To ensure that the future of freedom is bright, I offer three suggestions: Defend both liberty and limits, without embracing libertinism or authoritarianism; defend both true moral norms and tolerance for dissenters, without embracing relativism or false pluralism; and foster the institutions of civil society that form people in virtuous freedom, without allowing liberty to dissolve community.

Any sound defense of liberty must also defend its limits. Our disagreements today—both between Right and Left, and within the Right—are not primarily about whether to protect civil liberties, but about what their limits should be. The debate isn’t “civil liberties, yea or nay,” but rather our debates are about the contours and content of civil liberties. Large majorities of Americans (including of conservatives) support freedoms of speech and religion, for example, as well as economic liberty and property rights. But we disagree over whether religious liberty should cover Satanists who want to abort babies, or evangelicals who do not want to celebrate same-sex relationships as marriages. Conservatives disagree about whether free speech should protect Drag Queen Story Hour. As a result of these disagreements about contours, content, and, hence, limits, some are giving up on the liberty interest wholesale. That’s a mistake—but there are good reasons that it's become so tempting.