Liberalism is all about freedom and equality, or so its advocates say. But that’s not really true — at least in the sense that most Americans understand those terms. Over the past week, the state of New York has gone a long way toward revealing the end game of liberalism — what “freedom” and “equality” really mean under liberal rule. In doing so, the ideologues in control have shown it’s not just Donald Trump who’s facing a witch hunt in the state. These liberal tyrants want to give us all the Trump treatment.

If you want to understand what liberals mean by freedom and equality, all you have to do is look at how the progressive criminal justice system plays out on the New York City subways. Roving lunatics range from the hallucinating unhinged to outright violent, both effectively living in the subterranean tunnels. Open drug use is not uncommon and the stench of human filth and decay hovers in the stale air. As a native New Yorker, I can tell you the subway was never a triumph of spotless efficiency. But this unprecedented blight is a very new, very progressive problem.

To progressive elites, living as you please is just what it means to be free. We are all equal in the sense that we all have the right to live as we see fit without encroachment from others.  This is all good and well, but we see these principles taken to the extreme on the subway. The state exists to enable everyone to live out their authentic selves — even if that means living in filth and squalor suffering from untreated mental illness making life miserable (and potentially dangerous) for everyone else. However, from this arises an inconvenient political reality: New Yorkers are terrified to ride the subway. So what to do?

The only solution, as the New York technocrats proved last week, is an ever-expanding surveillance state to deter irresponsible self-actualization. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced sweeping security checkpoints throughout the subway system, where New Yorkers will be subject to random, mandatory bag searches and heavy National Guard presence, with the possibility of airport-style potentially coming down the pike. Of course, the searches will eschew profiling those who appear to be a subway menace; as with all progressive edicts, potential bias is viewed as a greater threat than actual criminality. So we will see the privacy and quality of public life increasingly violated for typical commuters, while the deranged, homeless track-pushers won’t let rational incentives deter their irrational behavior. It amounts to nothing more than the appearance of “doing something.”

Yet a few days later, New York showed that these expansive “principles” aren’t principles at all, but merely a political weapon: just look at the punishment New York firefighters now face after expressing their displeasure with Attorney General Letitia James. Members of the FDNY booed and chanted “Trump” like Atreides soldiers from “Dune” as James took the stage at a ceremony at a church on Thursday. In response, FDNY pledged to “hunt down” the members responsible, warning that it’s better if they come forward given the heavy surveillance at the event will lead them to be identified anyway. Internal FDNY communications stressed that their response wasn’t political, but about respecting a house of worship and basic professionalism. The guilty members will be required to undergo re-education training.

Now even the top brass of the FDNY likely isn’t thrilled about progressive mismanagement of state resources. But they’re bureaucrats at heart, who know they have to play the game — and bend the knee to the liberal leviathan. This is just pure power politics. The left hates both Christian worship and professionalism and only invokes them as a justification for a crackdown. Like subway commuters, the FDNY will eventually fall to the predation of a liberal surveillance state.

This is the common dystopian strain that liberals would love nothing more than to build bigger, better and stronger: a surveillance state that would give even China’s COVID regime a run for its money. They will couch it in high-minded rhetoric or frame it as the only way to live in a “free” society. But it renders us anything but free. It will not be used in any principled manner, but only selectively to enact the left’s priorities and insulate their power — making life worse, and less free, for everyday people.

Trump’s political persecution in New York is just the tip of the iceberg, and his understanding of the progressive regime has never been more salient: “In the end, they‘re not coming after me. They‘re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,” the former president said.