> Debates are essential in a free society. The alternative to debate is force. Either you convince your neighbour to do as you think they should do, or else you

> Debates are essential in a free society. The alternative to debate is force. Either you convince your neighbour to do as you think they should do, or else you send men with guns to his place. This feels like the authoritarian's world view where the only options are ones where you have to involve yourself with your neighbor at all. That's not a free society, it's just kicking the "force" can down the road. Unless your neighbor is doing something particularly egregious (the definition of what is egregious is also subjective and arbitrary), the attitude you should have for a "free society" is to leave him alone. Force is not an alternative to debate. Force is omnipresent and the threat of its use is what forces those into compliance with policies set forth by governing bodies. Debate is useful in that it can potentially help influence the people with power into creating policies that coincide with your beliefs, but any sort of governance is still forceful. > If you want to live in a free society... I've found that people do not actually want to live in a free society; they just align themselves with that phrase because it has a positive connotation. If you examine most people's world views, I'd suspect it'd be largely authoritarian takes. The issue of course, is that authoritarian has a negative connotation but gosh do the authoritarians love masquerading as libertarians.