TO PARAPHRASE THE aphorism attributed to Leon Trotsky: You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you. Just as ignoring the reality of war won’t keep your house from being bombed, ignoring the culture war isn’t going to obviate the threat it poses to individual liberty. As society and daily life become increasingly politicized, it is time for libertarians to accept that to preserve individual liberty, the government must affirmatively intervene in the culture war.
The use of government power can be liberty-enhancing— most obviously by restraining the exercise of government action through the rule of law and constitutional limits, but also by restraining private
