A unifying — and winning — theme for the GOP? Self-regulation.
The left does a great job of spinning their agenda as one of freedom. The freedom to love whoever you want to love. Freedom of choice about your own body. (Abortions and birth control, that is. NOT cheeseburgers.)
But when the talk turns to freedom to preach and live by the tenets of The Bible, the freedom to keep more of your own money to spend as you see fit, the freedom to criticize a black person without being dubbed a racist, or the freedom to refuse to have your tax dollars pay for abortions, everything comes to a screeching halt. You’re free to practice the Democrat Party platform and anything else that appeases the party’s various and sundry special interest groups.
As I’ve said before, I teach at a number of area colleges. So, I am in contact with Generation Y quite a bit. I am amazed at the appeal libertarianism appears to be having with the younger set. I’ve seen kids I had written off as slackers reading Reason. I’ve had kids raving about the Atlas Shrugged movies. They were stunned when I told them the films were based on a book — and wanted to know more about Ayn Rand, and how to find more of her books. Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns had an amazing amount of pull with the 20-something and 30-something crowd. It seems like it has to do with a whole lot more than pot legalization.
On the social issues, the argument about personal freedom wins over these young people on issues like abortion and gay rights. But look at the case in Wilmington where the Christian school is being harassed for its admissions policies barring gays, and the Washington state florist being dragged into court because she refuses to handle gay weddings. Having the government tell you who you MUST do business with is quite a piece of totalitarianism.
Cases like this are not about opening minds and ending oppression. They’re about stomping out sectors of the community that dare to desist from the agenda of left-wingers and their bureaucratic enforcers. Freedom is a two-way street. If you’re going to OK two homosexuals getting together to play house, you also need to respect the religious beliefs of those who object to the homosexual lifestyle. We get lectures galore about respecting the beliefs of Muslims. But dare to stand up for your Christian beliefs, and you will be on the receiving end of a DOJ / EEOC colonoscopy.
The government’s job is to build roads, ensure the flee flow of commerce, and protect us from physical harm by foreign powers, as well as from each other. Telling you what your health insurance policy must cover, and who you can buy it from, and how much it needs to cost, is not part of that. The real freedom agenda is about letting people keep as much of their hard-earned money as possible — allowing them to make the decisions that are best for them and their families.
The freedom-crushing totalitarian nature of our government, and what to do to challenge it, needs to be at the forefront of the GOP strategy. It worked well for Ronald Reagan in sweeping out Jimmy Carter in 1980. A GOP leadership that takes on Reagan’s 1980 mindset in dealing with our 2013 problems can effect tremendous positive change and cement itself as the majority for years to come.
I agree… while I generally support those freedoms you mentioned (on both sides), for a lot of people “freedom” is a hard concept to wrap their mind around when it involves that flip side, where other people may make decisions differently than you would, or base their reasoning on values you find ridiculous or irrelevant or just wrong.
I do think it’s important to point out these inconsistencies. Maybe with many of those young people, it’s just the immaturity of just starting out considering these types of questions… When it is pointed out, I think either the discrepancy becomes really apparent… or we realize that person was just supporting “ideas they like” rather than “freedom”, and they actually do support the state using it’s power to enforce their preferred “choices” about how people “should” live. (which at that point isnt really a “choice” at all).
But… I do sometimes see a different circumstance that’s mistaken for philosophical inconsistency. Many people confuse the line between the approval/disapproval of “the state” versus the “approval/disapproval” from a “free” individual. If someone puts out their opinion/arguments in the public square – others are also free to evaluate, disagree, reject, and perhaps even ridicule. That’s often complained about as some kind of “denial” or “infringement” of one’s freedoms, when a lot of the time it’s just not. “freedom of speech” is not “freedom from criticism and rebuke” 🙂