In his recent speech at the Democratic National Convention, Gov. Josh Shapiro said his party carries the banner of “real freedom.”

On everything from abortion (whose numbers have increased since the Dobbs ruling) to fictitious “book bans” (even though anyone can access and read any of the supposedly banned books), Shapiro claimed “real freedom” is on the ballot this November.

But a look at Democrats’ record of heavy-handed rule shows their claims of “real freedom” are a mirage to distract from their real goal of using government force to make Americans comply with their agenda.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in education. In his speech, Shapiro equated “real freedom” with blocking kids from leaving public schools – no doubt a nod to his party’s platform, which officially opposes educational freedom.

In states across the nation, Democrats fight tooth and nail to trap children – mostly minority children and kids in lower-income households – in failing, union-operated, government-run schools.

As children and families crossing all party lines and spanning every demographic strive to escape the government-imposed, zip-code-driven confines that block equal educational freedom, Democrats continue to believe only the rich deserve access to diverse educational options.

Even as they regale us with the virtues of public education, they send their own children to pricey private schools. Their supposed “freedom” ignores the freedom to choose the best educational environment, regardless of zip code or socioeconomic standing, and instead forces children without means to remain in terrible and even unsafe schools.

The Left raises the ridiculous objection of “taxpayer funding for private education.” But when it comes to higher education, federal student aid embraces no similar discrimination. Furthermore, children are denied even the freedom to cross invisible school district boundaries to attend an alternative but better public school, gutting any claims the Left makes of supporting quality education for all.

Of course, driving Democrats’ anti-educational-freedom agenda are powerful unions that are also behind another of the Left’s false claims of “freedom:” worker freedom.

While President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Shapiro, and others wax eloquent on the “freedom to join a union,” they oppose the freedom not to join a union or the freedom to leave a union at will. Indeed, Shapiro has repeatedly pledged that as long as he is in office, Pennsylvania will never become a Right-to-Work state – where workers are free to embrace or abstain from union membership without penalty.

Put simply, Democrats believe worker freedom extends only in one direction: toward unionization. And in the Left’s ideal society, workers aren’t “free” to join a union; they are “forced” to join a union in order to fund the union machine that bankrolls Democrats’ political campaigns. The Left’s freedom in theory is little more than coercion in practice.

Worse, central to the Left’s “freedom” is the desire to force Americans to fund anything they claim is a “freedom.”

The “freedom to earn a living wage” means government-mandated labor costs that force businesses to lay off workers and even shut their doors. “Reproductive freedom” has gone far beyond abortion’s legality and now means forcing taxpayers to fund abortions.

As for “freedom” of speech? Democrats deem it desirable only provided it doesn’t turn into “misinformation” or “disinformation,” which the Left often defines as anything that challenges their narrative. And where falsehoods actually exist, instead of debunking them, the Left seeks to censor them.

In any discussion of “freedom,” we can’t forget – nor should we – that during COVID, Democrats, who claim they’re the party of “freedom,” set up government reporting hotlines to encourage Americans to report lockdown violators to the authorities. Indeed, in Democrat Tim Walz’s Minnesota, violators could be (and were) thrown in jail simply for seeking to maintain their livelihoods amid random shutdown orders that targeted small businesses while allowing major box stores to stay open.

The Left’s “real freedom” looks an awful lot like tyranny.

Without freedom, our representative democracy is, indeed, at risk. But freedom by necessity includes free expression, free association, educational freedom, and economic freedom.

Americans seeking true freedom must look past Democrats’ rhetoric to their actions and recognize that you cannot claim to support the idea of freedom while opposing its substance.