It is freedom that enables us to choose and combine values, including those thought to be progressive. Although the Left often concedes the language of freedom to the Right, people on the Left do propose policies that would further freedom. They just usually fail to make their case in those terms. What seems to be a permanent clash between Left and Right reveals an unspoken (and as-yet-unspeakable) American consensus: freedom is indeed the value of values, as some on the Right claim; yet to live free, we need the structures that many on the Left support.
