Ever had the experience where you differed on some point with a friend or loved one, and suddenly made a really good argument — only to have them clam up, saying: "Well, that's my opinion!" (as if opinions need not correlate with reality), or "Isn't it great that we live in a country where you and I have the right to disagree?"

Yes, of course, it's great that we have the "right" to disagree. But so what? Citizens could disagree with each other in the USSR too, as long as they stayed off a few key topics. There's never been a government in history, no matter how oppressive, which outlawed all disagreements. But what did any of that have to do with the topic at hand? Such tactics are usually just a subject-changer, to avoid looking too closely at the evidence.

Yet somewhere we've gotten this idea that any view should be celebrated, no matter how wrong, and that diversity on every topic is inherently a good thing.

For example, Max Yasgur, a conservative Republican who opposed the Vietnam war, as well as taking drugs (not to mention "free love"), nonetheless provided a venue for the very things he thought were harmful (Woodstock) because, as he put it, "Tens of thousands of Americans in uniform gave their lives in war after war just so those kids would have the freedom to do exactly what they are doing."

Certainly, his love of the "kids", as foreign as they were to him, was laudable. And, yes, tens of thousands of Americans in uniform did give their lives for these kids' freedom. But was "exactly what they are doing" really the end result intended, and something we should celebrate? A man does have the freedom, in our society, to lie to his neighbors, slander the innocent, and blithely spread venereal disease — but does that mean that's the ultimate purpose of said freedom?

The rarity in this world is not the freedom to do wrong, but the freedom to do right. It's true that authoritarian governments often restrict certain wrong behaviors: China is busily mandating various "green" initiatives (which makes Thomas Friedman swoon with admiration); the Soviet Union had nice clean subways and very little petty crime. But these small virtues always come at the cost of (and under the crushing weight of) vastly larger evils: No one in such societies can speak about negative effects of state policy, voice eternal truths, or try to change the nation for the better. More often than not, it is goodness, not systemic corruption, which these states persecute and punish.

So, of course, we have to protect people's freedom to be wrong about things, to say things which we think are false, to hold beliefs we personally think are harmful. But we do this to prevent greater evils: if "wrong" speech is outlawed, history shows us true and moral speech tends to be the first victim. Error, slander, ill will, and even tolerating certain kinds of deception are then a necessary byproduct (much as evil is a byproduct of free will) — but it doesn't follow we need to encourage nor celebrate such things.

Our freedoms do not exist primarily so we can hold any opinion, no matter how unrelated to reality, or say anything we want, regardless of how badly thought-through or harmful. Our freedoms exist to give us the possibility of doing good, and to discover and speak the truth — which is the true rarity in this world.

Let's celebrate that.