Excerpt from Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (Norton, 2000)

The year 1986, midway into Reagan second term, resounded with conservative uses of "freedom." Jerry Falwell changed the name of his Moral Majority to the Liberty Federation, complete with Liberty University, located outside Lynchburg, Virginia. Pat Robertson, a prominent evangelical minister, established the Freedom Council, with a budget Of $5.5 million, to prepare for a possible run for the presidency. But by far the year's most significant event, so far as the language of freedom was concerned, was Liberty Weekend, marking the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. With its parade of tall ships and impressive fireworks display, the event, designed by Hollywood producer David Wolper, was an extravagant pageant dedicated to freedom. It was also an orgy of commercialism, replete with corporate sponsorships and the sale of broadcast rights to a single television network. This celebration of the "American spirit of freedom" left "no cliche unturned," as Time magazine noted. Time itself, however, was hardly innocent; its special issue on the commemoration abounded in hackneyed, sometimes 'incomprehensible prose. "Freedom is a powerful animal that fights the barriers:' its editors declared. But inadvertently, the magazine offered a graphic "ample of how Reagan had transformed public discourse. The special issue rewrote history to erase non-conservative meanings of freedom, insisting that from the beginning, Americans had been concerned only with "freedom from, specifically from the evils of repressive government, and never with "freedom to.'

Reagan himself used the centennial to declare freedom from "government interference" the key to American greatness. In so doing, he offered a narrative of American history as the saga of the white ethnics-descendants of upwardly striving individuals who had emigrated from Europe 'in search of "freedom and opportunity," especially the ability to "support themselves and their families by their own labor." Reagan’s version of the past appeared to eliminate from the “imagined community” African-Americans, whose ancestors came in slave ships and whose labor for centuries supported families other than their own. Indeed, among many black Americans, a certain skepticism prevailed on Liberty Weekend. "For us, the Statue of Liberty is a bitter joke," wrote James Baldwin "Some black leaders, like John Jacob, head of the Urban League, urged blacks to take part 'in the ceremonies. "We must refuse to cede the symbols of liberty, freedom, and equality," Jacob wrote, "to ideologues of the right:' His plea, however, may well have come too late."

Reagan’s presidency revealed the contradictions at the heart of modern conservative thought. Rhetorically, he sought to address the concerns of the religious Right, strongly opposing-abortion and advocating a "return to spiritual values" as a way to strengthen traditional families and local communities. Freedom, he insisted, carried with it responsibility-- "We're not set free so that we can become slaves to sin.” Like most conservatives, however, he exempted the economy from his abhorrence of self-interested behavior and his demand for moral action, making the unremitting pursuit of profit the sole arbiter of right and wrong. In the end, the Reagan Revolution undermined the very values and social institutions conservatives professed to hold dear. Intended to discourage reliance on government handouts by rewarding honest work and entrepreneurial initiative, Reagan’s policies inspired a speculative frenzy that enriched architects of corporate takeovers, plungers in the stock market, and sellers of "junk bonds' " In their wake were left plant closings, job losses, and devastated communities. Nothing was more threatening to local traditions or family stability than deindustrialization, pervasive insecurity about employment, and the relentless downward pressure on wages spurred by the Reagan Revolution. Nothing did more to prevent a revitalized sense of common national purpose more than the widening gap between rich and poor."