"to live and act out their sincerely held vision of morality"
Hehh. I think you had hid a bit of a trick here. I think what you are saying is that it is not necessarily about being free to do anything as long as it does not affect others - the basic trouble with liberalism is that it always turns out it affects others. Someone doing cocaine in their own home once does not affect others, but when you live in SF you simply cannot escape other people's drug habits affecting you. So I think what you are saying is that not necessarily everybody is free to do cocaine, but more like everybody is free to do what they sincerely, deeply hold to be best?
I like that idea - but by what test can that be determined?
Because truly this is the only version of liberalism that makes sense. I congratulate you for finding that out. I don't think any seriously sane person could move to SF, research the drug situation for a year and then decide the solution is to legalize it all and forget about the problem because it is just preferences. Such ideas were always the issue with many versions of libertarianism. Sometimes certain things cannot be solved on an individualistic basis, where individualistic means indifferent.
On the other hand, pick any random homeless addict up from the streets of SF, get them clean, and run them through a set of deep interviews and you will find that their dream in life at 16 was not to become a homeless drug addict. Say, their life dream was becoming a respected musician, who moves people's emotions and expresses what other people have in their hearts. Then... things happened.
Anyhow, this is the only versions of liberalism that makes sense, and for this reason please focus on working out the "sincerely held vision of morality" part. That is, what we should liberate is not people as such, all their choices, but their best versions of themselves. How to do that?
I think it's something that we need to work out gradually. Which is why I'm a libertarian gradualist (as opposed to all the 'cut all government now' libertarian immediatists).
"to live and act out their sincerely held vision of morality"
Hehh. I think you had hid a bit of a trick here. I think what you are saying is that it is not necessarily about being free to do anything as long as it does not affect others - the basic trouble with liberalism is that it always turns out it affects others. Someone doing cocaine in their own home once does not affect others, but when you live in SF you simply cannot escape other people's drug habits affecting you. So I think what you are saying is that not necessarily everybody is free to do cocaine, but more like everybody is free to do what they sincerely, deeply hold to be best?
I like that idea - but by what test can that be determined?
Because truly this is the only version of liberalism that makes sense. I congratulate you for finding that out. I don't think any seriously sane person could move to SF, research the drug situation for a year and then decide the solution is to legalize it all and forget about the problem because it is just preferences. Such ideas were always the issue with many versions of libertarianism. Sometimes certain things cannot be solved on an individualistic basis, where individualistic means indifferent.
On the other hand, pick any random homeless addict up from the streets of SF, get them clean, and run them through a set of deep interviews and you will find that their dream in life at 16 was not to become a homeless drug addict. Say, their life dream was becoming a respected musician, who moves people's emotions and expresses what other people have in their hearts. Then... things happened.
Anyhow, this is the only versions of liberalism that makes sense, and for this reason please focus on working out the "sincerely held vision of morality" part. That is, what we should liberate is not people as such, all their choices, but their best versions of themselves. How to do that?
I think it's something that we need to work out gradually. Which is why I'm a libertarian gradualist (as opposed to all the 'cut all government now' libertarian immediatists).