The Curse of Freedom

Everything Libertarians Believe Is Wrong (pt. 2)

“It is a mistake to suppose that all men, or at least all Englishmen, want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it. They would happily exchange their liberty for a modest (if illusory) security.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, Life At The Bottom

Freedom stands as the modern world’s highest ideal, praised as the source of progress, prosperity, and human dignity. It is treated as sacred, a self-evident good that must be defended at all costs. But this belief is a delusion. Freedom, for many, is not a gift but a curse. It is a weight they were never meant to bear, an impossible burden that crushes those too weak to carry it.

The common man is not made for boundless autonomy. He is not an architect of his destiny but a creature of habit, instinct, and necessity. He is given freedom and told to make something of himself, yet he has no tools to shape his life into anything meaningful. Stripped of guidance, of duty, of the firm hand that once directed him, he is cast into the chaos of limitless choice. He does not rise. He falls.

With no structure to bind him, he sinks into vice, addiction, and self-destruction. He does not choose wisely because he was never taught how. He does not impose discipline upon himself because discipline must first be imposed from without. He is told to take control of his fate, but fate is something he does not understand. The freedom he is given is a trap, one from which he cannot escape.

This is the great tragedy of the modern world. We have mistaken a burden for a blessing. We have taken men who need order and forced them into a world of uncertainty. We have condemned them to lives of misery and failure, then scorned them for their suffering. What they needed was not freedom, but structure. What they needed was not choice, but direction.

Thus, the worship of freedom has become the worship of a false god. And under its rule, the common man has not been liberated. He has been destroyed.

II. The Burden of Choice and the Paralysis of Freedom

Tell a man he can be anything, and he’ll spend his whole life being nothing.

Choice is the defining feature of freedom, yet it is also its greatest curse. The modern world overwhelms the common man with choices he is neither prepared for nor capable of making wisely. Every decision, from his career to his morality, from his beliefs to his identity, is placed upon his shoulders. He is told that this is empowerment, that he is the master of his fate. But in truth, he is drowning in decisions he does not know how to make.

Jean-Paul Sartre declared that man is “condemned to be free.” This is not liberation—it is exile. It is the terrifying realization that no structure exists to guide him. He must construct his own meaning, his own values, his own life. For the few who possess wisdom, strength, and will, this is possible. But for the vast majority, it is not.

Without clear direction, the common man flounders. He avoids responsibility, not out of laziness, but out of fear. He drifts between jobs, relationships, and philosophies, never committing, never certain. He is paralyzed by the weight of endless options, unable to choose, afraid of regret. And so he does nothing. His life becomes a series of half-choices, a meandering path that leads nowhere.

In earlier times, his choices were made for him—by tradition, by family, by faith. He had a role, a place, a duty. Now, he is cast into the abyss of self-determination, expected to forge his own destiny. He is not free. He is lost. And the world, in its arrogance, calls this progress.

III. The Necessity of Structure for Human Flourishing

Freedom doesn’t build empires; it builds fast-food chains and rehab centers.

Man was never meant to wander alone. He was meant to be shaped, to be molded by forces greater than himself. The greatest lives are not those of men who forged their own way in defiance of structure but those who were disciplined by it, sharpened by its constraints. Freedom without form is chaos. It is structure that allows men to thrive.

Children raised without discipline do not grow into strong, capable adults. They become anxious, aimless, and weak. They lack the inner fortitude that only external order can cultivate. A child does not teach himself restraint. He does not instruct himself in wisdom. He must be guided, corrected, and sometimes forced onto the right path. If even childhood requires structure, how much more does adulthood?

Society flourishes not through unlimited freedom but through carefully maintained order. The greatest civilizations were built on hierarchy, on duty, on the expectation that every man knew his place and his role. Those who deviated were brought back in line, not out of cruelty, but out of necessity. It was understood that men are not naturally wise, that they must be led before they can lead.

The same is true in all things. A workplace without structure becomes a place of inefficiency and disorder. A military without discipline collapses in defeat. A culture without boundaries decays into decadence and irrelevance. The modern world, in its obsession with personal freedom, has abandoned the structures that once produced strong men. And in doing so, it has left them weak, adrift, and broken.

Structure is not oppression. It is salvation. It is the force that refines men, that lifts them above their base instincts, that forces them to rise to something greater than themselves. Without it, they do not ascend. They collapse.

IV. Freedom as a Catalyst for Self-Destruction

“This is the lie that is at the heart of our society, the lie that encourages every form of destructive self-indulgence to flourish: for while we ascribe our conduct to pressures from without, we obey the whims that well up from within, thereby awarding ourselves carte blanche to behave as we choose. Thus we feel good about behaving badly.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, Life At The Bottom

Freedom promises fulfillment but delivers ruin to those unfit to wield it. It offers men the ability to chart their own course, but without guidance, they veer toward disaster. Given no external structure, they spiral into self-indulgence, addiction, and despair. They are told they can become anything, yet most become nothing at all.

The modern world is filled with men who have been granted absolute autonomy and have used it to destroy themselves. They drink themselves into oblivion, waste their lives on distractions, and numb their dissatisfaction with fleeting pleasures. They were given the power to shape their own destiny, yet they have done nothing with it. They do not rise to greatness. They sink into mediocrity, if not worse.

Vice flourishes in a world without restraint. The man left to his own devices does not choose discipline—he chooses indulgence. He does not choose wisdom—he chooses entertainment. He does not choose purpose—he chooses comfort. And so he wastes away, wondering why he feels so hollow, why his life is so empty. The answer is simple: he was never meant to bear the burden of absolute choice.

The consequences are all around us. Depression, anxiety, and loneliness have reached unprecedented levels. Families have collapsed. Meaning has disappeared. Men drift aimlessly, disconnected from everything that once anchored them. They were told that freedom would bring them happiness. Instead, it has left them broken.

The promise of total self-governance is a lie. Without structure, without boundaries, without duty, most men do not thrive. They decay. And in the name of freedom, the modern world has sentenced them to their own destruction.

V. The False God of Freedom

I learned early in my life that if people were offered the opportunity of tranquility, they often reject it and choose torment instead.
― Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses

Freedom is no longer a principle; it is an idol. It is worshiped as the highest good, the answer to all suffering, the cure for all oppression. But like all false gods, it demands sacrifice and offers nothing in return. It strips men of guidance, of duty, of certainty, and leaves them to fend for themselves in a world that does not care whether they survive.

Societies that once understood the need for order have abandoned it in the name of liberation. Tradition is mocked. Authority is scorned. Any structure that imposes limits is viewed as tyranny. But what has this new faith produced? A generation of lost men, adrift in endless choice, crippled by indecision, paralyzed by meaninglessness.

The lie of freedom is that it makes men strong. The truth is that it makes them weak. The strongest civilizations were not built on autonomy but on duty, on discipline, on shared purpose. The greatest men did not become great by doing whatever they pleased. They were forged in struggle, shaped by hardship, guided by those who came before them. Freedom, without a higher principle to direct it, does not elevate men. It degrades them.

To worship freedom is to deny reality. Most men do not need more choice—they need guidance. They do not need autonomy—they need duty. They do not need liberation—they need purpose. The modern world has cast off these things in its devotion to freedom, and in doing so, it has not freed men at all. It has enslaved them to their own worst instincts.

VI. Slaves of the False God

How many people does each of us know who claim to seek happiness but freely choose paths inevitably leading to misery?
― Theodore Dalrymple

The tragedy of this false god is not only in the suffering it causes, but in the way its victims are treated. The men who collapse under the weight of freedom are not oppressors, nor rebels, nor villains. They are casualties of a cruel experiment, thrown into a world without structure and then mocked for failing to navigate it.

Society tells them they are free, then scorns them for not knowing what to do with their freedom. It gives them limitless choices, then ridicules them for choosing poorly. It strips them of discipline, guidance, and responsibility, then calls them weak for being lost. It is a cycle of abandonment and contempt, as though it were their fault that they were never given the tools to thrive.

Some turn to vice to numb the pain. Some lash out in anger, blaming the world that left them to fend for themselves. Others resign themselves to quiet despair, drifting without purpose, knowing something is wrong but unable to name it. They are not lazy. They are not broken. They are simply men who were denied the structure they needed to become more than they are.

They do not deserve scorn. They deserve mercy. If the world had not lied to them, had not told them they could build their own meaning from nothing, they might have become something great. They did not need freedom. They needed order, discipline, and purpose. And until these things are restored, they will remain lost, abandoned by the very society that claims to have liberated them.

VII. Conclusion

They stripped him of direction a burdened him with choice. Then they called him weak for collapsing under a weight he was never meant to carry—freedom is a joke, and he’s the punchline.

The worship of freedom has led to ruin. It has promised strength but produced weakness. It has claimed to liberate men but has instead enslaved them to confusion, vice, and despair. For many, freedom is not a blessing—it is a burden too great to bear.

The modern world has confused autonomy with fulfillment, choice with purpose. But true purpose is not found in endless options. It is found in commitment, in duty, in submission to something greater than oneself. Men do not thrive in isolation. They flourish within structure, within order, within the constraints that give life meaning.

The consequences of unchecked freedom are clear. A society without discipline collapses. A man without duty decays. A generation raised without structure drifts into nihilism. The experiment has failed, and its victims are everywhere—silent, broken, and lost.

What people need is not unlimited freedom, but a path to follow. They need guidance, not detachment. They need a world that offers purpose, not one that abandons them to the abyss of self-determination. Until society recognizes this, it will continue to create more suffering, more isolation, more destruction.

It is time to cast down the false god of freedom. It is time to restore the structures that shape men into something greater than themselves. Only then will the lost be found. Only then will the broken be made whole. Only then will the common man be freed from the curse that was forced upon him.