Ideology is pure. Real life is messy. Answers to life’s pressing problems are legion, but if we can’t agree to settle on one answer, it sometimes seems like we’d have been better off without any. Which is why when Rand Paul says that “the difficult part” about believing in freedom is insisting on your own narrow definitions – even when even when and especially when no one agrees with you – I have to wonder what definition of freedom he’s referring to.
Because as I understand it, freedom’s best expression comes out in the will of the governed. Without a democratic process that allows all voices to be heard, any other concept of freedom including anarchy seems to me to be a temporary state at best. And if there is one voice in a thousand that disagrees with Rand Paul, what then? And if, as is most likely the case, there is a spectrum of answers ranging from Rand’s through mine and beyond, what then?
