Can Hillary Clinton Take Back the Concept of ‘Freedom’ From Conservatives?

Can Hillary Clinton Take Back the Concept of ‘Freedom’ From Conservatives?

Can Hillary Clinton Take Back the Concept of ‘Freedom’ From Conservatives?

Clinton would do a great service to the country by offering Americans a more expansive view of what freedom requires, and what threatens it.

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Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

This weekend, Hillary Clinton will unveil her “vision for the country” at a mass rally at the FDR Four Freedoms Park in New York City. Her campaign indicates that she’ll reveal a fuller picture of her economic policies in what is being billed as her official campaign launch.

But the stunning Louis Kahn memorial to Roosevelt can be more than just a setting for Clinton. It can inspire her to a far broader and bolder mission: to challenge directly, as Roosevelt did, the constrained notion of freedom that has dominated our politics since Ronald Reagan, and to offer a more expansive, empowering view of America’s experiment.

As historian Eric Foner has shown, freedom has always been a contested concept in the United States. In different eras, it has taken on different meanings. For the founders, it meant freedom from political autocracy, and from royalists with special privileges from the crown. Speaking in 1936, Roosevelt argued in the midst of the Great Depression, that industrialization had produced a “new despotism” of “economic dynasties.” Within our borders, Roosevelt argued, “popular opinion is at war with a power-seeking minority. . . an economic autocracy.”

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Become a Sustaining Donor This September

Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.

This assault on democracy cannot be ignored or wished away. Resisting it requires bravery in the face of threats and repression, a steadfast commitment to the truth, and the unwavering belief that we can—and will—overcome this darkness.

We must have an independent media that sets the record straight, unearths corruption and abuses of power, and advances a politics of justice and dignity for all if we’re to win this fight.

That’s why I’m writing to you today. This September, The Nation needs to add 100 monthly donors to sustain our progressive journalism. Your contribution makes the next investigative report, the next truth-speaking column, and the next pathbreaking essay all possible. 

I hope you’ll support our work with a recurring donation today. If you donate $10 or more a month, we’ll send you a brand new “Hands Off the Free Press!” sticker to recognise your commitment to our cause. Please, donate today. 

Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

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