Twenty twenty-two was an election in which authoritarians employed every sort of disinformation. They ran on “character” while engaging in corruption on a multi-trillion-dollar scale. They rolled out the old “take your Social Security away from you” fear-mongering for seniors. And, this year in particular, they stoked fear of losing access to abortion when in fact the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade returns decisions on abortion to states.
More bizarre yet, Democrats attacked conservatives as “a threat to democracy,” but the code word “democracy” in the progressive lexicon actually means “more government control” and less freedom. Donald Trump is not a threat to democracy; he is a threat to those who continually undermine our democracy by limiting what we can say, read, listen to, discuss at work, hear at church, and learn in school. Joe Biden used “threat to democracy” many times in the 2022 campaign, and in every case, it was not a threat to democracy he had in mind; it was a threat to his party’s power and with it the enslavement of the American people by Big Government.
What “democracy” and “freedom” actually mean is the right of individuals to do as they like without regulation, restriction, or intimidation from government or other powerful institutions.
America was founded as the “Land of the Free,” and many generations have sacrificed to preserve our freedom, but the danger of losing their freedom was very much in the minds of our Founders. From the beginning, America was, as Franklin said, “a republic, if you can keep it.” Or Madison: “We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.” Or Jefferson: “Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”
