[Barrin92]

> It's nothing more than intellectual infantilism

No, infantilism is being unable to contextualise freedom and see it in its proper communal and social context. Handing private entities the ability to engage in surveillance against their fellow citizens isn't freedom, it's eroding the very basis of freedom. It's creating a private panopticon in which everyone is constantly conditioned to behave and comply. That is actually what modern American society is by the way, literally infantilized. Students are being policed by their universities, children by theire hyper-religious parents, minorities by their neighbours ring doorbells, and workers by their companies, no state required.

The proper way to understand the liberal tradition and apply it today is to understand that the liberal tradition is concerned with threats to individual freedom, period. 200 years ago, in early capitalist times, citizens were equal and the state was powerful. Today private power and surveillance is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than anything the American government can come up with.

The liberal tradition applied today, by the spirit rather than the letter of the law and its proper intent, must be concerned with stopping citizens and private firms from controlling each others lives, rather than be obsessed with some 18th century homesteading logic or 'voluntary contracts'.