As I wrote elsewhere, "Steele in passing mentions what’s really going on here, I think: It’s a continuation of the ancient struggle not between freedom and 'the good,' but rather liberty and equality. An egalitarian society and a 'good' society are not the same thing."

Now, don't completely disagree with this:

Too often I see conservative writing like this that attempts to vilify the left by implying that any attempt to cure social ills necessarily and mistakenly curbs individual freedoms. That may be true is some instances, but it is hardly an axiom.

It's more of an axiom than not. I would modify the statement to read: "...implying that most government attempts to cure social ills..." The default position of most Democrats in positions of authority is government is the solution to any and all problems, real or imagined. There are endless examples of this, but I'll mention three:

1) The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is considering an ordinance that would ban fast food restaurants from including toys in their kids' meals. (I heard about this last week, meant to post something, got distracted with paying work -- so this will have to do):

The proposed law comes from Santa Clara Board of Supervisor, Ken Yeager. “Fast food restaurants spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to tempt children into eating unhealthy,” he said.

Yeager points to the one in three children in California who are obese as the reason to regulate restaurants and hopefully guide parents to make better decisions about nutritious meals for kids.

"We're finding out more and more that if you're obese as a child, you're going to have health problems your entire life," said Yeager. "Ten out of 12 meals that are associated with the promotional toys are the high-caloric, high-fat and high-sodium meals.”

Let me tell you something. Parents aren't rolling up to the drive-thru because Bobby and Sis want the latest piece of crap Avatar doll, though doubtless there are some of those people. (I remember collecting football helmets from Straw Hat Pizza in the 1970s -- that was a lot of pizza!) They're doing it, by and large, because they've been working all day, the thought of cooking dinner is wearisome, and a quick trip to the drive-thru is an attractive alternative.

Now, you could say the proposed remedy is dopey or at best insufficient, but that doesn't change the fact that childhood obesity is a real problem that costs taxpayers money in terms of burdens on public health care, etc. You could tax these foods, of course. There is a long and noble pedigree of imposing sumptuary or sin taxes. I'm not entirely opposed, but it would depend on how those revenues are used.

Or you could attempt to enact (or repeal) government policies that encourage one parent to stay at home and raise the kids while the other goes to work. Trade-offs, always trade-offs. And complications. A discussion for another time.

1.5) Banning Happy Meal toys is laughable, but my all time favorite example of inept -- and inapt -- government responses to perceived social ills was when the Denver School Board in 1999 banned students from wearing trenchcoats because, after all, that's what the Columbine High School shooters were wearing. Idiocy.

2) Every year, California State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) holds a contest called "There Oughta Be a Law," in which he encourages his do-good, busybody constituents to propose legislation to resolve some problem or another. Simitian just announced three winners for 2009-10. I'd say one of the three has merit. Most of the previous winners involve either piling regulations upon existing rules or fixing errors and closing loopholes of existing rules.

There oughta be a contest called "There Oughtn't Be A Law," which singles out dopey, obsolete, overly intrusive laws for repeal.

3) If you really want to see the folly of government-imposed cures for seemingly intractable social ills, look at the past 40 years of federal efforts to "reform" education. If that's too much, look at the past 10 years. I covered a House Education and Workforce Committee field hearing in Orange County 11 years ago. Everything I wrote about then is even more true today, after eight-plus years of No Child Left Behind.

That said, I find much slovenly rhetoric among conservatives, who often do not look beyond the narrow policy issue they oppose at a given moment. We oppose big government. We often do a poor job of explaining why. Too many commentators now confuse opposition to "big government" with government simply. That's a problem.

Yeah, I more or less agree with you about the armchair psychology stuff. I fleshed out my thoughts a little bit more at The American Culture (not a lot, but a little), and I mentioned parenthetically that Steele stumbles when he gets into the psychoanalysis. That's why I focused on the question of liberty versus the "good."

It sounds like an interesting read. The wikipedia page implies that the author has a bias toward the "Constrained" vision. Is that the case, or is it a failing of the wikipedia article (or my reading of wikipedia)? As described, the Unconstrained vision don't seem a very accurate representation of my worldview. For example, I believe in the rule of law and constitutional government. I also don't distrust the free market, but I don't trust it completely either - it works a lot of the time, but it's not perfect. And I put more value on empiricism than theory. I'm hoping that the wikipedia article is not giving Sowell's theory the depth needed to convey the idea.