Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick, Writers' Group Published 9:30 a.m. CT July 11, 2020

Independence Day is a time when we both celebrate freedom and consider its meaning, and 2020 has thrust to two radically different visions of freedom to the forefront.

One version, championed by Black Lives Matter protesters, calls for all Americans to enjoy the same rights and responsibilities granted by their U.S. citizenship. They protest for freedom from police violence, from discrimination in housing and work and education and medicine, from race-based harassment. They protest, in short, on behalf of liberty and justice for all.

In so doing, they echo both core, traditional American beliefs and centuries-old calls for America to better live up to its values. These demands for freedom from echo the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the demands of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960sand more. The exhortations that we do better recall Frederick Douglas What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? and Langston Hughes Let America Be America Again:

"O, let America be America again

"The land that never has been yet

"And yet must bethe land where every man is free."

The other view of freedom on display is a belligerent, self-centered sense of freedom to that some should be free to do whatever they wish, regardless of their actions impact on others. Its advocates ignore public health directives, threaten and kill Black Lives Matter protesters, carry guns to intimidate state legislators and protesters as they have done in at least 33 states.

This view, that the freedom of one group is more important than everyone elses liberty, also has a long tradition. If equality is the heart of American freedom, then this other version is Confederate freedom; as the traitors vice president declared, the Confederacy was founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

Its advocates are not all motivated by race (although, notably, many anti-quarantine groups morphed into openly racist anti-Black Lives Matter groups), but those who champion Confederate freedom dismiss the rights and even the lives of those they look down upon.

This stance is neither fringe nor obscure. For example, a 2017 NPR/PBS Marist poll found that Republicans are the group most likely to believe that we do too little to restrict freedom of the press, of religion, to protestand to vote. This is not a problem among Republicans only, but current Republicans disproportionately champion selective liberty and are the ones engineeringgerrymandering and voter suppression, stripping incoming governments of their power, limiting citizenshipand more.

They do this under the banner of the president, who has expressed his devotion to this type of perverse liberty by stating his belief that the Constitution gives him the right to do whatever I want. His actions testify to the earnestness of this belief, as he ignores the Constitution on anti-corruption, Congressional oversightor even budget procedures, Constitutional allocations of power are unimportant to him.

Similarly, the national GOP has lashed itself to his mast, as it states, The RNC is the political arm of the president and we support the President. It makes that support concrete by standing with him during his impeachment, tolerating his support for Chinas concentration campsand restricting voting, protestingand other Constitutional rights.

The American public overwhelmingly supports freedom for all Black Lives Matter may be the largest movement in U.S. history, reaching even small cities across the nation, and public health measures are widely popular. However, when one segment of our political sphere adopts a definition of freedom that tramples on the rights of others, it is a threat to us all, regardless of party. It is our duty, at the least, to defeat the champions of selective, Confederate freedom and their collaborators in a landslide this November and afterward.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick(Photo: Special to the Press-Citizen)

Writers Group members Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa City. And biannual time changes must be abolished.

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Current crises give cause to consider the meaning of 'freedom' in 2020 - Iowa City Press-Citizen