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Why is freedom so controversial? The answer is that freedom comes with responsibility. We all want to be free ⏤ but we do not all want to be responsible for our own actions, and we do not all trust others with the freedom to live their lives outside of government control.
To try and create some semblance of freedom without the expectation that people will make good decisions in their lives requires two things: 1) a generous welfare state with a government that provisions the things it determines people need (food, housing, clothing, etc.) in ways that cannot be abused, and 2) the reallocation of resources (such as income) from those who are responsible to fund the lives of those who are not.
It’s actually worse than that. The need to reallocate resources (such as income) from those who earn it to those who do not also creates an unhealthy separation between consumers and producers, while simultaneously creating a ‘moral and intellectual elite’ that exists solely to determine how much of the income to take from those who create it, and how best to spend that income on those who have become dependent upon the state.
This ‘moral and intellectual elite’ takes good care of itself ⏤ one might remember Nancy Pelosi (whose husband just took $5 million in stock options one day before his wife helped pass a bill that made those stock options far more valuable) showing off her $60 thousand ice cream freezer during the early days of the pandemic. The wealth accrued to the ‘moral and intellectual elite’ through the seizure of income from those who earn it under the auspice of taking care of those dependent upon government creates what amounts to a noble class of Ladies and Lords who neither know what it means to produce, nor to consume, but who dictate to the rest of us how we shall live, and what our public policies should be.
