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13/ Mandeville and Hume thought this could be overcome--we could be made *civilized* or, in Mandeville's phrase, "governable." We could be made through custom and modest enlightenment into a person capable of living in liberty and ease with others.
14/ Arguably, libertarians are heir to this way of thinking-- through Smith, I guess. And yet it is libertarians *themselves* that seem most likely to upset these very norms, to cast doubt on the rationality or utility of the norms that make common life possible.
15/ I'm not suggesting that this is bad, and maybe I'm really just restating the increasingly-strained conundrum at the heart of 20th-c libertarianism: that Lockean natural rights and Humean conventionalism are very, very hard to reconcile at all times.
16/ But what I'd really like to say is this: you can be governed by your community and your neighbors, or you can be governed by Leviathan; that much appears clear. If you object to the latter, you need to think about the terms on which the former can happen.
17/ Cooperating with others freely is the goal, yes, but sometimes it means shutting the fuck up and wearing a mask.