George Orwell observed before he died in 1950: “For a left-wing party in power, its most serious antagonist is always its own past propaganda.” For California Gavin Newsom, the most difficult opponent as he aims for a presidential campaign in 2028 is his own record, or lack thereof. Yet there is one time I have agreed, despite myself, with my governor — and that is when he declared, in 2023, that California is the “true freedom state.”
That resonated with me on a personal level, even though I disagreed with the precise argument Newsom was making on a political level.
When Newsom talks about “freedom,” he means social issues like the “right” to an abortion, or the “liberty” to force sexual literature on elementary school children.
I understood the word “freedom” in the most ordinary sense: the freedom to live your own life as you wish, free from interference.
That might seem shocking in a state that once punished using the “wrong” pronouns with a one-year jail sentence. It might seem completely wrong to anyone who has tried to open a small business in California, navigating a shifting minefield of rules. And it might seem delusional in light of the restrictions Newsom imposed on the state in the coronavirus pandemic, including a ban on religious services in private homes.
But for a person with steady employment with few reasons to interact with the state bureaucracy, life in California is — or was — quite idyllic in a way that life in few other states could be.
The weather, of course, contributes to that sense of freedom: coastal California has warm weather and low humidity virtually year-round. I don’t think I’ve bought more than one bottle of mosquito spray in more than 14 years of living here.
There is more to the freedom we once in enjoyed in California than physical freedom from summer bugs or winter jackets. There is also a sense that once can experiment with different paths in life.
I am not referring to the crude sort of experimentation with gender and sexuality that is urged, and almost imposed, by the state on California’s youngest residents. I mean freedom to experiment with different careers, hobbies, and ideas.
Of course one is free in other states, for example, to take up boxing, as I did when I was 40, some eight years ago in Santa Monica. Or to learn how to surf, and ski, or to try writing romance novels.
What is different here is the sense that one can try new things without being measured against expectations that the surrounding society has for your life.
In California, underneath all the utopian socialism, there is still a libertarian streak.
It is an incomplete freedom: people apply a sense of liberty to their own lives, and to the lives of those around them, as long as one avoids politics, in which case one’s peers might be more judgmental than in any other state.
Or, at least, they were, until radical policies turned once-beautiful cities into homeless encampments; until official negligence let wildfires burn our homes. People here are more open to conservatism, now.
Newsom was right that California is, or was, the “true freedom state.” But it is less so, as he leaves office, than it was when he arrived.
Because the kind of freedom that makes life worth living in California depends on a sense of basic physical security. We don’t have that anymore, and that’s because he and his party failed to enforce their own laws and to carry out their own responsibilities.
California, and America, deserve better.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
