Editor, Gazette-Journal:
Franklin Roosevelt articulated four freedoms: speech and worship and from want and fear. I believe there are only two: freedom from personal responsibility and freedom from external control, but to the degree you have one, you lose the other. Indeed, growing up is an exercise in earning freedom from control and surrendering freedom from responsibility.
We’re social creatures, and necessarily live somewhere between having 100 percent of either. The question is: Where on that spectrum can harmony and fulfillment be maximized?
Progressivism tends to emphasize freedom from responsibility, believing centralized management of society by experts best provides for human needs and happiness. Conservatism tends to emphasize freedom from control, believing maximizing autonomy best provides for fulfillment and happiness.
But flaws of human nature threaten both. The Progressive vision must concentrate authority in a small subset of society. The avaricious seek power more en...