Newly-minted Free Agent Brika Lyga has an excellent post on her personal blog about her journey from the statist Left to libertarianism (do read the whole thing!). The post is now ancient by internet standards, but she makes an important point which needs emphasizing:
Legislating your Opinion. Realize when you are pushing your opinion to become policy, there will always be someone who disagrees with you and wishes to implement their own conflicting opinions into policy as well. You will be pissed and disgusted that they have the audacity to try to legislate their opinion, though what you intend to do is the exact same thing. Good example; couple of gay environmentalists who want to marry, and also wish to enforce lower carbon emissions vs. fundamental Christians against gay marriage with tons of stock in Natural Resources like Oil and Gas. Learn not to force your opinion on anyone else; ultimate freedom for you, ultimate freedom for everyone else. Just because it’s your opinion doesn’t make it right for all.
Damn straight, Brika! Disagreements about how things should be done are always going to be with us. This would remain true even if everyone accepted the value of a freedom and opposed government, as many of the heated disagreements we see at our social network site demonstrate. The difference when an issue becomes political is that it becomes subject to a centralized decision backed by force. Nobody has a monopoly on truth, but whichever side wins the political argument has access to a monopoly on force.
The fact that I oppose government doesn’t necessarily say anything about the opinions I hold as to what it’s right and appropriate for people to do. I think the financially comfortable should help the poor, for example, but I accept that there’s room for disagreement on that question and oppose forced redistribution. Disagreements require negotiation and compromise; government policy produces the opposite.
As Ian Freeman of Free Talk Live Stefan Molyneux likes to ask anyone proposing a coercive policy, “am I free to disagree?” The relatively liberal government we see in the developed world today may allow people to express disagreement, but it precludes the genuine disagreement of withdrawing financial support. Enshrining the views of one group in legislation is what government inherently does. That’s not right, no matter how many people support it.
Brad Taylor is a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He blogs at 
Like the Against Me tactic
I believe you have confused me with Stefan Molyneux. That’s his tactic, and it’s a good one.
Ah, sorry. I think I must have heard you mention it on the show.
Personally, I feel social discourse – or disagreeing – is critical. If we all shared the same views how boring. Steel is forged through heat and pounding. Our fear of discourse is from our failed public schools where questioning, disagreeing, arguing is considered in poor form. When in reality it is critical to making us stronger, helping us to mold and shape ideas, keeping us humble, vetting out problems, developing alternatives and the list goes on. So the question for each individual is – Do you want to be a powder puff or a sword? And each to his own…