Acts
4:18-20 KJV And they called them, and commanded them not to
speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. (19) But Peter and
John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of
God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. (20) For
we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.
The
Words Trump Doesn't Use
nationalreview.com
[/] by Jim Geraghty [/] http://j.mp/0TrumpVsFree
or
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423819/donald-trump-speeches-no-liberty-freedom
Did
you ever think you would see the day when the GOP front-runner rarely
uttered the words “freedom” and “liberty”?
Perhaps
some Republicans can be accused of loving liberty and freedom too
much — or at least using those words as rhetorical crutches. Donald
Trump is not one of them. The current GOP presidential front-runner
rarely uses the words “freedom” or “liberty” in his remarks
at all.
Trump
didn’t use the words “freedom” or “liberty” in his
announcement speech. He didn’t use those words in his Nashville
speech on August 29, or his Nashville rally on August 21, or his
appearance at the Iowa State Fair on August 15, or his rally and news
conference in New Hampshire on August 14, or his news conference in
Birch Run, Mich., or his press conference in Laredo, Texas, on July
23.
He
didn’t use those words while discussing his signing of the
Republican National Committee’s pledge last Thursday, or in his
contentious interview with Hugh Hewitt the same day.
The
current GOP presidential front-runner rarely uses the words ‘freedom’
or ‘liberty’ in his remarks at all.
Trump
did use the term “free-market” once during his Meet the Press
interview with Chuck Todd, in a defense of his qualified support for
affirmative action: “Well, you know, you have to also go free
market. You have to go capability. You have to do a lot of things.
But I’m fine with affirmative action.” The word “liberty”
didn’t even come up.
This
is an unusual vocabulary for a Republican front-runner. It wasn’t
that long ago that grass-roots conservatives showed up at Tea Party
rallies with signs reading, “Liberty: All the Stimulus We Need.”
The Tea Party named itself after an event organized by the Sons of
Liberty. The GOP platform declares the party was “born in
opposition to the denial of liberty.”
RELATED:
Trump Has Become the Tone-Setter for Today’s GOP
Some
of Trump’s Republican presidential rivals use words like “freedom”
and “liberty” more frequently than commas. When CNBC’s John
Harwood asked Scott Walker about his health-care plan, the Wisconsin
governor used the word “freedom” six times in a 179-word answer.
In his campaign-announcement speech, Ted Cruz used the word “freedom”
twice, and not counting references to Liberty University, which
hosted the event, he used the word “liberty” eleven times.
Trump’s
lexicon is another indicator of the dramatic shift he would represent
in moving the Republican party from a libertarian-leaning one to a
populist one. During the Obama era, self-identified libertarians have
asked whether the Tea Party and the GOP are truly dedicated to
liberty and individual rights, or if their real objection to big
government is that it’s controlled by Democrats. The embrace of
Trump suggests their skepticism was well-founded.
It’s
no accident that Trump has been labeled a populist by outlets across
the political spectrum, from The American Interest to NPR. His
speeches and off-the-cuff remarks make clear that he doesn’t see
the world through the lens of free and unfree; he sees it through the
lens of strength and weakness: “For me, conservatism as it pertains
to our country is fiscal. We have to be strong and secure and get rid
of our debt. The military has to be powerful and not necessarily used
but very powerful. I am on the sort of a little bit social side of
conservative when it comes — I want people to be taken care of from
a health-care standpoint. But to do that, we have to be strong. I
want to save Social Security without cuts. I want a strong country.
And to me, conservative means a strong country with very little
debt.”
The
man whose slogan is “Make America Great Again” doesn’t seem
particularly worried about a Leviathan state infringing upon its
citizens’ liberties. He sees a disordered society whose people are
threatened by violent criminals coming across the border, undermined
by poor negotiation in foreign-trade and security agreements, and
asked by free-riding allies to shoulder way too much of the burden in
a dangerous world.
That
philosophy is dramatically different from the liberty-focused message
Republicans have become accustomed to since the rise of the Tea Party
in 2009. And, at least for now, it has made Trump the front-runner by
a wide margin.
Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review.
Full
disclosure.
When
reading Milton's Paradise Lost in high school I was particularly
struck of the response of the smallest angel to Satan: “Thou art
not free, but slave to self.”
I
much prefer “freedom” to “liberty”. The editor of the first
English dictionary much preferred to use words with English
antecedents. “Liberal” is “libertine” in French and carries
both meanings. The New York statue is a gift of the French. The
statue atop our Capitol is in the likeness of an American Indian
woman and is named, “Freedom”.
The
great Christian and biblical social principle of subsidiarity focuses
on the responsibility and authority of a creature made in the image
of God. Other authorities, beginning with a mother, are provided by
God to assist the individual in fulfilling his responsibility to God.
We
should pray for government which limits itself to subsidiary duties
which authorities closer to the individual (nuclear family, extended
family, neighbors, local church, locality) cannot provide.
All
men in positions of authority are responsible before God to preserve
the proper freedom of those authorities closer to, and including, the
individual.
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