We already do have limits on our freedoms in respect of the laws that we are expected to obey. Legally at least, I don't have the freedom to steal something that belongs to someone else, and nor do I have the freedom to hit someone if I feel aggrieved. In this sense, legal restrictions on our freedoms are absolutely necessary for a civil, ordered society that we can all live in peacefully.
Another restriction on our freedom that is legally enshrined in most democratic societies is the restriction of our freedom of speech. At first this may sound like a wholly undemocratic, autocratic restriction, but in fact some restrictions on our freedom of speech are necessary in order for a civilized society to function effectively. For example, employers should not have the freedom to ask about the religion or sexuality of a prospective employee, and advertisers, including politicians in campaign season, should not be free to make whatever outlandish, hollow promises they feel like. In other words, some restrictions on our freedom of speech are necessary to guard against discrimination or to hold people accountable for the promises that they make.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Justice of the American Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932, once said that "the right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins." This is a proposition that I broadly agree with. It means that the freedom that somebody has to live their life as they choose extends only so far as it doesn't detrimentally impact the freedom of somebody else to live their life as they choose. This seems to me a rather good basis for any society.
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