James Bovard on liberty in America

If you look at the rhetoric of the presidential campaign this year, you had Biden promising to make America more woke, you had Trump promising to make America great again.  What you didn't have is anybody promising to make America constitutional again or to make America free again.

So I really wonder how much love of liberty Americans still have, because it doesn't come up that often as a pure issue in presidential campaigns.  It really hasn't been a primary issue, I don't think, by a major candidate since the 1980s, since Ronald Reagan.

~ James Bovard, "Draining the Swamp with Jim Bovard," Competitive Enterprise Institute, 23:30 mark, January 9, 2025