The primary reason why it is so difficult to defend political liberty today is because freedom is a rational construct, and thus cannot be understood by the irrational. Children, or adults whose moral reasoning skills are stalled at childish levels, are unable to experience it -- they literally don't know what they are missing.

This is why authoritarians of all stripes are hell-bent on producing and maintaining a society of childish citizens: dependent, trusting of the hand that feeds, obedient, pleasure-centered -- perhaps capable of proficiency in well-defined tasks, but frightened, above all else, of being left to "fend for themselves."

In short, individual freedom, in the complex sense captured in the most profound political philosophy, is completely inaccessible to a mind without a developed faculty of practical reason. And a moral concept that cannot be understood rationally cannot be deeply experienced emotionally. What does freedom feel like? What, conversely, does the deprivation of freedom feel like? Those who hope to restore freedom to the civilized world must first win the educational battle that would make those two feelings, and the difference between them, immediately accessible to every adult.

For there is no hope of winning a debate over the best means of securing liberty with an opponent who cannot understand what difference it makes whether health care is "provided" by private citizens or by the government, why some people should be "allowed" to be wealthy when others are poor, or why anyone who believes in Christian charity would oppose government programs that "take care of people." You might as well argue about driving technique with someone who has never seen a car.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/the_vanishing_feeling_of_freedom.html#ixzz1vMzAHUzu