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This post confused me when I realized you had written "Liberalism" instead of "libertarianism". I don't see what liberalism has to do with liberty. It seems like a purely a collectivist ideology to me. Only if we replace "liberalism" with "libertarianism" does the post make sense to me, and afterwards it's great reading rather than merely confusing. I will engage as if you wrote libertarianism for this reason (not that you're making a mistake. It's likely me who is confused here)
This seems like what we'd call "brainrot" or "degeneracy". I started using this latter word almost 10 years ago after reading Nietzsche, and nobody else seemed to use it at the time, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the reason the word came back. Anyway, freedom is actually the freedom to command yourself, not the freedom not to be commanded. One should only seek freedom if they don't need being told what to do in order to succeed in life, if they don't use their freedom to destroy themselves.
We're deeply social by nature (and the most oversocialized lean left! They just want to socialize without taking responsibility for anything, which is why they want the government to do everything for them). It seems that being around a lot of other people is bad for you, for the same reason that social media is bad for you. People start competing and aiming for superficial appearances of what people value while neglecting what actually matters.
The advantage of libertarianism is that you can choose which group you want to depend on and have depend on you (living as a hermit for very long is almost impossible). People are only equal in value, that they're actually equal is a stupid idea. I also agree that family values are essential, and throwing them out is basically taunting darwinism to remove you from reality. I also don't see how anyone would disagree with "The best kind of parenting is both loving and strict".
I consider myself pro-freedom, and around my friends I give myself all the freedom that I want, and I give them all the freedom that they want, too. But this only works because we're all reasonable and because we can take responsibility for ourselves. Those who believe "freedom" to be the freedom to indulge in vices (because it seems unpleasant for them to resist unhealthy urges) cannot live like this.
I agree with your conclusion, but you can word it differently. We don't need "authority" but "coherence". The advantage of Christianity is that it gives value to things which are healthier than our random urges/impulses. The disadvantage is that you can lose faith in Christianity (but if you have a preference like vanilla ice cream, you don't care if there's no objective proof that it's good - you still believe in your own preference). We also need Reponsibility (this is one of Jordan Petersons core values too) and you don't have to call this "authoritarianism". Being overly lenient with others only works when they're being too strict on themselves. I feel like this might have something in common with "we praise those who degrade themselves and degrade those who praise themselves". We recognize the need for a balance. As long as internal control + external control > X where X is some threshold, the individual will turn out alright. To the extent that a person is able to control themselves, they've earned the right to be free from external control
Liberalism, historically, meant something more like libertarianism (though probably a little less anarcho-capitalist than libertarians will get). It is sometimes still used in that sense. You'll see people calling themselves classical liberals from time to time, and these are pretty much always right-leaning people.
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The most common (and therefore correct, at least in American English) meaning of "liberal" in the US context is as a slur used by both the right and the left against the centre-left. Occasionally this extends to using "liberalism" to mean "whatever the US centre-left does". This is also slur-adjacent - the American centre-left generally call their own ideology "Progressivism" because their political tradition (with some degree of continuity in institutions, personnel and practice) goes back to the early 20th century capital-P Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Bob La Follette. There is a similar but different use of "liberal" and "liberalism" in British English (in this case not a slur - it is what we call ourselves) to describe the political tradition which runs through the British Liberal Party (1859-1988) and its predecessors and successors and their international imitators - there is a similar degree of continuity in institutions, personnel and practice that begins with John Locke advising William III and runs through to Earl Russel negotiating the Whig-Peelite merger and on to Nick Clegg and Justin Trudeau doing the things they do.
But @OracleOutlook, and the Economist (which he cites supporting it) and Marc Barnes (which he cites opposing it) are using "liberalism" in an even broader sense (which, for the avoidance of doubt, is also correct in both British and American English) - to refer to a whole panoply of mutually sympathetic political traditions based on ethical individualism, limited government, respect for a private sphere than includes religious belief, etc. All of British liberalism, American "liberalism"/Progressivism, Reagan/Thatcher conservatism, technocratic-elitist "One Nation"/"Rockefeller Republican" conservatism, and Cato Institute-style libertarianism* can trace their political traditions back to John Locke, and occasionally do so with pride. This is the background that mainstream political actors in the Anglosphere can not notice in the same way that fish don't notice that water is wet. (Many leftists, including the British Labour party, are swimming in the same water). Increasingly, it is the water that everyone is swimming in because the British won the 19th century and the Americans won the 20th.
But big-tent liberalism is not actually universal, even if it is foundational to Universal Culture. All the sub-varieties of liberalism would look at online sports betting and see "This is probably a vice, but that is a comment about private morality, not political morality. It may be so harmful that we need to ban it, but it should be legal by default because you only harm yourself." Most would cite to John Stuart Mill for justification. But a fascist, a communist, a Catholic integralist, a Christian fundamentalist, a Muslim fundamentalist, a Confucian, or a Lee Kwan Yew style technocratic-elitist would all ban it without a second thought, with "It's a vice." being sufficient justification.
* The brand of libertarianism being pushed by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and such-like is arguably not part of big-tent liberalism for reasons that this post is too short to discuss in detail.
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