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Episode 3: The Truth about Freedom.
19 Plays22 days ago
Republicans claim to love freedom and to be the party of freedom. Their actions say otherwise. This episode explores conservative freedom mythology.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction: The GOP and the Freedom Narrative
00:00:17
Darwin Kastle
Welcome to episode three of the big swing saving America. Today's episode is about the Republican Party's claim to being the party of freedom and the stark differences between their claims and reality.
Do Republicans Truly Value Freedom?
00:00:32
Darwin Kastle
Part one, free speech. Conservatives claim freedom as one of their core values, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom from government tyranny.
00:00:44
Darwin Kastle
They want you to believe that the Republican Party is the party of freedom. This is just another one of their myths. Let's start with one of their favorites, freedom of speech.
00:00:56
Darwin Kastle
Republicans like to complain about something they call cancel culture. This is when a famous person does something that such a large segment of society finds repulsive that there becomes a broad consensus not to show support for that person anymore and to avoid continuing to give that person a public platform.
00:01:13
Darwin Kastle
Conservatives believe that people should be able to say and do repulsive things without suffering those sorts of consequences. They say it's because those people were merely excusing exercising their right to free speech.
00:01:27
Darwin Kastle
Of course, this line of reasoning suggests that famous people should be allowed to say or do anything they want without any social consequences, which is absurd.
Free Speech vs. Social Consequences
00:01:37
Darwin Kastle
When the Bill of Rights talks about freedom of speech, they're talking about the government and the laws of the government.
00:01:44
Darwin Kastle
Cancel culture isn't a product of government action. It's the product of social action. If a famous person wants to say racist things, massages things, or other things that most of society objects to, they can. It's not illegal to say controversial or even awful things.
00:02:03
Darwin Kastle
If the government tries to de-platform you based on your speech, or worst yet, arrest you, that would be a violation of your free speech. The Bill of Rights is intended to protect you from government action, but if you use those legal rights to do or say things that society thinks is awful, society has every right to object, and even to protest against you for it.
00:02:27
Darwin Kastle
Saying repulsive things may not have legal consequences, but freedom from legal consequences doesn't shield you from social consequences, nor should it.
00:02:38
Darwin Kastle
The GOP love to talk about letting the market decide things. Another myth, by the way. Well, this is like that. If people decide that you're awful and they don't want to hear you or see you, that's the market deciding, right?
00:02:56
Darwin Kastle
It gets worse.
Is GOP's Free Speech Advocacy Hypocritical?
00:02:57
Darwin Kastle
Yes, the right tends to misidentify things as being about free speech in an effort to bolster their self-proclaimed reputation as the party of free speech.
00:03:07
Darwin Kastle
But they're also the ones who most frequently actually do interfere with free speech. It's important to understand that hypocrisy is one of the core traits of the Republican Party.
00:03:19
Darwin Kastle
Do as I say, not as i do. A defining characteristic of the Republican Party is to have rules intended to control other people, but that aren't intended to apply to them.
00:03:33
Darwin Kastle
For example, they say that things like abortion or divorce are bad right up until a rich Republican needs one. Then it's okay.
00:03:45
Darwin Kastle
Free speech is another perfect example of conservative hypocrisy. There are four states that had by far the most book bans in 2025, according to World Population Review.
00:03:57
Darwin Kastle
Florida, Iowa, Texas, and Tennessee. Hmm, what do those four states have in common? All four have been governed by Republicans for many years.
00:04:13
Darwin Kastle
What about free speech? What about cancel culture? Does that only apply to rich celebrities? Starting in 2024, the GOP had a stranglehold on federal power, a Republican president, a Republican Senate majority, a House of Representatives Republican majority.
00:04:33
Darwin Kastle
Oh, yeah, and a Republican majority in the Supreme Court.
00:04:39
Darwin Kastle
Technically, the people in Supreme Court aren't supposed to have an R or D by their names. So we'll just say a conservative majority in the Supreme Court. But, you know, people who are put there by Republicans and who tend to rule in conservative ways.
00:04:55
Darwin Kastle
But surely, as the Party of Freedom, now that they have such a stranglehold on federal power, they would make sure to protect free speech and avoid using government power to influence public speech, right?
00:05:09
Darwin Kastle
No. Brendan Carr, head of the FCC, has been threatening to remove the licenses of TV stations and networks that air content critical of the administration.
00:05:22
Darwin Kastle
President Trump has even got personally involved in large entertainment deals to influence networks and corporations that are seeking favorable outcomes in merger attempts. This has led to the firing of Stephen Colbert from late night television on CBS. It has also led to censorship at 60 Minutes and the firing of top producers and anchors that wouldn't cooperate.
00:05:43
Darwin Kastle
Government pressure even led to Jimmy Kimmel being temporarily removed from the air. CBS Nightly News has even significantly changed their approach the news to make it more favorable to the administration.
00:05:56
Darwin Kastle
The Trump administration has also removed discussion of slavery from museums in multiple cities. They have removed mention of Trump's impeachments from the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Are you seeing the pattern yet?
00:06:10
Darwin Kastle
The right is only in favor of speech that serves their purposes. Want to say something racist? Let freedom ring. Want to criticize Republicans or talk about slavery?
00:06:21
Darwin Kastle
Silence you. Time and again, if Republicans tell you about a supposed virtue of the GOP as a reason to vote for them, yeah it just turns out to be another myth.
Religious Freedom or Control?
00:06:35
Darwin Kastle
Part 2. Religious Liberty The GOP loves religion. Well, sort of. The Republican Party like to tout themselves as the party that cares the most about freedom of religion.
00:06:47
Darwin Kastle
At this point, we know that if the GOP brags about something, we shouldn't believe them. It's no longer even, trust but verify. Now it's, don't trust at all until it's been thoroughly verified.
00:07:02
Darwin Kastle
Their claim of supporting freedom of religion is just another example of why that's the case. As I've discussed before, the GOP's strategy for maintaining political power is all about creating in-groups and out-groups.
00:07:19
Darwin Kastle
Christians are a major in-group for them. Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Jews, and other non-Christians are all outgroups.
00:07:31
Darwin Kastle
The one conditional exception might appear to be Jews that support Israel. That's because Republicans are politically allied with Israel's right-wing government, not because of any actual great respect for Judaism.
00:07:47
Darwin Kastle
When conservatives say that freedom of religion is important to them, what it really means is that they believe Christians should have more power than everyone else. It's not uncommon for Republican politicians to refer to America as a, quote, Christian nation. And some have even suggested that so-called biblical law should take priority over laws made by Congress.
00:08:11
Darwin Kastle
In 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene declared the GOP as the party of Christian nationalism and rejected the Constitution's explicit mandate for separation of church and state.
00:08:24
Darwin Kastle
This is a key to understand the conservative view on religion. They don't believe in religious freedom. They believe in Christian supremacy. Oh, and did I mention that they get to decide what counts as Christian and what doesn't?
00:08:40
Darwin Kastle
Who cares what the Pope or other Christian leaders say? To them, what is and isn't Christian is whatever suits their purposes. In a country that values both religious freedom and separation of church and state, you might expect each individual will be allowed to act in ways that they determine is aligned with their beliefs and their values.
00:09:02
Darwin Kastle
Yet that's not at all what conservatives are pushing for. To conservatives, government and religion are just mechanisms of power and control. As an individual, you might decide to use your personal freedom to get an abortion.
00:09:18
Darwin Kastle
But the GOP have determined that this somehow violates freedom of religion because to them, What freedom of religion really means is that they have the freedom to tell you what you are and are or not allowed to do.
Pro-Life or Pro-Control?
00:09:35
Darwin Kastle
They just cloak that theft of religion in the righteous-sounding phrase, religious freedom. According to Judaism, the life of the mother is required to be placed above the fetus. You might then expect the part of religious freedom to respect this belief.
00:09:52
Darwin Kastle
But of course, this isn't about religion in general or even about freedom. It's about control. Conservative views on religious freedom are applied the same way towards gay marriage.
00:10:05
Darwin Kastle
You may think that a belief in religious freedom might mean that if your beliefs say, don't marry someone of the same sex, you would just not marry someone of the same sex while respecting the freedom of others to do differently. Nope.
00:10:20
Darwin Kastle
If I can't tell you what to do, then my freedoms are being violated. It's exactly that messed up when you boil it down. But why do they care about gay marriage?
00:10:34
Darwin Kastle
It's not like they're making money off gay people not marrying, right? It's because LGBTQ people are a major outgroup for conservatives. Sadly, oppressing LGBTQ people while seem simultaneously claiming that they are just exercising their constitutional right to religious freedom is a great way for the GOP to divide voters into opposing groups.
00:11:00
Darwin Kastle
Dividing us is crucial to prevent us from realizing that actually it's the wealthy versus everyone else. This helps them stay in power so they can keep pursuing their agenda of doing whatever they think is best for the wealthiest Americans.
00:11:17
Darwin Kastle
Party of Religious Freedom? Nope. Again and again, we learn that we have to question every claim they make and that this one is just another myth meant to gain and keep power.
00:11:34
Darwin Kastle
Part 3. Pro-life. Just saying it doesn't make it true. The Republican Party like to market themselves as the pro-life party.
00:11:44
Darwin Kastle
Sounds pretty wholesome, right? And we know they're against abortion, so this one can't be a myth, right? Well, the pro-life part sure is a myth.
00:11:55
Darwin Kastle
If they just called themselves anti-abortion, I guess it would be hard to argue with. But there are two big problems with the pro-life moniker. The first one ties directly to the abortion issue.
00:12:08
Darwin Kastle
They say that the reason they call themselves pro-life is that abortion is murder, and by stopping abortions, they're saving the lives of embryos, or as they misleadingly like to call them, babies.
00:12:22
Darwin Kastle
In reality, they are just trying to control women, a common theme with conservatives. The proof is in their own actions and policies. Studies have consistently shown that the best way to prevent abortion isn't by making them illegal, it's by preventing unwanted pregnancies.
00:12:44
Darwin Kastle
The keys to prevent preventing unwanted pregnancy are sex education and birth control. Conservatives, of course, are against both of these things.
00:12:56
Darwin Kastle
Their approach is that sex is for reproduction, not pleasure. If you don't want to get pregnant, then don't have sex. Telling people abstinence is the only way to prevent pregnancy isn't effective education or effective policymaking.
00:13:12
Darwin Kastle
It's just another way that Republicans are trying to control people, especially women. According to U.S. s News and World Reports, the states with the highest teen pregnancy rates are all red states.
00:13:25
Darwin Kastle
Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, of course, and West Virginia.
00:13:37
Darwin Kastle
Seems like the abstinence-only approach might have a few flaws. Republicans aren't stopping unwanted pregnancies. They're helping create more of them.
00:13:48
Darwin Kastle
It's a bit like their supposed desire to be tough on crime or on immigration. If the things that they're trying to get you mad about went away, then they wouldn't be able to campaign on them.
00:14:01
Darwin Kastle
Republicans want crime. They want illegal immigration. They want abortions. This gives them things to get voters angry about. That's why it's critical to watch what they do, not just what they say.
00:14:17
Darwin Kastle
The second problem with the GOP calling themselves the pro-life party is their policies on life after pregnancy and birth. Who wants capital punishment? Republicans. Who wants to launch wars? Republicans.
00:14:31
Darwin Kastle
Who wants to take away health care? Republicans. Does this sound like the policies of a party concerned about people's lives? If they're pro-life, you might think that the lives of the people they want to be giving birth to babies would matter to them.
00:14:47
Darwin Kastle
And yet, the states with the highest maternal death rates in 2025 were all red states, according to USA Facts. Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky.
00:15:02
Darwin Kastle
The top two states for lowest maternal death rates? Deeply Blue, California, and Minnesota. It seems like the GOP aren't doing good job of being the party that protects lives.
00:15:14
Darwin Kastle
And what about all those unwanted babies they want people to have? Surely Republicans must be pushing for things like paid maternal leave, child car so subsidies, child tax credits, and everything possible to help struggling families, right?
00:15:29
Darwin Kastle
Nope. Helping struggling people is way too progressive for the GOP. There is a party that is concerned about the lives and the quality of life of voters.
00:15:41
Darwin Kastle
but it's not the Republican Party. That is just another myth. Part four. Freedom! Well, just not for everybody.
00:15:52
Darwin Kastle
As I've discussed, the GOP isn't the dedicated party of American freedoms like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the freedom to live life as you would like to believe.
00:16:03
Darwin Kastle
as they would like you to believe. It turns out they aren't even protectors of the most basic freedom, freedom itself.
Freedom and Incarceration: A GOP Contradiction?
00:16:12
Darwin Kastle
Republicans love imprisoning people.
00:16:15
Darwin Kastle
According to Worldometer, there are 195 countries in the world. Only four of them have a higher rate of incarceating incarcerating people than the United States, according to a Statistica.
00:16:28
Darwin Kastle
El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan. Surely those aren't the governments we want to model our approach to freedom on, right?
00:16:39
Darwin Kastle
Yikes. We also have the highest overall number of people incarcerated at 1.8 million people, beating out China at 1.7 million people. Despite the fact that china's China's population is four times as high as the United States.
00:16:57
Darwin Kastle
so depressing. We're incarcerating people at four times the rate that China is. Since conservatives view themselves as the party of freedom, they must be trying to reform the justice system and to get those numbers down, right?
00:17:15
Darwin Kastle
No. According to Open Secrets, by far the most members of Congress that receive donations from PACs that represent the private prison industry are Republicans.
00:17:28
Darwin Kastle
Most of the Democrats that take donations like these represent conservative-leaning districts in red states like Florida and Texas. Perhaps this is just a reflection of the GOP trying to be the party of law and order.
00:17:41
Darwin Kastle
Hardly. According to the National Institute of Corrections and the Sentencing Project, incarcerating people more doesn't lead to lower crime rates. In fact, when states lower their incarceration rates, crime also lowers.
00:17:56
Darwin Kastle
me The big thing to look at is who is the Trump administration locking up and who are they setting free
00:18:05
Darwin Kastle
The first thing Trump did after he returned to office for a second term was to pardon every person involved with the attack on the Capitol building on January 6th. He didn't even draw a line between different levels of crime.
00:18:18
Darwin Kastle
He even pardoned the pardoned the ones who had seriously injured police officers. a Party of law and order, my ass. In other administrations, there's been a careful vetting process for determining who is suitable for pardons.
00:18:34
Darwin Kastle
Given that these pardons happened as soon as Trump got into office, it's clear he didn't bother vetting these people to ensure that they were good people who deserve a second chance. What made them worthy of pardons was their willingness to commit violence on President Trump's behalf.
00:18:51
Darwin Kastle
Trump has continued to issue large number of pardons since then, but the type of person being pardoned has changed. They're still all criminals who haven't received proper vetting from the presidential pardon office, but now they're rich people, of course.
00:19:08
Darwin Kastle
Rich people who found ways to enrich Trump or people close to him. If that sounds corrupt, that's because it is. Trump has already pardoned over 1,700 people, and he's not even halfway through his term.
00:19:23
Darwin Kastle
While about 1,500 of those were January 6th defendants, the rest have been a mix of the types of people Trump loves to surround himself with. Celebrities, disgraced politicians, political allies, and even white-collar criminals.
00:19:37
Darwin Kastle
The most common crimes among their richer among these richer individuals are money laundering, bank fraud, and wire fraud. Not only are these people not trying to make things right with the people that they've harmed, the pardons have wiped away millions of dollars that these people were supposed to be paying in restitution to their victims.
00:19:59
Darwin Kastle
Oh, but don't worry, though. Trump is making sure way more people are being put into prison by his administration than are being released. Phew!
00:20:10
Darwin Kastle
Wouldn't want to be considered a country concerned about human rights or anything, am I right?
Immigration and Profits: The ICE Connection
00:20:15
Darwin Kastle
Under this administration, us Immigration and Customs Enforcement has had its budget increase so massively that it is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency.
00:20:24
Darwin Kastle
How are they using those tax dollars? Keeping private prison companies happy. When Trump ran for office this time, he talked about mass deportations. But many voters believe that these would be carefully targeted to remove the worst of the worst.
00:20:40
Darwin Kastle
People with criminal records who are actively making the U.S. more dangerous. ICE hasn't used the influx of cash to find the most dangerous people. Instead, they've been increasing the number of holding facilities and the number of enforcement officers to enable them to lock up greater number of people for longer periods of time.
00:20:59
Darwin Kastle
Many of the people being detained don't even have criminal records, and many have even turned out to be here legally. Some have even been U.S. citizens.
00:21:11
Darwin Kastle
Republicans have long talked about the need for immigrants to do things the right way, coming in legally and through the proper channels to the United States.
00:21:22
Darwin Kastle
Yet ICE has been sweeping up people with green cards and people who are even attending asylum hearings. Even in cases where they've picked up people who could be legally deport, they have frequently kept them in custody for long periods of time before deporting them.
00:21:37
Darwin Kastle
If that's not bad enough, there are constant reports of inhumane conditions in these facilities. Which brings us to why the GOP are doing these things. Two reasons.
00:21:48
Darwin Kastle
The first reason is to make money for the rich donors behind the private prison industry. The people whose companies run the facilities were locking up huge numbers of people in terrible conditions for long periods of time, whether they're rightfully detained or not.
00:22:05
Darwin Kastle
The second reason is to support Republicans' narrative about hordes of dangerous immigrants and how tough the GOP are when it comes to fighting those supposed hordes. As usual, this is all part of the GOP mythology, promoting themselves as being the party of things that are based on lies.
Conclusion: The Myth of GOP as the Party of Freedom
00:22:23
Darwin Kastle
Republicans are not the party of freedom, not any kind of freedom. That is, unless you're talking about things like the freedom to ignore people's constitutional rights. The GOP are the party of making the rich even richer.
00:22:36
Darwin Kastle
Sadly, that just doesn't make for a winning slogan on a billboard or on a TV commercial. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Big Swing Saving America. The Big Swing is written and read for you by me, Darwin Castle.
00:22:49
Darwin Kastle
Join us next time as we dive into one of the biggest conservative myths, the immigration myth.