Deborah Lipp

One of the things that drives me (and indeed, many on the left) batshit crazy about those on the right is that they claim to love freedom yet seem to hate any displays of that freedom. I’ve wondered my entire life what, exactly, conservatives define as “liberty.” They hate the ACLU! How can you love freedom, and hate the defense of civil liberties? How can you love freedom, and applaud restrictions on free speech, on free assembly, or on a free press?

This latest rant on my part arises from a combination of two news stories. Not the news stories, really, but the wingnut reaction. First, the ongoing revelations about the NSA spying on ordinary Americans without a warrant. Now, some right wing folks understand the gravity of this. But the wingnut reaction in many places is more or less: Rah, cheer, we’re defending freedom.

Then there’s Cindy Sheehan’s arrest at the State of the Union. The wingnuts I was conversing with (on a message board) were adamant that it was right, and good, and proper, that her freedom be curtailed at the SOTU, because after all, she was breaking the law! (And not one of them bothered even to backpeddle, let alone apologize, once the police admitted she wasn’t.)

So my question is, at it has always been, how do the right wing define freedom? And I think I figured it out.

It’s not free speech, it’s not free assembly, it’s not a free press, or the right to a fair trial; none of those things float the Republican boat. Freedom, to the right, is to be unfettered and touched. It is to move forward independently.

In fact, freedom as defined by the right peaked around 1850–1890. Robber barons. Boss Tweed. The railroad. The Wild West. The reason that John Wayne is the ultimate right wing icon is not that he embodied the values but that he also wore the costume. And carried the gun.

I’m not actually being dismissive of those values. Freedom of movement, freedom to explore, a certain masculine bravado, these are legitimately a part of the “American dream.” They are accompanied, both in the historic image and in current winger philosophy, with unfettered laissez-faire capitalism, unrelieved poverty for the masses, and the oppression of women, minorities, and foreigners. And oh yeah, guns. Even Clint Eastwood figured out that the value of the Western image has its limitations, and he’s a Republican.

I can’t really think of a movie that embodies the left’s America the way that, say, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance embodies the right’s. Maybe Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or Silkwood, or Dances with Wolves. But, I dunno.

The point is, there is an image, a legitimate image of freedom, held by the right that excludes, really, everything I understand freedom to be. To me, freedom is the speech, the dissent, the religious radicalism, the rowdy press.

The one place where the lone gunman image and the rowdy dissident image come together, where left and right meet (or should meet) is on the issue of privacy. I just don’t understand why wingnuts don’t get the privacy thing. There is nothing more stereotypically American than saying “leave me the fuck alone.” If you tapped John Wayne’s phone, he’d put a bullet through the phone and then run the guy listening out of town on a rail. Why aren’t Republicans doing the same? Why aren’t we all, left and right, banding together to drive them varmints outa this here town?