Everyone wants freedom for themselves.

The fear is always what other people will do with theirs.

That is the central moral tension of liberty. Almost no one imagines himself as the tyrant. Everyone imagines himself as the reasonable exception: “Of course I should be free, but those people are dangerous, stupid, immoral, irresponsible, corrupted, brainwashed, or unfit.”

And that is how liberty dies.

Not usually because people openly hate freedom, but because they support freedom only for people whose choices they understand.

A free society requires something much harder than liking liberty in the abstract. It requires tolerating other people’s peaceful choices when you think those choices are ugly, wasteful, sinful, backwards, degenerate, foolish, or offensive.

That does not mean tolerating aggression. Murder, fraud, theft, slavery, kidnapping, child abuse, and coercion are not “choices” others must respect. They are violations of the conditions that make freedom possible.

But peaceful difference is another matter.

The real test of liberty is not whether you support freedom for your friends, your tribe, your class, your religion, your party, or your preferred lifestyle.

The real test is whether you support freedom for people who horrify you, provided they are not violating anyone else’s person, property, consent, or exit.

Most people fail that test.

They want freedom for themselves and management for everyone else.

That is why democracy becomes so vicious. It gives every faction a path to convert its fear of other people’s freedom into law. The left fears what the right will do with liberty. The right fears what the left will do with liberty. Both try to seize the state so their enemies’ choices can be controlled.

Libertarianism is supposed to break that cycle.

It says: your fear of someone else’s peaceful freedom does not give you jurisdiction over them.

That is the hard part. That is the adult part.

Freedom means other people get to be wrong without asking your permission.