly understands and embraces the fullness of what the Founding Fathers stood for when they made freedom coupled with character central to America's identity. In closing, I offer this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr's timeless work Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? as a cautionary tale that ought not be ignored. This was his challenge to America then that needs to be rekindled today in order to avoid cultural and political ruin.
We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late...We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind's last chance to choose between chaos or community.
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