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Liberalism: Ideal and Reality

Why does liberalism—the tradition that makes equal freedom the political touchstone—combine such strength with such incoherence? The attempt to make freedom dominant leads to contradiction. Liberalism is triumphant almost everywhere, but its victory reverses the meaning of its principles. It calls for live- and-let-live, and enforces it by supervising everything. For the sake of freedom, it empowers bureaucrats to reconstruct human nature. It appeals to "the people," while reserving the right to make them into whatever it thinks fit.¹

The stark contradiction between freedom and equality as the goal and all-pervading control by governing elites as the means is surprising,...