Humans are obligate social creatures. We cannot survive alone as individuals. We only survive, both individually and as a species, to the extent that we create and maintain functioning collaborative social communities. For the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to these social entities collectively as societies.

Although all successful societies use a wide range of political tools in order to function and endure (including things like norms, rules, regulations, laws) these political systems are secondary, simply tools created and used by societies. It is important not to conflate society with its manifestations. (Don't confuse the mmap with the territory.)

People who equate the constraints inevitably imposed by a society on itself as an unacceptable limitation on their personal freedom fail to understand that their freedom is actually a result of these constraints. In fact, their freedom would be impossible with constraints. (A paradox that seems to escape most libertarians and many conservatives.)

Several examples should make this clear.

Laws, regulations, and norms are used to protect our water supply. Without these constraints, we would not be free to safely drink or bathe. Our freedom would be far more severely constrained by cholera, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis B, polio, giardia, and toxicity from toxic chemicals than it is by safe water laws and regulations.

We have traffic laws and regulations that require that we drive on the right, stop at stop signs and red lights, drive safe vehicles, and give pedestrians and cyclists the right of way. Without these constraints we would be 'free' to be routinely injured or killed by someone driving on the left or ignoring a stop sign while we are going to work or running an errand. We are free to use our roadways safely BECAUSE of the constraints.

Our public health laws, regulations, and policies make us free to go about our daily lives without getting seriously ill and possibly dying from smallpox, TB, pertussis, yellow fever, malaria, measles.

In short, our laws, regulations, customs, and norms are what allow a society like ours to survive. They provide us with the individual freedoms needed to pursue our lives.

No, our laws, regulations, and norms are not perfect. Yes, they need to be examined and regularly adapted to our evolving society in a changing world. But I am tired of hearing people talk as if they have not benefitted immensely and survived because of the constraints they want to abolish. It comes across to me as an adolescent and self-centered delusion of God-like individual importance and power.

In the words of John Donne (For Whom the Bell Tolls):

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.