Ignatieff did not hesitate to face the consequences of his belief. Ignatieff's ideas seem terribly naive. When a fifty-year old man, struggling with his second adolescence, leaves his wife and children in cavalier fashion for the charms of a sexy, younger secretary, he has not exemplified legitimate human freedom. He has acted out of base irresponsibility. Beyond that, he has affected in a real way the society in which he lives, the community of which he is a part.
Individual freedom is a precious moral right, but freedom without responsibility has no moral basis.
To act with no understanding that one's actions inevitably impinge, at some point, upon the freedom of others is the road to moral anarchy. And with moral anarchy there is no community. Perhaps no thinker has viewed the human situation with more pessimism then the 17th century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes, not himself an orthodox Christian, embraced a view of human nature which carried ultra-Calvinism and its doctrines of original sin and total depravity to their ultimate. Human life, in its natural state, said Hobbes, is a jungle existence.