That is, as opposed – if it is opposed – to security, comfort, a home, entertainment, and a host of other ‘goods’ that don’t necessarily depend on it. Sigmund Freud thought not: https://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings-and-interpretations/sigmund-freud-most-people-do-not-really-want-freedom-because-freedom-involves-responsibility-and-most-people-are-frightened-of-responsibility. (His argument is summarised in that link.). Which if true – and I rather incline towards it – would make many of the appeals made by most political parties less seductive than they might think.

Of course it depends on what you mean by ‘freedom’. There’s no one definition of it. You can think of it in political, economic or social terms: ‘market’ freedoms or ‘socialist’ freedoms; liberty from the tyranny of the market, or from those trying to protect you from that tyranny; freedom from death or from wanting to die; freedom to bear arms, or to be protected against others who bear arms; freedom to make money, or to starve…. and so on. George Orwell made ‘freedom is slavery’ one of the three foundational slogans of his fictional dystopian government in 1984; conversely, the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution regarded what they called ‘freedom’ as one of the three major desiderata for their new republic – ‘Life, Liberty’ – if that’s the same thing – ‘and the Pursuit of Happiness’. This is why ‘Liberal’ parties across the world can be so philosophically divergent, situated both on the ‘Right’ and on the ‘Left’ of politics; and why in present-day America ultra-liberals (by one definition) can deploy the word ‘liberal’ (or ‘libtards’) as a derogatory term against their opponents.

But whatever meaning attaches to it in any situation, it’s clear that ‘freedom’ is not most people’s top priority. Which is one of the reasons why authoritarian parties are on the rise in Europe, and why the Democrats (capital ‘D’) in America are so feeble currently. Donald Trump instinctively knows this, and that there are other more basic instincts that can be appealed to. Right-wing leaders all over Europe have come to the same conclusion. ‘Freedom’ in most senses comes very low among people’s priorities when voting for politicians to represent them; unless it’s ‘freedom’ from ‘wokery’, or foreigners, or ‘élites’, or – in some cases – uppity women. Trump has a whole armoury of imagined grievances he can appeal to along these lines. Which is what sustains him and the ‘MAGA’ movement generally. And – in the UK – Farage and ‘Reform Inc’ too.