In response to someone trying to defend "social democracy" with a chart, and saying how much more "civil liberties" people have under it and how much happier it makes them, I said that I would have to know how they define "liberty" and "rights" before I could take them seriously.
Later I dared state there can be no such thing as "too much liberty" so someone decided to educate me on how "too much liberty" is a real threat, and that people's liberty can be in conflict. But they immediately pivoted away from arguing about liberty toward freedom.
In other words, they changed the subject so they could pretend they proved their point.
I have always said there can be such a thing as too much freedom. And your freedom can conflict with someone else's rights.
You might be free to arbitrarily kill someone, which would violate their rights, but you don't have the right to do so-- you don't have the liberty to kill them until they choose to violate you and put you in a position to need to defend yourself.
Similarly, you might be free to live on money stolen from others-- the slave labor of others--, but you have no right to do so.
There is no conflict.
But, I don't doubt this would make a certain type of person-- a type which is prevalent in societies around the world-- "happier" than the alternative.
