Where Milton Friedman Got It Wrong
I like Milton Friedman, and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years, but I think this quote is important to comprehend, because I think it exposes a fundamental weakness in libertarianism and a larger failure on the right in its current post 1950’s conception.
The left and the right (and by right I mean the still libertarian influenced majority of the right) have for too long been on different sides of the same river, with different focuses on freedom from constraints, in ways that were at odds with the what the founders devised and intended for our system.
One side of that equation has been against all moral restraints against personal autonomy. The other side has been against any restraints on economic activity.
Both of those sides have been on the same river, but in different boats. Each have been irritated with each other based on which they prioritize, but both are still on the same river being swept up in the same currents.
The only solution is to get off the river.
Freedom is absolutist in nature. Liberty is reasoned freedom, with constraints to ensure that freedom can be calibrated to preserve both the rights of individuals and create a nation that can protect the liberty of successive generations over a long period of time… our posterity. You can’t have liberty over a long period of time without a system and a culture calibrated to foster and care for it.
People have to understand the destructive nature of both worldviews to a sovereign nation rooted in Christian normative thought, especially given that all of the institutions built to create an environment where generalized liberty can flourish is dependent on a virtuous, high trust, and homogenous nation steeped in Christian tradition.
Both of the aforementioned worldviews elevate maximalist agendas of either the freedom to do literally whatever you want (nudity, sexual, child gender mutilation, etc), or absolutist market freedom to maximize profits irrespective of any other limiting principle (offshoring all industry and manufacturing to China as if we are all just consumers and not a nation with interests worth defending against enemy adversaries).
Neither of those two worldviews actually preserve a high level of liberty over a long period of time. Neither conceive of or postulate how a nation maintains the sovereign ability to persist and survive, and both sacrifice the posterity of liberty (reasoned freedom) by maximizing the needs of an individual sans the lens of morality or the needs of a nation.
Individual autonomy is very important, but not to the degree that we define it as allowing children to have their genitalia cut off. Economic freedom is important, and markets are important, but not to the degree that market absolutism dictates that we sacrifice our industry, jobs, and hand over supply chain dependence to countries that manipulate currencies, use de facto slave labor, ignore basic safety rules, and do all of that to strategically undermine the ability of the United States to employ its own people and maintain an ability to grow an economy not dependent on foreign adversaries.
The only solution is to get off the river and recognize that the “liberals” and the “libertarians” are stuck on the same river whose currents will rip apart our nation and deprive our posterity of their inheritance.
