I think most people use the concept of being for or against "Freedom" to refer to the opposite sides of the bottom-up versus top-down modes of economic development and governance.

Certainly, it's an over-generalization, and the word freedom is used specifically to evoke an emotional response, but I don't think it's devoid of meaning.

An unfortunate side-effect of having a democracy with 300 million plus people in it, is that to a certain extent these sort of over-generalizations are a necessary part of coalition building.