Many defenses of a free society are based on assumptions of certainty regarding human nature; for instance, human beings are so constituted that they must have maximal autonomy in order to discover scientific truths or invent and produce the goods and services that improve human life.
Less well known are defenses that assume uncertainty regarding the best course of action. As far as I'm aware, the most ancient of these is implicit in philosophical Taoism (see ยง71 of the Tao Te Ching: "Knowing well that you do not know is best; not knowing is a fault of foolishness"). Here one doesn't make a positive claim about human nature, but instead questions the positive claims about public policy made by those who would impose their views on the rest of us.
Far too often, such policies are based on ideology and opinion, not wisdom and experience. To take a recent example, consider the drive in some American cities to radically reduce or completely eliminate policing functions ("defund the police"). Although I don't pay close attention to political wrangling, for me one red flag at the time would have been that the proponents appeared to be awfully, even messianically certain about the correctness of their proposals. In an inherently complex realm like human society, it strikes me that no one who has studied the matter seriously could be so utterly oblivious to the existence of tradeoffs. If it's all pro and no con, I sense a con of a different kind.
Unfortunately, politicians and policy wonks are usually overconfident about the value of their "expert" opinions. If they won't temper their hubris with some much-needed humility, it's our job as citizens to counter their certainty with some well-deserved skepticism.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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