The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
Interpretation
True commitment to freedom is tested by tolerance for actions we may disagree with.
Walter E. Williams emphasizes that the ultimate measure of one's dedication to liberty and private property rights is not in supporting choices that align with our beliefs, but rather in allowing and respecting choices that contradict them. This principle highlights the importance of tolerance and the essence of true freedom, which encompasses all voluntary actions, regardless of our personal opinions on those actions.
In practice
Using this quote during a debate about the limits of free speech.
However, if we wish to be compassionate with our fellow man, we must learn to engage in dispassionate analysis. In other words, thinking with our hearts, rather than our brains, is a surefire method to hurt those whom we wish to help.
In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market, and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one.
Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top".
If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.
The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
I well remember it being said to me by an occultist of great experience that two things are necessary for safety in occultism, right motives and right associates.
The society exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the benefit of the society.
The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
We don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.
And these things that keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient, they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue. They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts, into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.
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