Social problems are caused by the beliefs held by individuals in the public, and the actions they take as a consequence of those beliefs. For example, if many

Social problems are caused by the beliefs held by individuals in the public, and the actions they take as a consequence of those beliefs. For example, if many people in a society believe that theft is an act they can live with, there is a high rate of thievery. The beliefs currently held in most western societies that lead to a lack of defense of personal freedom are that security is more important than freedom, that security can be improved through restriction of freedom, and that the average people in law enforcement and the government have the capability and will to restrict freedom in ways that increase security. Since most people no longer seek rational justifications for their beliefs and rely on naive intuition, it is impossible for their beliefs to be corrected through rational argument or by better informing them. Intellectualism is viewed as a form of extremism, and their intuition tells them that all extremism is bad and that truth always lies 'in the middle.' Therefore, when someone wants to appeal to them to consider the ideological underpinnings of their belief, or the logical consequences of it, they turn off and immediately ignore the person. Anything that is substantially different from their present experience is rejected, regardless of its rational basis. For example, when it was found that almost all of the MPs had been illegally using taxpayer money to pay for personal expenses, the concern of the public was never whether this is a behavior that should be punished on principle. The fact that throwing almost every MP into jail, or even just ejecting them from office, would seem "extreme" to them, so they reject the idea out of hand. Were rationality still a valued trait in western society, the public might come to realize the things learned about human behavior over the past hundred years or so and the futility of efforts to improve security by limiting freedom. They might realize that conditions in prison are caused by the lack of freedom rather than the type of people put into prison. If prisons were full of plumbers and judges rather than criminals, they would be nearly indistinguishable from prisons full of criminals. The Stanford Prison experiments and many other real-world scenarios (Abu Ghraib was one that garnered publicity) illustrate this facet of humanity well. Having your freedom limited strips you of your humanity, and stripping someone of their freedom also strips you of your humanity.