Freedom Isn’t For the Little People

George Mason University’s conservative Mercatus Center has just published a report on “Freedom in the 50 states” and guess what – the liberal bastions of New York and California are running dead last for the second year in a row!  But fear not severely repressed Angelenos and New Yorkers.  The study says far more about the contemporary Right’s distorted views on freedom than it does about the range of choices available to Americans.

Freedom is for the rich…

The report’s main revelation is that conservatives equate freedom almost exclusively with “the freedom to spend money as you see fit (especially if you’re a business).”  More than two-thirds of the freedom score is based on fiscal and regulatory “freedom,” with a blunt measure of the overall state and local tax burden alone accounting for almost 30%.  Under Mercatus’ rubric, things like allowing businesses to harm consumers with reduced consequences, banning free speech on private property and not paying for health insurance that allows people to live fuller lives are freedom promoting.  Giving new mothers family leave to spend with their children, assuring workers the right to speak freely in the workplace and providing tax dollars to poor people for benefits like food stamps or childcare subsidies, these are all freedom reducing.

Freedom is for the powerful…

This gets at a larger point that comes increasingly into focus as you read through the reports details:  Conservative freedom is freedom for the wolf, not the sheep.  Freedom is the right of your boss to fire you for your political beliefs, not your right to express your political opinion at work.  Freedom is the right of rentiers to jack up your rental rates, not your right to have an affordable place to live.  Freedom is the right of a business to pay you as little as they want, not your right to a minimum wage that dramatically expands the choices of you and your family.  Primacy is given to business and the wealthy consumer, with only indirect scraps of freedom left to workers and other citizens.

Freedom is not your grandpappy’s freedom…

Items one traditionally associates with freedom – civil liberties, free speech laws, civil rights, freedom from unjust incarceration – are either completely absent or given short shrift.  Restrictions on police and judiciary power are only important as they relate to the victimless crimes of drug and alcohol use.  If you so much as think about lifting that 7-11 Twinkie though, your ass can rot in a cage for 25 to life with nary a dent in “freedom.”  Totally fine to have police fly mini-drones down your suburban street or place recording devices on all downtown light poles, but god help Lady Freedom if the local town council mandates that businesses have to marginally limit the size of their neon beer signs.  Also absent from the report’s analysis is racial/gender/sexual orientation discrimination, which dramatically impacts a person’s freedom to live where they want, have the job they desire and gain access to things like bank loans.

Freedom is not applicable in your daily life…

This seemingly glaring oversight is only possible because Mercatus’s “freedom” relates exclusively to freedom vis-à-vis business and (to a lesser extent) individual interactions with government.  There is no room in this conservative framework for freedom in spheres where most of us spend our time:  at work, in our community or interacting with large corporations.  Racial bigotry or misogyny doesn’t restrict freedom in the right-wing worldview, as long as it’s perpetuated by landowners, businesses or dominant social groups (and not the government).  Similarly, the dictatorial workplace power of business owners, who can fire employees for their party affiliation or the color of their hair, doesn’t budge the free-o-meter because freedom doesn’t extend to the work sphere.  Culturally, conservatives view San Francisco’s nose-ring wearing, tattooed green anarchists as less free than blue-haired Tennessee churchgoers because they completely ignore the role of progressive social/cultural heterogeneity in giving people the freedom to live without oppressive social norms.

… and freedom is definitely not for the masses

Overall then, the right-wing vision for freedom is a sad one.  Gone are the enlightenment emphases on freedom of speech, freedom of association and the broader right of the little man to be free from interference by large institutions.  Instead, conservative freedom is largely freedom for business owners and the rich to exercise control over their property, workers and money.  For the rest of us, Mercatus carves out a tiny free-space where we can consume unregulated corporate products, work long days for shit pay for said corporations, and smoke, drink, and gamble away the pain of losing real control over our lives.  Who’s ready to vote Libertarian!?