Abstract:
Why a Tragedy of Freedom? A tragedy in the classical sense is a tale of conflict and downfall. In such a story, the protagonists lose control over events and wind up doing precisely what they set out to avoid. So too in our own era, freedom has become a tragedy. We are told that rights are inherent, so we keep on expanding them until today, they are totalitarian. Now we find ourselves paralyzed and powerless to prevent our own destruction. And the tragedy is a conservative one. For liberals delight in degeneracy. The problem looms only for those not infected with such moral insanity. It remains for conservatives to acknowledge that democracy is self-terminating, and to develop an alternative which balances rights with responsibilities.