Thank you. I think I basically agree with you. I’m writing within the red-blue world because that’s where we live right now. If we had ranked choice voting (and no gerrymandering) we’d get closer to real choice. The main point of my article is that there are people out there who cry “Liberty!” while taking liberties away from others. The introductory stuff, including the quote about noses, is meant to set the stage, within the world we operate in, for people who haven’t thought about the difference between the freedom that comes from good cooperation and the illusion of freedom that comes from drawing weird lines in the sand.

I have received a few very thought-provoking responses from you and others who have done a lot of thinking and reading about this, and who know a lot about this stuff already. You might not be the target audience for this article — you know too much! — and I therefore especially appreciate your thoughtful engagement with it.