In the current election cycle, serious charges have been raised by both candidates concerning the fitness for the office of the presidency of the other candidate. The essence of the Harris charge dwells on what she claims has come out of Trump’s mouth, meaning insults, putdowns, racism, and lies. The essence of the Trump charge concerns what doesn’t come out of Harris’s mouth, meaning her utter vacuity, not to mention her silence on many issues.
Granted, Harris has not been silent on many important issues — but she has claimed that she has changed her mind on many of them. In other words, we have a good idea of what Trump stands for and what he will try to accomplish, whereas we have suspicions, but no clear idea about what Harris might do — or might not do.
Now for the vacuity charge. Yes, that vacuity was on display in Harris’s recent sit-down with Oprah Winfrey. It was even cringingly and embarrassingly on display — but this was nevertheless not an entirely substance-free zone.
Her laundry list of “freedoms” was actually quite revealing, meaning both what she didn’t include and what she did include. First was the “freedom to make decisions about your own body.” That wasn’t exactly one of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms,” but there has never been much doubt that it is Kamala Haris’s first freedom. Now we have solid evidence that this is the case.
And yet it, too, was in its own way a bit vague. The obvious presumption is that she was referring to the modern Democrat party version of a “positive good,” meaning an unlimited right to an abortion rather than the right to own slaves. But notice what was missing: “your body,” not a woman’s body. She left open the possibility that she was also including the freedom of a child to attempt to alter his sex. Or the right of an illegal alien to do the same thing — and at taxpayer expense. Or the right of a male to compete in female sports. In any case, it is revealing that this is Kamala Harris’s first freedom.
Second on her list was the “freedom to be safe from gun violence.” But how will she ensure this? She doesn’t say. Will she interfere with the freedoms of gun-owners? After all, to guarantee such a freedom, there will have to be gun confiscation on a massive scale. If this is really her second most important freedom, nothing less than that will be required.
Third was the “freedom to have access to the ballot box.” To be sure, that freedom was denied to women and minorities decades upon decades ago. But just how is this freedom being denied to any eligible voter today? And might it not be considered freeing to know that assurances are made to ascertain that only eligible voters exercise the franchise?
To be more specific, does Harris’s third freedom include the right to have an unrequested ballot mailed to you? Does it demand voting for weeks on end? And does it include not being required to show identification prior to voting?
To cap it all off, Harris returned to the body — and perhaps the mind: “the freedom to be who you are and just be …” And precisely what does that freedom imply? Who knows? It’s not likely that even she knows. In any case, it is completely vacuous.
Then she got slightly more specific: “the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride.” Everyone who is sentient knows precisely what category of lovers she was pridefully talking about here. But just to make sure that everyone gets it, she clinches things with a second mention of the “freedom to just be.” The Peter Sellers character in Being There couldn’t have said it any better.
Having covered virtually all of the bases of the ever-expanding sexual revolution, Harris concludes with a triumphant “And that’s who we are. We believe in all that.” And that apparently is that. But not quite.
On another fateful January 6, FDR outlined his Four Freedoms in what actually was his 1941 State of the Union address. They included the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Now let’s compare that quartet to Harris’s four freedoms: the freedom to abort a child (or try to alter one’s sex), freedom from guns, an apparently unlimited and unrestricted freedom to vote, and an equally unlimited and unrestricted freedom when it comes to sexual partners.
On second thought, Harris actually did FDR one better by adding a fifth freedom: her “freedom to just be.” One can easily imagine both Franklin and Eleanor wincing and shaking their heads upon hearing those four words. Actually, they might also be wondering what happened to his stated freedoms. His insertion of the word “expression,” it’s safe to surmise, had nothing to do with sexual expression. And his “freedom from fear,” though itself on the vague side, likely had little to do with any specific fear about guns.
But also notice what else is missing from the Harris top four — or the Harris top five, if we include her elusive freedom to be. Early on in their chat, Harris informed Oprah that Americans are an optimistic people, a people “with dreams and aspirations and ambitions.” Vague enough, but also fair enough. In any case, who could possibly object to that? Certainly not Donald Trump.
One might then readily assume that any subsequent Harris list of American freedoms would include not just the presence of speech and worship and the absence of want, but a number of other crucial freedoms, especially economic freedoms, which might fall somewhere under FDR’s “freedom from want.” But given her concession to Trumpishness about “dreams and aspirations and ambitions,” it’s more than curious that she forgot about all of that when it came time to wax eloquent about her most important freedoms.
Then again, perhaps she was indirectly signaling something here — namely, her desire to California-ize the nation with all sorts of governmental restrictions that would make it more and more difficult for any and all Americans to realize their own dreams and ambitions. Or maybe, just maybe, Harris was so taken with, so wrapped up in, all of the trendy freedoms of the Sexual Revolution that no other freedoms really matter all that much to her. And what could be more revealing than that?
John C. “Chuck” Chalberg writes from Bloomington, Minn.
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