PROPOSITION: TO PRESERVE INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY, GOVERNMENT MUST AFFIRMATIVELY INTERVENE IN THE CULTURE WAR

AFFIRMATIVE: You May Not Be Interested in the Culture War, But the Culture War Is Interested in You

- TODD ZYWICKI

TO PARAPHRASE THE aphorism attributed to Leon Trotsky: You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you. Just as ignoring the reality of war won't keep your house from being bombed, ignoring the culture war isn't going to obviate the threat it poses to individual liberty. As society and daily life become increasingly politicized, it is time for libertarians to accept that to preserve individual liberty, the government must affirmatively intervene in the culture war.

The use of government power can be liberty-enhancing-most obviously by restraining the exercise of government action through the rule of law and constitutional limits, but also by restraining private actors by protecting property rights against theft or vandalism, enforcing contracts, protecting against assault or other bodily harm, and other exercises of government power that restrict some people's freedom of action in order to enhance others'.

Libertarians, including myself, have traditionally navigated these competing rights claims through a simple and highly effective dichotomy oriented around property rights: The primary threat to freedom is the exercise of government (public) power, whereas the exercise of private power to exclude via property rights and freedom of contract is generally considered not only untroubling but actually freedom-enhancing. Moreover, asking government to do more (such as by limiting the power to exclude or freedom of contract) is fraught with the risk of unintended consequences of unleashing Leviathan.

In an ideal world-the world of the "first-best"-this public-private binary has much to commend it. The arbitrary exercise of private power will be checked by market forces and freedom of choice. Employers or restaurants that discriminate will find themselves bankrupted in competition with those that do not. Adapt or die.