Freedom for the few: Fighting the right's constricted notion of liberty
Conservatives love to talk about “liberty” and “freedom.” Their definition of those terms is callous and negative
CONOR LYNCH
10.28.2017•6:00 AM
During their recent televised debate on tax reform, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Ted Cruz offered sharply divergent views of what kind of role the government should play in society. While Sanders made the case for a social democratic government that provides services like universal health care and free public college tuition, Cruz advocated the direct opposite: slashing taxes for the wealthy, cutting or eliminating social programs and letting the invisible hand of the market work its magic.
At times, the two senators appeared to be living on different planets, and they painted conflicting pictures of American life compared to life in Scandinavian countries like Norway and Denmark.
Sanders pointed to the historic levels of inequality in America and the tens of millions of Americans who lack health insurance, and used a Danish fellow from the conservative think tank Peterson Institute to prove his point about social democracy in Denmark. On the other hand, Cruz romanticized the “American free enterprise system” and demonized “European socialism,” claiming that the former creates “opportunity for everybody” while the latter does the opposite. (In reality, social mobility is higher in Europe than in the U.S.)
The Texas senator’s argument for cutting taxes on the rich and dismantling the welfare state was a familiar one, and throughout the debate, he peppered his rhetoric with the language of liberty. In justifying policies that would make the rich even richer, for example, the senator extolled the free market and associated lower taxes with greater freedom and prosperity for all.
When the discussion shifted to health care, Cruz did his best to portray the single-payer systems found in European countries as nightmarish bureaucracies that infringe on one’s freedom — a classic Republican trope that has long been used to defend the private health care system in America. Last March, for example, House Speaker Paul Ryan employed the same kind of logic while defending the Republican health care plan, depicting a potential increase in the number of people without health insurance as a symbol of freedom:
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https://www.salon.com/2017/10/28/freedom-for-the-few-fighting-the-rights-constricted-notion-of-liberty/
