My social libertarian side comes out in my column for The Daily today.  I've always been a live and let live and let your freak flag fly type of person.  I think that people who want to live an atypical life should enjoy being chemically, sexually, physically and emotionally adventurous, so long as that's what they want to do.  If we only get one go at life, there's probably no point in returning your rental body without a few dings in it. I was heavily influenced by reading this book in high school.  Now, a ton of my beliefs and attitudes have changed since I was 16.  But not the sense that it's wrong to butt into other people's affairs and that we should take a very narrow view of what actions have a negative affect on others.  Though I'm economically compassionate, I seek to maximize personal social freedoms.

I'm also struck by how often telling people what to do just doesn't work.  That's the real conclusion behind the Global Commission On Drug Policy report that declared the drug war a failure.  You criminalize the behavior of ordinary people, you even throw them in jail, and they keep taking drugs.  Why?  Mostly, it's because they want to and on some level they don't view the laws telling them that they can't as entirely legitimate.  I'd liken the drug laws to sodomy laws.  Even if you're aware of them, they're unlikely to have much influence on your bedroom choices.

Now, this certainly doesn't meant that the government can't discourage certain behaviors for health reasons.  Mayor Bloomberg's anti-smoking crusade, aimed at enhancing public health, has never actually sought to criminalize smoking.  It limits where you can do it (fine by me) and the city will offer free nicotine patches to people who want to quit (also fine by me) but it ultimately acknowledges that the choice is yours.  I'd be fine with drug laws of that type (no, you can't shoot up in the park, yes, we do have methadone available if you want to stop).  I'm fine with the government educating people about nutrition (though I wish the information were less lobbyist influenced) but I'm not fine with, say, banning the sale of fatty foods.

Basically, I think we can allow all sorts of behaviors without collectively sanctioning them.  More often than not, I think being non-judgmental is the best response (Tweet your johnson, what do I care?) but I understand that the majority, and our elected leaders, will feel differently.  Fine.  Freedom of choice also means that people should be free to criticize.  Which is why it's good that we have people like Amanda Marcotte writing intelligently against the new and growing prudery in the U.S.  See, we can criticize people back.

Part of the point of life, I think, is to transgress the occasional social norm.  We should stop making that illegal except in cases where direct harm to unwilling others can be shown.  Which I guess is my last point about this... we've been too creative in making up harms to others.  A perfect example would be the post-9/11 claim that people buying weed are funding terrorists or claims like "gambling ruins families," which tends to ignore all of the other things that ruin families -- we don't ban layoffs, benefit cuts and dead-end jobs, do we?  Our definition of harm should be extremely limited and direct.  Adult alcohol consumption?  No direct harm that would justify banning it.  Drinking and driving?  Sure, I'll draw a line there.

It's too bad that the Tea Partiers mostly don't walk the walk on the social Libertarian stuff, because I think some compromises could be made between the libertine left and the libertarian right if they did.  But, sadly, the other side isn't so adventurous.