“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”

Those lyrics are from Beyonce’s song “Freedom,” the unofficial anthem of the Kamala Harris campaign. And that choice reflects a stunning reversal in modern American politics.

For decades, Republicans have shrewdly and effectively made freedom central to their core identity. From “freedom fries” — coined by a North Carolina restaurant during the Iraq War — to the hard-right Freedom Caucus in Congress, the GOP has owned the idea. Until now.

During their Chicago convention, Democrats invoked freedom at every opportunity — through signs and speeches, songs and slogans. As Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania summarized the message: “Donald Trump took away freedoms and is promising to take away more, and Kamala Harris is promising to expand our freedom.”

The barrage left even loyal Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer somewhat bemused. “Who would have thought,” he admitted, “that freedom would be the watchword of the Democratic Party, and no longer the Republican Party?”

The Democrats once claimed that watchword. Franklin Roosevelt’s State of the Union address in 1941 promised Americans that government would safeguard “four freedoms”: freedom to speak and worship, as well as “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.” The civil rights workers who poured into the South in the early 1960s were known as “Freedom Riders.”

Eventually, however, the New Deal fueled a vast increase in government rules and regulations, and Republicans could effectively campaign against a “nanny state” that strangled individual liberty. Many Americans who struggled with the DMV or the IRS or any other three-letter government agency were open to the argument made by Ronald Reagan at the Republican convention in 1964: “This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Donald Trump still rants against the swamp and the deep state and the coastal elites, but the rising power of fundamentalist Christians within the Republican Party has shifted the debate. The preacher state has replaced the nanny state. Instead of liberals regulating the economy, conservatives want to regulate morality. Instead of controlling business choices, they want to control personal choices: who you love, when you have children, what you read, where you pray.

“Republicans have created space for the government to become much more intrusive in people’s personal and sexual and familial lives,” says New York Times columnist Ezra Klein in a recent podcast. “You have a Republican party that is coming to a very, very different understanding of freedom, right? It’s not interested in freedom. It’s interested in using the power of the state and the power of the culture to reshape decision-making quite powerfully.”

That impulse gives Democrats a critical opening. Jason Willick of the Washington Post describes their strategy as “social libertarianism” and explains: “It reflects a Democratic effort to portray the GOP as the culture-war aggressors — the ones trying to dictate how you should live.”

Two comments by the vice-presidential candidates sum up this key conflict. One was by Republican JD Vance, who lamented that the country was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies.” The other was by Democrat Tim Walz, who said folks in Minnesota lived by a “golden rule” that goes, “Mind your own damn business.”

The prime example of Republicans as “culture-war aggressors,” of course, is abortion, and the Supreme Court decision — boosted by three Trump appointees — to cancel a woman’s constitutional right to control her own reproductive system. A recent Washington Post/ABC poll reports that 62% of Americans oppose that opinion, and in every state where abortion rights have been put to a vote, the pro-abortion rights side has won.

That’s why Democrats included so many personal testimonies by women who have suffered health complications since the ruling restricted their rights. One was Kate Cox, who had to leave Texas to obtain an abortion. “Trump didn’t care,” she said. “There’s nothing pro-family about abortion bans. There’s nothing pro-life about letting women suffer and even die.”

Reproductive choice has a larger symbolic meaning: It conveys the idea that the preacher state doesn’t respect women’s basic autonomy or identity. And support for the Democratic ticket among young women has surged by 16 points.

As Beyonce might put it, Harris and Walz are chain breakers, reclaiming the banner of freedom. And they’re waving it high.

(Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.)