What does it mean to be a libertarian?

At its heart, libertarianism is the belief that adults should be free to live their own lives, make their own choices, and bear the consequences—good or bad—of those choices. It stands in contrast to authoritarianism, which insists that people must be guided, managed, and protected by the state, as if citizens were children incapable of self-direction.

The tension between these two worldviews has existed for centuries, but the question remains as urgent as ever: how much of our lives should belong to us, and how much to the government?

From the earliest days of political thought, philosophers recognized that there must be some boundary between the public and private realms. Aristotle described the public realm—the polis—as the sphere where laws, contracts, and principles of community are debated and enforced. The private realm, by contrast, was the space of the home and the individual, where people could act freely without interference. The debate over where this line should be drawn is timeless. Yet the deeper question, as libertarians point out, is not just where to draw it—but who gets to decide?

Seventeenth-century English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke offered two enduringly different answers. Hobbes believed that, left alone, human life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” To escape this chaos, he argued, people must surrender nearly all their rights to an absolute sovereign who decides what freedoms they may enjoy.

Locke, on the other hand, trusted ordinary people more. He believed that individuals are generally peaceful, capable of reason, and naturally entitled to life, liberty, and property. Governments, he argued, exist only to resolve disputes and protect these rights—and if they ever exceed that role, the people have not only the right but the duty to resist and restore their liberty.

Modern authoritarianism is rarely as explicit as Hobbes’s Leviathan, yet it operates in much the same spirit. We are told the government acts “for our safety” when it regulates our diets, censors our speech, or dictates how we educate our children. Each small intrusion seems benign when viewed in isolation, but the pattern reveals a creeping presumption—that citizens are too foolish or fragile to manage their own lives and must be managed by their betters.

The irony, of course, is that few of those who favour state control actually believe they themselves need controlling. Surveys routinely show that most people consider themselves above average in intelligence. The Dunning–Kruger effect teaches us that people often overestimate their competence. Combine these tendencies with power, and you have the makings of a ruling class that sincerely believes it knows best.

Every new rule, regulation, or “public safety” measure becomes an opportunity to exercise this misplaced confidence—an expanding web of control that slowly replaces self-reliance with dependence.

Take, for instance, the so-called nanny state. Laws that mandate bicycle helmets, restrict alcohol and tobacco, or ban gambling are premised on the belief that adults cannot be trusted to weigh risks and make their own decisions. Censorship laws that regulate “disinformation” operate under the same assumption: that people are so gullible they must be shielded from bad ideas. Laws that prohibit even non-lethal means of self-defense assume that individuals are too hot-tempered to be trusted with their own protection. In every case, the government steps in to parent the citizen, stripping away the dignity and responsibility of adulthood.

Libertarians reject this infantilization. They believe, as Locke did, that people are capable of reason, that freedom is not dangerous but essential, and that government should be limited to preventing harm—not managing behavior. History has proven this approach not only morally superior but pragmatically sound. Societies that respect individual liberty—such as those influenced by Locke’s ideas, including the early United States—have consistently been freer, wealthier, and more peaceful than those ruled by centralized authority.

The dangers of authoritarianism are not theoretical. Even democracies can slide into tyranny. Hitler’s National Socialist Party was elected before it abolished the very democracy that gave it power. When citizens surrender their autonomy, believing the state will always act benevolently, they create the conditions for despotism. The right to self-defense, to speech, to property—all are bulwarks against that fate. When these rights are eroded, so too is the public’s ability to resist oppression.

Consider the simple matter of personal safety. Political leaders travel with armed guards; wealthy citizens hire private security, but ordinary people are denied even non-lethal means of defending themselves. A woman stalked by an abusive ex-husband must rely on the same government that has already failed to protect her. This is the logic of dependency: trust the state, even when it cannot or will not keep you safe.

Being forced into such dependence is not the mark of a free society. It resembles, rather, the relationship between a parent and a child. And just as children learn helplessness when their parents refuse to let them make choices, citizens grow passive under excessive government control. Responsibility erodes, initiative fades. People begin to expect the state to solve every problem and shield them from every risk. In the process, they surrender the very qualities—courage, accountability, and creativity—that make them capable of self-government.

Most people instinctively resent being ruled. They distrust politicians and bureaucrats, often viewing them as inept or self-serving. Yet they fail to see how each small intrusion—the ban, the mandate, the tax, the censorship—is part of a larger pattern. Smokers, environmentalists, gun owners, and civil libertarians may all feel aggrieved by different policies, but their cause is the same: resistance to the idea that government should dictate the terms of private life.

If these groups ever recognized their shared interest in personal liberty, they would form a formidable force. The private realm would again become truly private, and government would return to its rightful place as servant, not master.

Libertarianism does not promise a perfect world—only a free one. It trusts adults to live as adults, to learn from their mistakes, and to govern themselves. Authoritarianism, by contrast, promises safety but delivers submission. The choice between them is ultimately a choice between living as citizens or as subjects.