A fierce spirit of independence and personal autonomy is hardwired into the American psyche.

We don’t like being told what to do. We hate it when someone tells us to keep quiet. We’re incensed when we feel someone is trampling on our rights, even when we’re in another country. “You can’t do that,” we’re primed to protest. “I’m an American.”

The marketing gurus selling Kamala Harris as a presidential product understand that much about America. That’s why they’ve rebooted the brand of one of the least popular vice presidents in U.S. history around the theme of freedom — a topic we’ll hear a lot about next week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“In this election, we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?” Harris asked in her first campaign video, set to Beyoncé’s Freedom.

“There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate,” she said as Donald Trump’s mug shot appeared on the screen. “But us, we choose something different: We choose freedom.”

It’s savvy advertising. After all, who doesn’t like freedom? There’s just one problem: Harris’ view of “freedom” stands diametrically opposed to the Catholic conception of true freedom.

What’s more, very few Americans, no matter what their faith, support the far-left policies Harris wants to repackage as fundamental tenets of freedom.

When it comes to gender ideology, for example, they simply don’t agree that parents should be kept in the dark when their daughter decides she’s a boy; or that someone should lose their job if they don’t use a coworker’s preferred pronouns; or that a religious high school should lose federal aid if it won’t let boys dominate girls’ athletics.

Similarly, on abortion, few agree with Harris and her supporters that it ought to be legal to kill an unborn child for any reason up until the moment of birth.

Ah, but what if opposing those policies means that you’ll be lumped in the anti-freedom camp with all the other haters? Well, then, that’s a different matter.

That’s the persuasive pitch we’re hearing from Harris and her fellow Democrats. Pete Buttigieg, for one, said that abortion makes men “more free.” And Harris VP pick Tim Walz said at a campaign stop in Wisconsin that the “golden rule” in America is to “mind your own damn business.” (Never mind that as governor he set up a hotline for Minnesotans to snitch on their neighbors for violating his draconian COVID-19 rules.)

As Harris tweeted on Easter Sunday (marking “Transgender Day of Visibility”): “Every person in our nation must have the freedom to be their true self and to live free from hate.”

As Catholics, we can’t be deceived by such brainwashing. What Harris and the far left are promoting is a selective vision of freedom as autonomy. Yet they also want to force those who disagree with this vision to affirm other people’s autonomous choices — or face the consequences.

Theirs is a freedom from: from restrictions, moral judgments, opposition, even objective truth.

Our faith teaches that real freedom is for something greater: to know the truth and live our lives in accordance with that truth.

It’s the freedom to cooperate with God in welcoming new life — not destroying it.

It’s the freedom to cooperate in our creation as man or woman, not to remake ourselves as we see fit.

“Human freedom,” the Catechism explains, “is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God …”

We need courage — and God’s help — to resist trading this genuine freedom, which is rooted in human dignity, for an artificial substitute, however inviting and popular that shallow version of freedom might be.

Stand strong. This is the land of the free, yes, but also the home of the brave.

May God bless you!