Check out the New York Times ideological hypocrisy regarding single-issue voters: When Democrats cynically employ the word “freedom” but apply it only to the single issue of abortion, it’s a praiseworthy political tactic. But when it’s Democrats joining Republicans to support actual freedom by opposing harmful vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and school closings, it’s potentially dangerous.
Reporter Katie Glueck huddled up with the Democrats on their new campaign tactic while reporting “Progressive Groups Push Democrats on ‘Freedom’ for Midterm Election Message,” which redefined “freedom” as “abortion.” As if saying “freedom” will make voters forget years of moralistic liberal calls for lockdowns and mandates at the expense of actual individual freedom.
How does freedom work? Abortion, mostly.
The move is the latest evidence that Democrats at every level of the party and of varying ideological stripes….are increasingly seeking to reclaim language about freedom and personal liberty from Republicans. It is a dynamic that grew out of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, and one that is intensifying as more states navigate abortion bans while Republicans nominate election deniers for high office.
Glueck let a Republican at the very least a pithy quotation:
In a statement, Emma Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, highlighted the effort to paint Democrats as anti-freedom over pandemic measures, calling them the party of “shuttered businesses, school lockdowns, masks on toddlers and forced vaccines.”
The last month The Washington PostAside from their support of abortion-on-demand, the Democrats are also known as the party of freedom.
By contrast, reporter Sheera Frenkel’s alarmist front-page August 1 story on mothers moved to protest Covid-related mandates and school closures took a strange angle: “Pandemic Made Some Parents Fervent Anti-Mandate Voters.”
They waved signs that read “Defeat the mandates” and “No vaccines.” They chanted “Protect our kids” and “Our kids, our choice.”
Nearly every person in the crowd was a parent. As they protested in Orinda, Calif. on Friday, almost everyone was a parent.
The majority of them had never been before to a political gathering. But after seeing their children isolated and despondent early in the coronavirus pandemic, they despaired, they said. Through Facebook, other parents were concerned and sympathized with their situation. They shared notes and online articles — many of them misleading — about the reopening of schools and the efficacy of vaccines and masks. These issues quickly displaced other concerns.
Frenkel didn’t bother analyzing the strengths of the actual argument to keep schools open, as if admitting that keeping public schools shuttered was indefensible policy.
Ms. Longnecker, along with her fellow objectors, are part of potentially destabilizing new movementParents who became anti-vaccine or anti-mask during the pandemic and narrowed their political views to one-minded obsessiveness over these issues. Their thinking hardened even as Covid-19 restrictions and mandates were eased and lifted, cementing in some cases into a skepticism of all vaccines.
….
….Many of these were motivated by a feeling of righteousness following the end of Covid vaccine mandates and mask mandates. The parents are becoming more dogmatic and convinced that, if they do not act, then new mandates will be given after the midterms.
A correction revealed Frenkel’s desire to tar the fight for normal lives for children as extremist.
Because of an editing error, the article included a link to a “Stop the Steal” Facebook group, suggesting that it was among the groups [former Democrat and mother Natalya]Murakhver was a member. This group did not interest Murakhver, so the link was removed.
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