You may have read in the news about the very recent death of tech mogul John McAfee. He died by allegedly hanging himself in a Spanish jail while awaiting extradition to the US on tax evasion charges.

McAfee prophesied his own death, telling friends that he would never commit suicide and thus if it appeared that way he was murdered. But if you know of John McAfee that was likely convenient spin. And anyway, he wasn’t important enough to be suicided. His pre-death ploy was just a graveyard move to make him seem influential enough to be silenced.

Yes, I can hear the tinfoil hat crowd now. “Just like Epstein!” Well, the aforementioned perv was totally a threat enough to the prevailing authorities to be shut the hell up. Whether he was or not is open to debate. The whole thing is very dodgy. But McAfee? Nah. Your garden variety autodeath.

McAfee was a prominent member of the Libertarian Party. Ran for their presidential nomination in 2016. Came in third. Think of him, in manner, as a consistently very drunk Donald Trump. Here’s a McAfee spot from that campaign.

Quite entertaining, but replete with enough full on paranoid craziness to render him a great talk show guest and not much after that. I know of where I speak here, having worked with the LP on a national basis years ago. I was in my relative youth then and their siren song of anarcho-capitalism still rang a bell. It was a leftover from my Randian college days.

They are good people and well-meaning. But the LP is a think tank masquerading as a political party and couldn’t fight their way to a municipal water board slot, much less to the presidency. However, the part of their ideology that engages us today is their refusal to comprehend the delicate balance between freedom and order that is needed to run a country. They are foursquare for almost unlimited freedom. Which is fine, on a roadtrip or at a toga party. As the modus operandi of a nation? Not so much.

If you have too much freedom it’s anarchy. If you have too much order it’s tyranny. When you get them in the right balance it’s liberty. And just as the misnamed LP and others tip the scales too much in the favor of freedom, others on both the right and the left tip it too far towards order, an order enforced by them.

Survey social media and you will see Marxists and populist conservatives screaming about “firing” this person, “kicking out” someone, or “getting rid of” another. Scant thought of evidence, due process, common sense, the law, or the Constitution. They want a sacking and by Jove they want it now. A pox on both their houses.

As my youthful flirtation with Ayn Rand tells you, I’m a bit partial to freedom over order. As I’ve gotten older I’ve tried to compensate for my bias. The Founders, having read both Rosseau and Hobbes, also choose freedom but recognized the vital need for order. We’re very lucky they understood the balance.