The Freedom Fraud: How the Right Weaponized Liberty Against Democracy

From Patriots to Authoritarians in One Generation

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

They call themselves the party of freedom. The defenders of free speech. The guardians of constitutional liberty against government overreach. They’ve wrapped themselves in the rhetoric of the First Amendment for decades, positioning themselves as the last bulwark against creeping authoritarianism and thought control.

So where is their outrage when tourists and students are being barred from America for social media posts critical of Israeli policy, when the FBI raids John Bolton’s home for criticizing the president, when major law firms are terrorized away from civil rights cases, when universities face ideological purification through funding extortion, when state officials use government resources to promote religious nationalism?

The silence is deafening. And revealing.

This isn’t principled constitutional conservatism. This is a protection racket masquerading as freedom advocacy. They don’t defend freedom as a principle—they weaponize it as a tactic. And tactics serve one goal: power.