'People' do not want 'freedom'

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They really don't.

Well, of course they selfishly want freedom for themselves to do what themselves want to do - and if other people don't like what they want to do and would want to try to stop them doing it, then they will say they want freedom.

But hardly anybody really wants freedom as a principle: instead, they want people to do what they want people to do: that is what they want, not freedom.

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I learned this the hard way, by experiences in trying to defend freedom - because I used to be one of the insignificant minority of powerless people who really did want 'freedom', as a socio-political principle, not just for me.

I was myself involved in a few clear-cut infringement of freedom cases, and involved myself in some others, and I realized in each instance, with some astonishment, that it was very hard to find anybody to defend freedom: very hard indeed.

Sometimes people would 'defend' freedom in private, verbally - but even that was half-hearted and qualified. 

People would defend other people doing what they wanted these other people to do; but when it was a matter of other people doing something of which they did not approve, they would nearly always oppose them (and freedom actively be damned); at most they would make minimal murmerings but refuse to take any kind of principled stance or identify themselves in public (and freedom be damned - but passively).

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Same on the national stage. People do not get roused up about the crushing of freedom, and it is a waste of time trying to get people roused up about, freedom issues.

When the state suppresses freedom in an arbitrary fashion, the only thing people want to know is whether it was in a good cause.

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What is wrong when Leftists crush freedom, as is happening now, is not that they are crushing freedom but that they are driven by the inversion of good.

The essential problem is that Leftists are using the power of the media and the state to prevent good and impose evil.  They should be doing the opposite.

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Resisting evil by trying to reduce the power of the state, in order to defend the abstract entity called freedom, is incoherent, crazy and futile.

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So, forget about freedom; (almost) nobody wants freedom.

Speak out and fight for a system that encourages what you believe to be true, beautiful and virtuous - and discourages lies, ugliness and vice; not a system that merely 'allows' good or bad things to happen, impartially.

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