If the point of our disagreement were not an overriding one, my commitment to FP would, at this point, be without qualification, because I agree with you also that to reject affiliation with a group over minor and debatable single issues is frivolous. Prohibition of the sale of alcohol is a good example. We cherish Freedom as our most valuable possession and have the right and obligation to protect it. Not to exercise that right and fulfill that obligation flies in the face of natural law. Although individual freedom of choice occupies the core of our belief, it can prevail only within the larger sphere of like freedom to others.
Freedom is simultaneously an individual and a societal attribute.
It follows that irresponsible individual choice, one that endangers the freedom of the collective whole, can not be allowed. The libertarian is obsessed with a mythical government ogre devouring individual freedoms and completely ignores the dangers to those same freedoms from actions of other individuals. Therefore, we must have a government so constituted that eternal vigilance is brought to the protection of freedom by abuses by either an individual, a group, or the government itself. The constitution of the United States is recognized as one of the more successful documents for self- governance by free men. It is so because the drafters of that constitution started with the historically proved proposition that all men are intrinsically selfish, venal and power-hungry.