I say self-defeating because it would be incapable of supporting many of our most important institutions which let us make good use of our freedom, including our school systems and armed forces. Such a country would also be incapable of providing each citizen with even a roughly equivalent amount of freedom with which to lead his unencumbered life. Thus, I will prove that, as paradoxical as it may seem, for freedom to be of any real use, it must often be curtailed. But before I begin, I want to respond to the claim that liberalism has it authentic roots in a tradition of unmitigated freedom. Immanuel Kant, who is considered to be father of liberal thought, and who placed an enormous value upon autonomy, still recognized that we have unbreakable duties to others.
Libertarians feel that such policies are an unjustified infringement upon individual freedom.
They also claim that, in the absence of those policies, we would live in a society which could still protect those freedoms. The best example of a public good is national defense. Herein lies the rub. Unfortunately, every individual realizes that they are better off not paying for defense and so no one does, leaving the society undefended. And it goes without saying that one of the many problems facing an undefended society is that it will have a hard time resisting attacks by other groups seeking to restrict its freedoms.