This concept of a “collective liberty,” something that libertarians claim simply does not and cannot exist under any circumstances, is embodied in our founding documents — We the People, in order to form a more perfect union, in order to establish justice, in order to ensure domestic tranquility, in order to provide for the common defense, and so on. Also there’s this idea floating around libertarian circles that the idea of a higher good or higher collective purpose is illegitimate and incompatible with liberty. But as I’ve pointed out to them before, libertarians believe in a higher good. If they didn’t they wouldn’t advocate libertarian ideology as the best good for everyone; the ruling principle for society. So in reality everyone, including libertarians, advocates a “higher good,” we just disagree on what that “higher good” is and how to achieve it.

I’d have to do some research to get the exact quotes and from whom, but I’ve read before where some of our founders explained why they preferred the word “liberty” over “freedom.” To them the idea of liberty carried with it and implied responsibility, whereas the word freedom implied license. In today’s terms liberty means almost the exact opposite of what the founders deemed it to mean. But our founding documents like the Constitution cannot be properly understood unless we know what the framers meant by these terms.

But anything can be taken to the extreme, and anything taken to the extreme is bad.