My friend Justin says that my brand of small-l libertarianism reminds me of the sentence his father claims to want as an epitaph: “He just wanted to be left alone.”
I try to do — I want to do — good things. But I want to determine the good things I do, and which of them I do at any given point. I don’t want to be frogmarched into someone else’s idea of what I ought to do when they think I should do it, and as always, I think that compulsory virtue is an oxymoron. A world in which “you will be made to care” is an abomination.
And that brings us to today’s QotD, from Kevin D. Williamson at National Review Online:
The most radical idea in American politics is that it is possible to have a politics that is not oriented toward the domination and subordination of competing social groups but that instead seeks to enable Americans to seek fulfillment and human flourishing on their own terms in accordance with their own interests, values, and priorities.
Put another way (again from Williamson): “‘We are all in this together‘ is not a synonym for ‘One size fits all.'” Our nation and culture should not be a Procrustean bed.
Professor Mondo 