A Reply To a Commenter

A thoughtful commenter has stopped by trying to pursuade me that Kos is right. You can read his whole comment here, but I quote, in part:

There is a hierachy of liberty interests. Arguably, political rights against state intrusions are superior to mere economic liberties, such as the right to pollute the commons, or defraud customers, or even to use one’s property in an unrestricted manner. You may feel differently, but history has demonstrated over and over that political rights, once lost, are much harder to restore than economic rights,

To which I reply:

a) insulting libertarian ideals by insinuating that we favor polluting the commons and defrauding customers is probably not a winning strategy.

b) Your assertion that political rights are harder to restore than economic rights is simply wrong. There are not political rights and economic rights - there are just rights.
Second, American history is full of liberties that have been taken away and restored:
Alien and Sedition Acts
Japanese Internment
Full Scale spying on American Citizens (Hoover and McCarthy)
and the list goes on.

You may (or may not) be right about American politics being stuck in a two party system but I do not have to accept that the Republican party and Democratic party are the only options, therefor I will sit this one out.