Safety vs. Freedom
Instapundit approvingly links to this post and quotes this paragraph:
The really interesting thing about the Alibhai-Brown piece lies elsewhere: in it, and in the dismissive response it provokes in some of us, we can see a deep clash, at some subterranean level, of great tectonic plates in our moral thinking.
I wish he hadn’t stopped there, though:
On the one hand, there is the very powerful combination of multiculturalism and the discourse of human rights, which has dominated so much of our thinking about how we as individuals, and also the state, should treat members of the various groupings which make up a diverse society like our own. And, on the other hand, there are the needs and demands of the whole of a liberal-democratic society, including its need to be protected from those who seek to undermine or destroy it. On the one hand, the insistence on protecting the individual’s rights regardless of the common good; on the other hand, the desire to protect all of us from deadly threats.
That’s as good a definition of libertarianism vs. statism as any. Self-proclaimed libertarian that he is, it’s obvious which side Reynolds must be on.
Right?