How Kamala Harris Took ‘Freedom’ Back from the GOP

Freedom
I can't move
Freedom, cut me loose
Singin', freedom! Freedom! Where are you?
'Cause I need freedom, too
I break chains all by myself
Won't let my freedom rot in hell.

                        --Beyonce, “Freedom”

To Beyonce’s soundtrack, Vice President Kamala Harris announced her campaign in an ad that used the word "freedom" four times. She framed her messages about the economy, gun violence, and abortion as “the freedom not just to get by, but get ahead:” “the freedom to be safe from gun violence;” and “the freedom to make decisions about your body.” At her Delaware campaign headquarters, she talked about the “sacred freedom to vote.” “Our fight for the future,” she added, “is also a fight for freedom.”

For half a century, that word “freedom” has been mostly absent from the vocabulary of Democratic campaigns. The word and the concept, as well as its cognate, liberty, have been coopted by Republicans since Ronald Reagan was a candidate for president. (“Freedom,” Reagan said, “is never more than one generation away from extinction.") But Republicans did not just commandeer the word, they also changed the concept. They altered our sense of its meaning from a vision of equality (which Beyonce calls on), to a more limited, “negative freedom” -- freedom from state power, from regulation, freedom from any obstacle put in the way of free enterprise. Harris is remaking the sense of freedom from the negative freedom of overcoming constraints to the positive freedom of self-realization and achievement.

It was the philosopher Isaiah Berlin who first made the distinction between positive freedom—freedom to—versus negative freedom, freedom from. Positive freedom is the ability to exercise choice, to act on one’s free will. Negative freedom is the freedom from constraint imposed by others or the state, a limit that restricts one’s goals or potential. In their traditional belief in small government, modern Republicans embraced the idea of negative freedom, freedom from the power of the state. Berlin noted the age-old tension between freedom and equality, and that the pursuit of absolute freedom, especially freedom from any restrictions, can often undermine equality and promote authoritarianism.

The Framers mostly emphasized positive freedoms, the freedom to worship, and freedom of speech and expression. They believed their creation of a constitutional republic was the best means of protecting individual freedoms. It was Lincoln who first coupled the notion of freedom with the idea of equality. He saw the infringement of freedom for some as undermining freedom for all, and viewed emancipation as expanding freedom for all Americans, not just formerly enslaved Americans. The Progressives in the early 20^th century continued this idea, and saw government’s role as freeing people from economic exploitation while creating more economic opportunity.

It was Republican Herbert Hoover, by popularizing “rugged individualism,” who portrayed freedom as liberty from an overweening government. Franklin Roosevelt went in the opposite direction and saw the prospect of our freedoms being crushed by global Fascism. To ensure the perpetuation of liberty, he proposed the Four Freedoms. Two were positive freedoms, speech and religion, and two were negative freedoms, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy saw freedom through the lens of the Cold War, and tried to ensure that Americans were free from tyranny. It was Reagan who revived Hoover’s notion that government impeded freedom more than it protected it (“I love my country but fear my government”), and pushed the word out of the Democratic lexicon.

But Vice President Harris’s revival of “freedom” was not something that came out of nowhere: Since the 1960s, Democrats grasped the idea of positive freedom as self-realization, the ability to fulfill one’s potential without constraints. This had its public side in the civil rights movement, which was the freedom to not be discriminated against, and the personal freedom of achieving one’s potential. Joe Biden mentioned freedom 15 times in his 2024 State of the Union, and said “freedom and democracy” four times. (Obama used the word a total of four times in his final three States of the Union.) Harris is performing the same trick of combining the narrative of saving-our-democracy with protecting and enlarging upon our freedoms. That’s a more inclusive message, and a winning one. Listen for a more liberal use of the word and idea of freedom this week at the Democratic Convention, not just by the candidate but all her surrogates.

The Vice President has even started using the word liberty, a staple in the conservative vocabulary and combining it with freedom. “We want to have the pride all people have to freedom and liberty,” she said to the United Auto Workers, “to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home and not have their government telling them what to do.” Those are words that could have been spoken by Ronald Reagan; Harris is commandeering those ideas of both positive and negative liberty for the Democrats. Rather than campaigning on abortion rights (which an ultra-conservative Supreme Court made an immediate issue) she links freedom and liberty with personal choices about “heart and home,” embracing another traditional conservative notion: that culture, not politics shapes a nation. That’s how parties expand their tent and their base.

What we are likely to hear at the convention is Harris and the Democrats rhetorically attempting to forge a union between conservative ideas of liberty and freedom and liberal notions of equality. This not only echoes the Progressive era mixture of positive and negative freedoms, it also coincides with a recent revival of the ideas of the philosopher John Rawls, who built on Isaiah Berlin’s ideas of positive and negative freedom. Rawls sought to reconcile a conservative respect for individual freedom with a liberal emphasis on fairness, and create a society that reduces inequality while being both more democratic and meritocratic. That’s what Harris seems to be trying to do. Her language describes a middle path in the classic debate between liberty and equality, where conservatives say your equality diminishes my liberty, and liberals say your liberty diminishes my equality.

That path leads toward a larger consensus. As Trumpism has taken over the GOP, it’s shrinking itself to older white Americans who feel that somehow the American Dream has been denied them..

Donald Trump was the first “declinest”—someone who sees the future more negatively than the past—ever elected president. The Republican party of John McCain and even Reagan sought to broaden its tent to include Hispanics, new immigrants, and people of color. (“Latinos are Republicans,” Reagan said. “They just don’t know it yet.”) A Democratic candidate who combines the rhetoric of freedom with the language of equality is blending the language of traditional conservative Republicanism with traditional Democrats. This not only assumes a big tent, it invites everyone in.

The United States will be majority non-white by 2050 and the Democrats recognize that within that new majority, there is the old ideological continuum of left and right. Why not capitalize on that by blending conservative and liberal rhetoric? Why not be the party of the left, right, and center? Harris is breaking the rhetorical chains that have narrowed the Democratic party’s appeal for the last few decades.

When she says, “We face a choice between two very different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, and the other focuses on the past,” Harris is reviving the traditional language of optimism -- something that has appealed to American voters, well, since the beginning.