Thanks for this insight. Although I also value liberty highly, I think it's important to remember that liberty goes both ways. Your freedom to drive as fast as you want encroaches on my freedom to feel safe in traffic. Your freedom to do as you see fit with pollutants that come out of your factory can inhibit my freedom to clean air and water. To complicate matters, this diffuse balance of liberty is a compromise settled by a representative electorate. The U.S. is a republic run by representatives (as opposed to a pure democracy). Once these individuals come to power they can really do whatever they want to do and their actions are almost always systemically corrupted by the people with real power - people with means ($, influence etc..). Liberty sounds nice on paper, but its harder to define where the rubber meets the road or how then to steer the vehicle.