Mind Your Own Damn Business

• In his debut performance, Tim Walz told a raucous crowd that Democrats are the party of freedom and Republicans should mind their “own damn business.” The pro-freedom rhetoric does not match the record.

Tim Walz stepped up to the podium on a stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this week. Christened as the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president, Walz wasted no time tearing into Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Republicans.

Walz told a packed auditorium Republicans were no longer the party of freedom. Democrats, he said, had a simple response, “mind your own damn business.” The crowd went wild.

Walz’s line has been adapted in subsequent speeches to read: “In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make. Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”

For a limited government conservative, “mind your own damn business” is more than music to the ears. It’s standing in the Sistine Chapel gazing up at Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” while Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 plays goodness. Yes, please.

What “Minding Your Own Damn Business” Doesn’t Mean to Tim Walz

But what does Walz mean when he says it? He doesn’t mean that government should mind its own business when it comes to what you earn. His running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, voted against the Tax Cut and Jobs Act in 2017, has at various times voiced support for repealing the tax cuts in the law, and has proposed new taxes on Americans and American businesses.

He doesn’t mean that people should be responsible for themselves. As governor, he enacted a law that provided free breakfast and lunch to students irrespective of their ability to pay. The policy, while popular, is emblematic of a worldview steeped in fostering greater government dependency.

Another recent example of this worldview is the Biden administration’s perpetual insistence on canceling student loan debt. Apparently, minding my own damn business includes being forced to pay for other people’s damn business.

Walz doesn’t mean government should mind its own business when it comes to property rights or the choices consumers make. His running mate wants to ban domestic fracking, and his party has been conducting a war on gas stoves and flatulent cows.

As a U.S. Senator, Harris signed on to support the Green New Deal. The plan proposed a complete takeover of the U.S. economy that included decimating America’s energy production, single-payer healthcare, making air travel “obsolete,” imposing a new set of costly national standards on construction, and yes, eliminating methane-producing bovines.

Minding “one’s own business,” I suppose, includes the ability to tell your neighbor he can’t eat a porterhouse.

He doesn’t mean that people get to make their own decisions on most healthcare questions, either. As governor of Minnesota, Walz implemented a government run “snitch” hotline during the COVID pandemic for neighbors to report on neighbors who did not obey public health guidelines. He also attempted, unsuccessfully, to mandate COVID vaccines.

What “Minding Your Own Damn Business” Does Mean to Tim Walz

So what does Walz mean when he preaches the ‘golden rule’ of “mind your own damn business”? Simple really. He means there should be unfettered access to abortion nationwide. He means that school libraries should be chock full of hypersexualized books for kindergartners. He means parents should have no say in whether their children are sterilized by hormone treatments or have their genitals mutilated.

Of course, the oft-repeated idea that being pro-life is anti-freedom ignores the freedom interests of the unborn. A classic articulation of freedom is the ability to think, speak, and act according to your conscience so long as you do no harm to others. Someone who believes that an unborn child is human and entitled to their own set of rights, including the freedom to live, is not acting outside the bounds of the classical definition of freedom in adopting a pro-life stance.

To put a fine point on it, no one would say “mind your own business” in response to a neighbor murdering his day-old child. Why then, is it too intrusive to question the ethics of aborting that same child, for instance, one day before birth?

One of the charges made against conservatives in recent years is that they are attempting, in authoritarian fashion, to ban books. This is an admittedly scary accusation to someone who believes an absolute right to free expression is foundational to a free and thriving society.

But if you dig deeper, book banning is not really what is being discussed. The question that has been raised, instead, is how to ensure material students have access to in school is age appropriate. Almost no one would balk at the statement “pornography should not be shown to elementary students in school.” It’s unclear why pornographic material in the pages of a book would draw a different response.

Finally, whether we are talking about what our children are taught, or whether they can undergo medical treatments to transition from being a boy to a girl, our children are very much so “our damn business.” They do not belong to the government. It is ultimately parents’ responsibility to shepherd them through to adulthood.