Stephanie Slade > Quotes

“In the end, the liberal political tradition is not so easily disentangled from the Judeo-Christian moral tradition. Individual liberty matters — free breath is good — because human beings, created in the image of God, were not made to be dominated, manipulated, or controlled, whether by the bandit, the tyrant, the bureaucrat, or the mob. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, «The right to the exercise of freedom, especially in moral and religious matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of the human person». Or as Vallier has written, «Liberty [i]s a requirement of justice». The belief that an unfree society is intrinsically unjust was for decades near to the heart of the conservative worldview in the United States. That is why Hayek, despite being a European liberal, is also a hero of American conservatism.”
― Stephanie Slade, Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right

“Bad choices are rarely fully internalized. An absentee father's actions affect his kids, and a culture that is affirming toward men who abandon their families will end up with more of them. The men are arguably freer, but is the society better off?

As good libertarians, we know better than to ask the state to solve these sorts of problems, but we don't have to pretend they aren't real. To say that a good society just is a free society and a good life just is a free life is to miss all of that. Greater freedom from force and fraud is always a positive thing. Greater freedom from cultural constraints may not be.”
― Stephanie Slade