Jackie Danicki

Luke Ford can’t figure out when freedom and liberty should trump his wish to live in a certain kind of society. Can you help? I’m exhausted from too many ‘discussions’ with anti-freedom types masquerading as ‘libertarians’ lately. (At least Luke is honest about his lack of certainty and understanding, and not just brazenly dishonest about his values.) To me, it’s pretty simple, but then I should remember what Brian Micklethwait says:

My favourite bad idea, so to speak, is the belief that the truth is obvious. Believe that and you land in a heap of trouble. Just for starters, neither you nor anybody else have any excuse for not recognizing the truth at once, or for ever changing your mind about it. If you disagree with someone, you have to be right (because you have no excuse not to be) and they have to be evil (ditto). Mayhem.

The only thing I’ll say to Luke is to forget about ideology and ‘libertarianism’ and what, say, Brian Doherty would think about one issue or another. Think about what you value more: liberty and freedom and a world where everyone’s rights are respected…or a world where the government tries to engineer the ‘right’ outcomes (heterosexual families with no divorce, illegal prostitution, etc). Then ask yourself why you value that, why you think that, and how your version of the world would work.

Filed under: Friends, Law, Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend