It's about freedom, stupid.

We Republicans should not be so naive as to consider our recent election victory as a mandate. Far from it. After all, the same angry voters who just put the Republicans in power in Congress were the ones who threw out the Bush Republicans with an equivalent "mandate" for the Clinton Democrats. Before that, they tossed out the Carter Democrats to embrace the Reagan Republicans, and before that, those very same voters wiped out the Nixon Republicans to bring on the Carter Democrats. The only reasonable conclusion is that angry and disgruntled voters are willing to make wholesale changes if they see no progress. But what is "progress," and on what front?

Voters flip-flop between parties, because they are confused by and angry with the obsolete Republican-Democrat (conservative-liberal) paradigm, which no longer describes the true division of ideologies in America. The real dividing line is between freedom and authoritarianism, between those who champion individual freedom and those coercive utopians who espouse government-controlled authoritarianism. The battle of freedom versus authoritarianism is fought on two fronts: economic and personal. Republicans offer economic freedom and social authoritarianism. Democrats offer personal freedom and economic authoritarianism.

Clinton had it half-right when he campaigned on the theme, "It's the economy, stupid." The voters do want a better economy, but not for its own sake. They want a better economy, because more jobs and more wealth mean more economic freedom - more money to allow them to do what they want. So, Clinton also had it half-wrong. When he began to work on the economy with massive new taxes (loss of economic freedom) and a massive new government health-care program (loss of personal freedom), he went in the wrong direction on both fronts - and lost big.

All the big election losses in the last 25 years have been precipitated by a president who turned authoritarian, both socially and economically. And the result was the same, whether the social authoritarian wanted to force the public to be politically correct or to pray in school. When George Bush - the "regulation" president who allowed the Washington bureaucracy to chisel away at our personal freedom - also abandoned his Republican principles and raised taxes, he went in the wrong direction on both fronts and gave away the eight-year Reagan mandate. Jimmy Carter not only allowed interest and inflation rates to rise to levels that curtailed the economic freedom of most Americans, but he also created the Departments of Education and Energy to further encroach on their personal freedom. The voters viewed Carter's big-government "progress" as nothing more than a loss of personal and economic freedom. (Remember Carter's "Moral equivalent of war," in which individual freedom of choice was sacrificed to the Carter-defined common good, like the 55 mph speed limit?) And, Carter was also thrown out of office.

In one election, the voters flip toward the Republicans who promise lower taxes, and either get cheated ("read my lips") or forced into bed with the Neanderthal side of the Republican party, which wants to control their reproductive habits by federal law. In the next election, the voters flop toward the Democrats, based on lofty promises such as "re-engineering" government to protect personal freedom, but get cheated by classic tax-and-spend Democratic politics, which produce pork-barrel crime bills and colossal boondoggles such as Hillary Clinton's health-care plan - a plan that threatens your right to choose your own doctor and keep your medical records private. The voters become enamored with the liberating philosophies of Ronald Reagan, only to end up in bed with Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan. They become enamored with Bill Clinton's visions of freedom, but end up in bed with the two Edwards from Massachusetts, Kennedy and Markey, the latter to live in infamy as the congressman who claimed the so-called electronic data superhighway was "too important to leave to the free market."

Let's hope Republicans get their new, so-called mandate right. It's not about returning prayer to schools or about passing a constitutional amendment banning abortion or about re-starting the Star Wars program: It's about economic and personal freedom. With the exception of a few Democrats in Republicans' clothing, such as Bush and Wilson, the Republicans have been faithful to their agenda of smaller, cheaper government. But the Republicans have not done well on the personal side of freedom. The voters saw that clearly when they elected Clinton and rejected the Bush/Buchanan "family values" campaign as nothing more than a hateful attack on personal liberties.

We live in an age in which the explosion of technology should be generating wealth and personal freedom at an unprecedented rate. But the American economy is at a standstill, and its citizens are less free every day - just think about the congressional mind-set behind the unanimous passage of H.R. 4922: $500 million to make your telephone wire-tap ready. The culprit is an elite governmental ruling class that takes our money by force, provides little benefit, and stifles freedom at every turn. The voters know something is wrong. They aren't really flip-flopping; they're giving a consistent message to elected officials: "It's about freedom, stupid. Get it right, or you will also be on the street in two years."

For decades, Americans have died defending freedom around the world. Now they are fighting for their own freedom. Why should we be surprised that Americans are waging a ballot-box guerrilla war against the freedom-grabbing politicians they have come to dislike so much?

T.J. Rodgers President and Chief Executive Cypress Semiconductor