‘A vote for anyone other than Donald Trump in November is a vote for Hillary,” the governor of Wisconsin has spent the week of the Republican convention robotically repeating. “It’s a binary choice,” the speaker of the House keeps on telling us, in his less colloquial, more game-theoretical language.
This is all nonsense—rationalization masquerading as realism, sophism disguised as sophistication. “A vote for anyone other than Donald Trump” is . . . a vote for anyone other than Donald Trump. And our choice need not be, and is not in truth, a binary one; that we must choose between the two nominees of the major parties is required neither by the Constitution nor the laws of the land, nor is it the truth of what we will see on our ballots this November. Indeed, there is no legal requirement, there is no moral obligation, there is no civic duty to vote for every office on the ballot or to vote at all. Nor should there be. This is a free country.
Not that you would know this from the Republican convention, and not that you will learn it from the Democratic convention. What happened to freedom? Freedom—heretofore thought a rather central component of the American dream—is barely visible in the visions of both parties.
Yes, we know: It’s too simple to say that America is only about freedom. It’s important to understand that there are other good and important things besides freedom. We know freedom isn’t everything. But it’s an awfully important thing.
Neither of the major parties’ 2016 presidential nominees is much of a votary of freedom. One is an old-fashioned authoritarian demagogue. The other is a modern nanny statist. The Republican nominee cares about the art of the deal, not the arts of free government. The Democratic nominee believes it takes a village to secure our rights, not that it takes free men and women assuming responsibility for their fate.
Neither has much sympathy with Tocqueville’s sentiment, expressed near the end of Democracy in America: “I would, I think, have loved freedom in all times; but I feel myself inclined to adore it in the time we are in.” Neither Trump nor Clinton adores freedom. Neither loves it. Neither much respects it.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised. A lasting dedication to the cause of freedom is rare on the part of nations. An elevated taste for the exercise of freedom is rare on the part of individuals. And so, in America in 2016, we have two non-freedom-loving nominees supported by two relatively indifferent-to-freedom political parties.
But we needn’t support either of them. We are free to ignore the rationalizations and the sophisms of the politicians. We are free to make the case for freedom and to advance its cause. For if we owe allegiance to any party, surely it is the party of freedom.
