| CATEGORY | FREEDOM VS. | PROGRESSIVISM |
| Constitution | Limits the government in order to protect the citizen; the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are what they are and don’t allow for imagined intentions | A living, breathing document whose meaning changes arbitrarily; creative interpretations by activist judges, at the urging of special interest groups, fabricating new “rights” that infringe on the Bill of Rights; revisionist casting of the Bill of Rights seeks to create utopia; rights are to be rationed by the government |
| Family | The basic unit of society: married mother and father caring for their children contributes to healthy society | Based on adult happiness, regardless of gender; government content to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on family breakdown |
| Marriage | One man and one woman committed to the best interests of the family | Any coupling or grouping and based on adult happiness |
| Theology | Jesus died for the sins of all mankind for all time; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; the government is not a theocracy, but religion is the moral conscience of the nation | Secular humanism is the religion of government, public schools, and mass media; government is “god”; man is the master of his fate, the captain of his ship (Invictus) |
| Morality | Transcendent moral order; God’s Word in the Bible; obedience to something higher than one’s self | Relative: determined by the individual; situational ethics |
| Government | The Constitution protects the citizen from the government; localized control preferred; powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution | Centralized federal control over state and local levels; seemingly every human activity imaginable requires government regulation administered by an ever growing army of regulators; there are almost 1,000 federal agencies and divisions enforcing laws; the executive and judicial branches of government are free to usurp the legislative branch to set and enforce policy |
| Basis of freedom | The Bill of Rights; God-given natural law; inalienable rights | Open to government interpretation; Non-discrimination laws, “hate” crime laws |
| The Courts | One of three equal branches of government; decisions based on originalism; bound by the Constitution, which protects citizens from the government | Superior to the executive and legislative branches; decisions open to interpretations favored by leftists; to be used for gains that special interests are not able to achieve legislatively; the judiciary makes unilateral “amendments” to the Constitution; protects government interests at the expense of citizens |
| Supreme Court justices | Limited by the Constitution | Unlimited by the Constitution; open to citation of international law and the fabrication of new “rights” under the guise of constitutionality |
| The Church | Protected from the government by the First Amendment | Naturalism; science; government needs protection from the church based on the ACLU’s false claim of a “separation of church and state” not based on history, the Constitution, or original intent |
| Public education | The student is to be served by the best educational choice possible; local control | Public schools, run by teachers’ unions, are prioritized over the education of students; federal government control |
| Taxation | Low tax rates stimulate business investment, hiring and job creation; tax rates should be fair across the board; the federal government should raise only the revenue needed to fund the activities authorized by the Constitution | High tax rates allow government to expand social welfare programs; whomever earns the most should be taxed more; the tax rate on the wealthy could extend all the way to 100 percent; Karl Marx urged “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax” |
| Economy | Capitalism; economic equality is unachievable because people invest differing levels of education, motivation and risk | Socialism, which is the path to communism, and centralized control by the federal government; government intervention; the redistribution of wealth is staged by coercion |
| Market | Free enterprise and minimal government regulation; the free market is the most transformative economic system; the free market creates the most wealth and opportunities for people | Massing of centralized control and power over the market; high tax rates removing money from the private sector; statists oppose the free market and seek to control it; demonization of wealth creators by government and unions |
| Political competition | Compete against opponents; freedom to disagree | Destroy the enemy; punish anyone who opposes us (fascism) |
| Crime | Man is fallen and susceptible to evil and must be punished with stiff sentences for law-breaking | Man is a victim and subject to forces beyond his/her control; light sentencing |
| Government | Constitutionally ordered, divided into three branches to provide a system of checks and balances | Domineering and with few restraints; to be used for personal and special interests’ gains; the courts are to be used to gain what cannot be achieved through the legislative process |
| Property | Private ownership of personal property; what belongs to one man is the object of his care and economy | Maximum government ownership; taxation and laws intrude upon private ownership; what belongs to no one in particular is wasted by everyone |
| Achievement | Self determination; hard work and achievement are rewarded | It’s unfair if some have more possessions than others; everyone should have the same amount of things, with government acting as regulator; those with what government deems excessive must be punished |
| Life | Man is made in the image of God; humans should be protected from conception to natural death; human embryos should not be used as a commodity or sacrificed for experimentation | Man is just another animal and nothing special; human life is expendable; only “wanted” children should be born; depressed citizens should be allowed to find another person to kill them; the elderly and the disabled are using up too many medical resources and should not be allowed to continue living; people and government have the right to determine who lives and who dies |
| Autonomy | Citizens should be left alone to tend to their own affairs; private enterprise; private decisions in work, life, education, worship; government’s intrusion into personal lives must be extremely limited | Increasing government control of and regulation over citizens’ personal lives |
| Second Amendment | Citizens have the constitutional right to bear arms and to self protect; a gun is vital to a citizen’s self defense and is no better or worse than the person holding it | Only the government should have the right to own a gun; citizens have no right to protect themselves |
| Law | Uphold the rule of law | Selective use of the rule of law and liberal preference for applications of “law” |
I think you have a typo. Under marriage, “one man and one man” should be “one man and one woman” if my understanding of your position is correct.
Under theology, freedom should just say that there is a creator of the universe who created man in his image, endowed him with free will, provided him with the ability to discern the will of the creator for living a good, honorable life, and provides him with the natural rights to exercise his free will to follow his interpretation of his creator’s wishes as long as he respects the rights of others to do the same.