A Personal Contradiction

I've noticed this contradiction about myself:

1) I'm becoming more and more libertarian all the time, more of a believer in the principles of the American Revolution. Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have said I was a traditionalist conservative rather than a libertarian because freedom-- while it's obviously an important value-- isn't the most important value, or the overriding value.

But in recent years my position has changed to this one: freedom isn't the most important value in itself, but it's the most important political value. Not only because authoritarian government always has the potential to become a flat-out totalitarian regime like the USSR or the Nazi Germany (and surely preventing that is the most important thing), but also because of the more insidious soft tyranny we've seen creep over all publicly-funded or government-controlled institutions over the last few decades. The arm of government only stops short of your own home and your own mind. Political correctness is omnipresent. Civil society is replaced by NGOs. "Human rights" have become an excuse to hammer society into the shape desired by our elites-- which inclines me to think that positive human rights were a mistake from the first, and we should instead favour the "negative" human rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Yes, corporations can be just as enthusiastic at spreading political correctness (or any other ideology) as government. But government always has the whip-hand. Recent events in America have shown this to be the case. (The fact that this whip-hand might sometimes be used for good doesn't make me any more keen on it.)

2) And yet...the sort of community I would like to live in is a paternalistic and closely-knit and somewhat rigid community. I like reading about boarding schools and monasteries and old-fashioned colleges with dormitories and honour codes and all that sort of thing. I love the word "canteen", both because of how it sounds and because I like the idea of a communal eating space where everybody eats the same thing, or chooses from a limited menu. (The word "canteen" is intrinsically poetic, in my view.) I want some rules that are a little bit arbitrary and nonsensical and unreasonable. I want village elders, town worthies, and city fathers...even if they have feet of clay, even if I thumb my nose at them. My own taste would not run to the maximum amount of freedom-- except in the all-important areas, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion.