Freedom. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. At a speech this past Friday, the factually challenged President decided that it’s high time the Democrats take ownership of the word freedom.
During his speech to Democrats on Friday evening, President Obama pointed out that it was the Democrats, not Republicans that should own the word “freedom.”
“As Democrats, we’ve let the other side define the word ‘freedom’ for too long,” he said, as the crowd applauded.
During his speech, Obama explained that the true meaning of freedom was not just one’s freedom to act as he wished, but rather the freedom from experiencing economic pressure.
Freedom, he insisted, was about having health insurance.
“Freedom is the peace of mind of knowing that if you got sick, you won’t lose everything,” he stated. “Freedom is the ability to change jobs and start a new business, chase a new idea without fear of losing your health insurance.”
Obama also defined freedom in terms of Americans understanding and living with financial debt.
“Freedom is signing for that new home and knowing it can’t be taken from you because you actually understand what you’re signing,” he said. “Freedom is getting that new credit card and knowing the stakes and understanding how you’re going to manage it; enrolling in college and knowing what you’ll owe once you graduate.”
Let’s hop in the not-so-wayback machine check out The Democrats view of freedom.
In a piece from August, 2008, the Wall Street Journal noticed that the DNC had completely left out the “FACTS!!1!” about the Democrats long history of racism and their definition of freedom from the DNC website:
…. So what’s missing?
- There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. There were six from 1840 through 1860.
- There is no reference to the number of Democratic presidents who owned slaves. There were seven from 1800 through 1861
- There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were 20, from 1868 through 1948.
- There is no reference to “Jim Crow” as in “Jim Crow laws,” nor is there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 52-year part of the DNC’s missing years. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, rest rooms and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the “whites only” front section of a bus, the “whites only” designation the direct result of Democrats.
- There is no reference to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease’s description of the Klan as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.”
- There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The 15th gave black Americans the right to vote.
- There is no reference to the fact that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who had been a Democrat before joining Lincoln’s ticket in 1864. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.
- There is no reference to the Democrats’ opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations.
- There is no reference to the Democrats’ 1904 platform, which devotes a section to “Sectional and Racial Agitation,” claiming the GOP’s protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to “revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country,” which in turn “means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed.”
- There is no reference to four Democratic platforms, 1908-20, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching and voting rights as racial problems in the country mount. By contrast the GOP platforms of those years specifically address “Rights of the Negro” (1908), oppose lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks “wards of the state.”
- There is no reference to the Democratic Convention of 1924, known to history as the “Klanbake.” The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate, the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African-Americans and Catholics.
- There is no reference to the fact that it was Democrats who segregated the federal government, at the direction of President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913. There is a reference to the fact that President Harry Truman integrated the military after World War II.
- There is reference to the fact that Democrats created the Federal Reserve Board, passed labor and child welfare laws, and created Social Security with Wilson’s New Freedom and FDR’s New Deal. There is no mention that these programs were created as the result of an agreement to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks. Neither is there a reference to the thousands of local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. congressmen and U.S. senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965. Nor is there reference to the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
- There is no reference that three-fourths of the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in the U.S. House came from Democrats, or that 80% of the “nay” vote in the Senate came from Democrats. Certainly there is no reference to the fact that the opposition included future Democratic Senate leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia (a former Klan member) and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Sr., father of Vice President Al Gore.
- Last but certainly not least, there is no reference to the fact that Birmingham, Ala., Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, who infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors, was in fact–yes indeed–a member of both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan.
Let’s skip ahead to modern day Democrats, shall we. Mandating all Americans purchase a healthcare plan that the Democrats like, or be penalized. NSA spying. IRS targeting. President Stompy Pen and his Executive Orders. Burdensome regulations that not only kill jobs, but make energy costs rise as well. And, last but definitely not least, the Democrats injecting themselves into newsrooms across the nation for a “study.” After all, according to the Constitutional Law Professor in Chief “the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.” – Barack Obama, 2001
Thanks, but I’ll keep my current definition of the word freedom.