Virtue People versus Freedom People

Freedom and Virtue: Friends or Enemies? | Brownstone Institute | Bruce Pardy:

November 26, 2023 - "There’s an elephant in the room, the speaker declared. He was right. I was at a gathering, as I often am, of people who aspire to rescue their countries from descending into woke, collectivist hell. But the attendees were not of one mind. Instead, there were two kinds of people in attendance. The elephant in the room was the tension between them.

"Across the West, Virtue People and Freedom People have been working together. At conferences, in think tanks, at school boards, on email lists, in living rooms, on X, and sometimes marching in the streets, they coalesce. These two groups constitute the rebel alliance against authoritarian woke globalism. But their political philosophies conflict.

"Virtue People believe that virtue is the most important thing. Tradition, faith, family, responsibility, dignity, patriotism, community, and spiritual or religious conviction are the pillars upon which the West must be built. Virtue People are often, but not always, people of faith, especially of the Christian variety. Laws, governments, and society, they believe, should promote the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.  

"Freedom People don’t share this view. They believe that freedom is the most important thing. Virtues, they believe, are for individuals to work out for themselves. The primary accomplishment of the West, they would say, is individual autonomy. The purpose of government is to secure individual rights to liberty. Freedom means the absence of coercion. You may decide your values, actions, and groups for yourself. Freedom means 'freedom from.' 

"Virtue People believe in freedom too, especially in this era of illiberal progressivism. But freedom means a different thing to them. Freedom is essential, they would say, but the decline of the West is due to an excessive emphasis on individuality. (If that makes perfect sense to you, you may be a Virtue Person. If it sounds like a contradiction, you are probably a Freedom Person.)

"Freedom, they would say, means the disciplining of desire, which requires limits. Freedom is the liberation to act responsibly, to be transcendent, and to flourish virtuously. We become free, they would say, to the extent that our will becomes coherent with objective Good. Freedom means 'freedom to.'  

"In the political sphere, these two kinds of freedom are incompatible. Freedom People expect their governments to keep the peace and protect the individual – and otherwise to not interfere. Virtue People expect their governments to promote the Good with laws and policies. Virtue People support laws that prohibit behavior that is, in their view, immoral, damaging to human flourishing, or inconsistent with common good. Assisted suicide, prostitution, divorce, pornography, even heresy, just to start, shall not be permitted. 

"To achieve their ends, Virtue People rely on force. At least, that’s what Freedom People would say. Virtue People use laws to achieve their ends, and laws depend on force. Every legal rule identifies a circumstance in which the state will bend the will of its citizens. Without the monopolistic violence of the state, laws cannot be enforced. Virtue People are willing to use that force to achieve their virtuous ends. Therefore, allege the Freedom People, they are willing to use force to have their way.  

"Freedom People are decadent. At least, that’s what Virtue People would say. If morality crimes do not exist and individuals are free to decide their own values, depravity ensues. Libertarians and libertines are cousins, Virtue People would declare. Excessive individualism causes indulgence, narcissism, and social decay.  

"But Freedom People can be virtuous too. They can embrace faith, family, and community. They can disapprove of behavior, such as prostitution, that Virtue People would ban. However, Freedom People make a distinction that Virtue People are unable or unwilling to make. Freedom People see two different questions where Virtue People see only one. How should people behave? How must they behave? For Freedom People, the first is philosophical and personal. The second is legal and coercive. The answer to the first does not answer the second. Freedom People do not impose their moral judgments on others. They will not have others impose upon them. 

|Paradoxically, Freedom People have faith that Virtue People lack. They have faith in spontaneous order. If we leave people alone, they say, things will turn out fine. Individual decisions will coalesce into peace and prosperity. Virtue People do not believe in spontaneous order. They want their hands on the wheel, so that they can manage people to virtuous ends. 

"Freedom People will not be managed. They believe that the West’s problem is too little liberty. Virtue People believe that the problem is too much. Freedom People oppose the administrative state. Virtue People embrace it if it directs people to proper ends. Neither will sign on to the other’s project. Although they cooperate to resist the tyranny of the woke, they are not likely to succeed unless they reconcile. 

"At the gathering, most people were Virtue People. The few Freedom People present slowly realized that they had attended a kind of church to which they did not belong. The Virtue People who filled the room, steadfast in their conviction that they knew best what is Right and Good, did not seem to be aware of them. Or for that matter, that they existed at all.

"Near the end, I spoke with an earnest, soft-spoken gentleman in horn-rimmed glasses. In his ideal world, the law would prohibit behavior that conflicted with the Good, as he perceived it. When I pointed out that some people in the room would oppose that enterprise with all their might, his mouth fell open and his eyes grew wide behind his thick lenses. That possibility had not occurred to him. Not everyone sees the elephant in the room."

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2024 Rand Debate | Virtue vs. Freedom (David Haskell & Bruce Pardy) | Augustine College | April 24, 2024:

The conspiracy theory of free enterprise

 Free Enterprise as Conspiracy | American Institute of Economic Research - Phillip W. Magness:

 August 25, 2021 - "The recent surge of academic interest in 20th century conservatism, libertarianism, and associated developments in free-market economic thought also carries with it a curious historiographical implication. Encompassing contributions by authors such as Kim Phillips-Fein, Quinn Slobodian, Bethany Moreton, Kevin Kruse, and Nancy MacLean, the genre varies widely in scholarly quality. Its contributors nonetheless share a pronounced ideological hostility to their subject matter, which in turn shapes how they select and construe their source materials.... 

"The approach taken in these works essentially conspiracizes ... routine historical records from disliked conservative, libertarian, or free-market sources as if they were evidence of a collective will to politically transform the mechanism of history in ways that disrupt a specific course of progressive political development desired by the author. A predictable assortment of problematic consequences in the present allegedly follows from the decades-long designs they claim to have identified: the 2007-2008 financial crisis, environmental degradation, rising inequality, the political ascendance of the religious right, and Trump.

"Lawrence Glickman’s Free Enterprise: An American History offers the latest contribution to this booming yet peculiar subfield. Styled as an intellectual history of the concept, his thesis holds that 'free enterprise' is essentially a constructed mythology that arose from political opposition to the New Deal. Over the course of the 20th century, this version of 'free enterprise' recast economic interventionism as an aberration from an artificially constructed history of the pre-Roosevelt American economy.... In his telling, the myth’s expositors — mostly a group of business interests and associated free-market intellectuals — set out to morally 'delegitimize' the New Deal order and with it 'the most basic functions of government,' namely taxation, regulation, and public expenditures....

"In Glickman’s telling, that attack amounted to a 'one-sided war' upon the New Deal by business interests and other defenders of 'free enterprise,' all rooted in the aforementioned myth-making. While he offers a moderately interesting etymology of the phrase ... dating back to the nineteenth century, the core of his myth-making narrative suffers deeply from the epistemic distortions of the book’s ideological hostility to its subject. In particular, Glickman’s own political commitments to the New Deal (and progressivism more broadly) effectively render him unable to even fathom the existence of valid economic criticisms for Roosevelt’s policies, or their long-term effects on the United States’ fiscal picture to the present day. Rather, the New Deal is simply 'an outgrowth of democratic processes' and unassailable as such. Its critics, past and present, are ,,, casually brushed aside as expositors of a near-religious devotion to the artificially constructed 'free enterprise' concept. This rhetorical move allows the author to sidestep any engagement with salient criticisms of New Deal policies and political actors. It’s much easier to recast the critics as fanatics under the 'talismanic' trance of a dismissed concept.

"Glickman accordingly bristles at the suggestion that the New Deal unintentionally “prolonged and deepened rather than ameliorated the Depression,” even as modern empirical scholarship has lent strong support to that exact contention.... He discounts any concern with the deficit-inducing budget strains of Social Security and similar programs on account of their popularity.... He similarly sees only fear-mongering over the specters of European communism and fascism in contemporary business complaints about Roosevelt’s affinity for economic central planning.... One need not speculate that the early New Dealers drew inspiration from Europe’s totalitarian regimes in the decade before the world descended into war with those very same powers. They openly boasted of doing so themselves....

"An unfortunate result is an ostensible history of 'free enterprise' that almost completely omits the concept’s historical use as a philosophical foil to the Soviet Union and central planning. In fact, Glickman consciously excludes this dimension from his study at the outset by little more than a wave of the hand: 'Although what we might call "the age of free enterprise" … coincided almost precisely with the Cold War battle against Soviet communism, proponents described the dire threats to the system as primarily domestic, not foreign.' The severity of the error in this assessment may be readily ascertained by looking no further than mainstream mid-century political discourse. 

"As Dwight Eisenhower contended in a celebrated 1950 speech that helped to propel him into the presidency, the communist world had 'embarked upon an aggressive campaign to destroy free government… because regimentation cannot face the peaceful competition of free enterprise.' Or consider Harry Truman’s 1953 State of the Union Address, recounting that the Soviets had predicted an American reversion into the Great Depression after the end of World War II: 'We answered that question—answered it with a resounding "no".... Free enterprise has flourished as never fore.' John F. Kennedy’s never-delivered Trade Mart Address from the day of his assassination planned to contrast the military ambitions of international communism with 'the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system.' Or as Lyndon Johnson succinctly put it in a 1964 interview, 'we have one thing [the Soviets] don’t have, and that is our system of private enterprise, free enterprise.' By attempting to pigeonhole the term to its domestic political uses, Glickman has somewhat astonishingly managed to completely miss its central place in mid-twentieth century geopolitics."

Read more: https://www.aier.org/article/free-enterprise-as-conspiracy/

GOP's new non-libertarian conservative ideology

GOLDBERG: Conservative divide pits anti-left against anti-state | Toronto Sun  - Jonah Goldberg:

January 25, 2020 - "For most Americans, conservatism basically means the stuff Republicans are for.... I don’t mean this as a criticism.... One of the great things about America is that politics – never mind political philosophy – isn’t a big part of most people’s lives. Associating a body of ideas with the institutions (political parties) that are directly charged with putting ideas into action is a pragmatic way to cut to the chase. Paying attention to what the eggheads and theorists of the left and right want the parties to do is only worthwhile if you’re especially interested in politics.

"The challenge for conservatives these days is that the Republican Party really doesn’t know what it’s for, beyond defending President Trump and opposing Democrats and socialism. While the fight over impeachment sucks up all of the oxygen in public, there’s a robust battle behind the scenes about what it means to be a conservative.

"Some of it has spilled out into public view, usually centering on nationalism – what it means, what it requires in terms of policy, how it differs from traditional conservatism or whether it differs at all. Sens. Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio, for example, have offered thoughtful versions of 'economic nationalism,' pitting it against libertarianism (both real and imagined) ... a common theme is the idea that government should be more interventionist in the economy: Policymakers should be more willing to overrule the marketplace on everything from big tech to child care to trade....

"Trump has now given more aid to farmers than Obama ever gave Detroit, and if an elected Republican has complained about it, I missed it. In fairness, the farmer bailouts were necessitated by the president’s trade wars. But that just demonstrates Republicans’ willingness to substitute their judgment for the market’s....

"There’s a cultural version of the nationalist project as well. Some conservative intellectuals – mostly, but not exclusively, Catholic – believe the state has a role in imposing its judgment in the marketplace of ideas....

"[T]here are those who are anti-left and those who are anti-state. For ... illustration, some people are opposed to public schools because they don’t think education is a proper task for the state. (Milton Friedman called them 'government schools.') Others on the right think public schools are fine; they just object to how progressives operate them....

"Another fault line revolves around the question, 'Which state are we talking about?'.... I’m very libertarian at the national level, mostly libertarian at the state level and pretty communitarian at the local level. Letting people live the way they want to live where they actually live, so long as basic civil rights are respected, has always struck me as the best way to maximize happiness and democratic accountability.

"This raises a final question: Can the state actually do what you want it to do? At the core of the conservative critique of the left has always been a basic skepticism that top-down planning from Washington can work. It used to be that the champions of such planning were mostly on the left. That’s not true any longer. And it remains to be seen whether top-down planning from the right works any better than it does from the left."

Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldberg-conservative-divide-pits-anti-left-against-anti-state
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Now Tyler Cowan takes a run at libertarianism

Not Losing Sight of the Classical Liberal Ideal – Richard M. Ebeling (01/07/2020) – WallStreetWindow.com:

January 7, 2020 - "Today, the media and ... public policy publications are awash in articles and essays insisting that the postwar 'neoliberal' era has finally and inescapably come to an end.... Most of these criticisms and challenges have come from 'progressives,' the new 'democratic' socialists, and a growing number in the Democratic Party.... But criticisms and rejection of domestic and international liberalism have also come from conservatives, who have called for a 'new nationalism,' that would require a more “activist” state to serve national interests and identity....

"Now another voice has offered his view on whether or not classical liberalism and libertarianism can survive in their historical forms of defending individual liberty, free markets, and a government primarily limited to the protecting of people’s individual rights to life, liberty and honestly acquired property without interventionist regulation and compulsory redistribution. And his answer, too, is, 'No.'

"Tyler Cowen is a prominent professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia. He has written a number of insightful books devoted to aspects of the economics and culture of a free society, and has written regular columns for both The New York Times and Bloomberg News. He also co-authors the provocative and widely read blogsite, 'Marginal Revolution'....

"The gist of his argument is that classical liberalism and libertarianism are out-of-date and passé political philosophies that had their relevance and significance in the 19th century for advancing the cause of personal liberty and freer markets, and during the first half of the 20th century as an argument against radical socialist central planning. But society and its problems have moved on and what people want from their government has become more expansive....  That’s just the way it is, Professor Cowen asserts. Live with it and give up the classical liberal and libertarian idea of prosperity and a highly limited government. With prosperity will come bigger government, he asserts.

"The 'inevitability' implied in this is, in fact, nothing of the sort. It could be just as reasonably argued that as the members of the society grow in wealth and improved standards of living, they will need and desire less government dependency and support. Rising standards of living enable more people to financially support themselves, as well as providing the means for those gaining in material comfort and ease to have the monetary means to demonstrate more willingness and generosity to assist some who may still be less well off than themselves through avenues of private charity and philanthropy; plus, having the greater leisure time to participate in such endeavors through the institutions of civil society.

"Why any such spirit of private giving and benevolence has diminished in fairly wealthy countries in Europe and in various circles in the United States may be taken as the consequences resulting from governmental redistributive largess and an ideology that has weakened the belief in or the goodness of 'self-reliance' and personal responsibility.... Ten years ago, the German news magazine “Der Spiegel,” reported that in a survey of leading businessmen in Germany, the vast majority said that private giving was not their responsibility; it was the job of government....  Where did that come from, other than an ideological and intellectual culture that presumes and persuades too many in society that political paternalism is superior to personal responsibility and the voluntary private sector....

"Why do so many people accept the notion that imposing and raising legal minimum wages are good for people at the lower income levels? Do they have some inexplicable “propensity” to demand higher wages for others through government mandate as their own economic circumstances improve? I think the more reasonable explanation is a failure to understand and appreciate all the implications of the logic and reality of supply and demand in labor markets. That is, it is the result of wrong and faulty ideas that are sometimes easier to impress upon people than the often abstract and indirect chains of causation through which market processes operate, including in the demand for labor.

"So, if we observe that as wealth and material betterment have improved in our society, people at the same time have been supporting increases in redistributive welfare programs, the more rational explanation is an educational, cultural and intellectual setting in which academics and opinion makers and writers have been successful in influencing the climate of ideas in socialist and welfare statist directions through their ability to interpret the past and the present through the prism of their collectivist ideas."

Read more: https://wallstreetwindow.com/2020/01/not-losing-sight-of-the-classical-liberal-ideal-richard-m-ebeling-01-07-2020/
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Hill.TV host called out on antilibertarian screed

Saagar Enjeti defends calls for conservatives to ditch libertarianism | TheHill:

December 30, 2019 - "Hill.TV host Saagar Enjeti hit back at billionaire Clifford Asness on Monday after the hedge fund manager criticized his calls for conservatives to ditch libertarianism. 'Clifford Asness’s corrupt and indignant hypocrisy is exactly the corporatism that I was calling out in that monologue, which triggered him,' Enjeti said....

"Over the weekend, Asness, who has since deleted his Twitter account, pushed back against Enjeti's critique of libertarianism, saying 'there is nothing libertarian about crony capitalism,' before adding that 'libertarians have called it out first and loudest'.... '[B]raying populists of the right now think they’re edgy and smart by decrying them,' Asness, who identifies as a libertarian, tweeted in a thread in response to Enjeti.

"These remarks were in response to an October monologue in which Enjeti said that conservatives have to 'ditch the libertarian streak and challenge concentrated power in the corporate form that we find it today.'

"Enjeti also doubled down on his criticism of libertarianism on Monday. 'Libertarianism in practice is a selective, corporate welfare ideology pushed by the financial industry and big business in Washington,' he said.

"Asness is one of the most prominent fund managers in the world. He has a personal net worth of $2.6 billion, according to Forbes, and the firm that he co-founded, AQR Capital Management, oversees an estimated $200 billion in assets."

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/476293-saagar-enjeti-doubles-down-on-calls-for-conservatives-to-ditch-libertarianism
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Frank Meyer's "fusionism"

Just Don’t Call it Fusionism - Ben Lewis, Austro-Libertarian Magazine:

August 15, 2019 - "Frank Meyer ... a prominent figure in postwar American conservatism, is best known for his attempted 'fusion' of traditionalist conservatism and libertarianism. Even today, Meyer’s name is nearly synonymous with 'fusionism.' But ... the term most commonly associated with Meyer was not his creation, but rather came as something of a pejorative from his colleague and critic, L. Brent Bozell.... Meyer ... disavowed the fusionist label, saying that he was not attempting to fuse two disparate elements together, but was simply attempting to show that 'although they are sometimes presented as mutually incompatible, [they] can in reality be united within a single broad conservative political theory, since they have their roots in a common tradition and are arrayed against a common enemy'....

"[F]ollowing World War II, conservatism was as much a gathering place of opposition to contemporary political and social trends as it was a coherent movement. Two strains of this opposition, however, quickly took form: libertarianism and traditionalism. The libertarians deplored the growth of the state and the collectivization of individuals that was so common in Progressive, socialist and totalitarian societies. The traditionalists, no less concerned about the growth of the state, lamented more the obliteration of traditional society and its methods of communicating enduring values. As these two lines of thought developed, their differences of emphasis led to a tension over which was the true conservatism and the true enemy of liberalism....

"It was this tension to which Meyer devoted much of his writing.... Can the traditionalist emphasis on the attributes of a healthy society – virtue, duty and a rootedness in tradition – be combined with political philosophy that emphasizes the freedom of the individual? For Meyer, the question was not can these emphases be combined, but how they can. His answer began with understanding the proper relationship of the individual to society.

"Meyer believed that 'society is not a real entity'....  What this statement means is not that society as a framework of interrelating individuals, associations, and institutions does not exist, but that it does not exist as an actual entity that can be considered in the same manner as an individual.... 'Society and the state were made for individual men,' he wrote, 'not men for them'....  To Meyer, society is comprised of and made for individuals. It owes its existence to them, and they are its end. All social activity is oriented, fundamentally, towards the individual. Echoing Ludwig von Mises, he concluded, 'Truth has meaning only for persons; beauty illumines the consciousness only of persons; virtue can be pursued only by persons'....

"Meyer was no less concerned about the development of personal and social virtue than were the traditionalists, but he believed that ... virtuous actions could not be truly virtuous if they were not freely chosen.... 'Men cannot be forced to be … virtuous. To a certain extent, it is true, they can be forced to act as though they were virtuous. But virtue is the fruit of well-used freedom. And no act to the degree that it is coerced can partake of virtue – or vice'....

"Meyer’s position on coercion and virtue appears mostly correct, although with some clarification. As Meyer said, it seems that all coercion can do is cause people to act virtuously, not to actually be virtuous.... But the mere appearance of virtue is not the aim of the good society, rather it is actual virtue instilled in the thoughts and voluntary behavior of men.... Whatever the case, even those who have historically accepted a role for the state in the enforcement of virtue must by now admit the truth of Meyer’s statement that, 'If the state is endowed with the power to enforce virtue, the men who hold that power will enforce their own concepts as virtuous'....

"[Murray] Rothbard placed Meyer squarely in the libertarian camp, pointing out that Meyer’s case for the necessity of voluntary choice in the pursuit of virtue not only didn’t clash with the libertarian prohibition of the initiation of force, but was perfectly compatible with it. To Rothbard, Meyer’s appreciation for community and tradition, for the necessary traits of a virtuous society, were not deviations from libertarianism, but were healthy components of the holistic worldview of a thinker who took both political theory and culture seriously.

"Meyer could, perhaps, have made his arguments more appealing to traditionalists by expounding how the moral order could enforce standards of virtue.... Even so, his case against the state performing this task [was] well-argued. In a modern political society, rife with centralization, there is nothing more dangerous to virtue than for its proper defenders to relinquish their duties to the state."

Read more: https://www.austrolibertarian.com/articles/just-dont-call-it-fusionism
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Attacks on libertarians misguided, says Ron Paul

Ron Paul: Conservatives Against Liberty – FITSNews:

July 15, 2019 - "Recently several prominent social and populist conservatives have attacked libertarianism. These conservatives, some of whom are allies in the fight against our hyper-interventionist foreign policy, blame libertarianism for a variety of social and economic ills. The conservative attack on libertarianism — like the attack on the freedom philosophy launched by leftists — is rooted in factual, economic, and philosophical errors.

"Libertarianism’s right-wing critics claim libertarianism is the dominant ideology of the Republican establishment [yet] the Republican leadership embraces anti-libertarian policies like endless wars, restrictions on civil liberties, government interference in our personal lives, and massive spending increases on welfare as well as warfare.

"Anti-libertarian conservatives ... blame libertarians for the American middle class’s eroding standard of living. Conservatives are correct to be concerned about the economic challenges facing the average American, but they are mistaken to place the blame on the free market. The American people are not suffering from an excess of free markets. They suffer from an excess of taxes, regulations, and, especially, fiat money. Therefore, populist conservatives should join libertarians in seeking to eliminate federal regulations, repeal the 16th Amendment, and restore a free-market monetary system.....

"[M]any populist conservatives support increased infrastructure spending and tariffs and other forms of protectionism. Like all forms of central planning, these schemes prevent goods and services from being used for the purposes most valued by consumers. This distorts the marketplace and lowers living standards — including of people whose jobs are temporally saved or created by these government interventions. Those workers would be better off in the long term finding new jobs in a free market.

"Anti-free-market conservatives ignore how their policies harm those they claim to care about. For example, protectionism harms farmers and others working in businesses depending on international trade.

"The most common complaint of social conservatives is that libertarianism promotes immorality. These conservatives confuse a libertarian’s opposition to outlawing drugs, for example, with moral approval of drug use..... [L]ibertarians support the right of individuals to use peaceful means to persuade others not to engage in destructive or immoral behaviors. Libertarians also support the right of individuals not to associate with, or to subsidize in any way, those whose lifestyles or beliefs they find objectionable.

"Social conservatives object to libertarians because social conservatives wish to use government power to force people to be good. This is the worst type of statism because it seeks to control our minds and souls.

"Most people accept the idea that it is wrong to initiate force against those engaging in peaceful behaviors. Libertarians apply this nonaggression principle to government. Making government follow the nonaggression principle would end unjust wars, income and inflation taxes, and the destruction caused by the use of force to control what we do with our property, how we raise our children, who we associate with, and what we put into our bodies. Making governments abide by the nonaggression principle is the only way to restore a society that is free, prosperous, and moral."

Read more: https://www.fitsnews.com/2019/07/15/ron-paul-conservatives-against-liberty/

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'Post-liberal' conservatives reject libertarianism

Conservative Divide: Libertarians, Moralists, and the Danger of Schism | National Review - Jonah Goldberg:

June 12, 2019 - "The idea holding together the conservative movement since the 1960s was called 'fusionism.' The concept ... was that freedom and virtue were inextricably linked..... Frank Meyer, the foremost architect of fusionism, put it: 'Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous the authority that kills it; and free individualism uninformed by moral value rots at its core and soon brings about conditions that pave the way for surrender to tyranny.' This idea may have passed its sell-by date.

"The intellectual Right ... has always had ... internal fault lines.... These cracks were mostly paved over by opposition to Communism throughout the Cold War, but they started to reemerge once the Berlin Wall fell. Pat Buchanan’s 1992 call to revive the 'Old Right' vision of economic protectionism and socially conservative statism was more of a harbinger of the unfusing of fusionism than was widely appreciated at the time.

"Today, conservative forces concerned with freedom and virtue are pulling apart. The catalyst is a sprawling coalition of self-described nationalists, Catholic integralists, protectionists, economic planners, and others who are increasingly rallying around something called 'post-liberal' conservativism. By 'liberal,' ... they mean classical liberalism, the Enlightenment worldview held by the Founding Fathers.... They seek a federal government that cares more about pursuing the 'highest good' than protecting the 'libertarian' (their word) system of individual rights and free markets.

"On the other side are more familiar conservatives who, like George Will in his brilliant new book, The Conservative Sensibility, still rally to the banner of classical liberalism and its philosophy of natural rights and equality under the law. 'American conservatism has a clear mission: It is to conserve, by articulating and demonstrating the continuing pertinence of, the Founders’ thinking,' Will writes....

"The post-liberals think that Enlightenment-based liberalism is the disease afflicting society because it has no answer for how people should live. They have a point: It is not a religion or moral philosophy. But it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, as National Review’s Charles Cooke rightly put it, classical liberalism was a system designed to keep people of different religions from killing each other.

"This framing, however, obscures the path to reconciliation not just among the battling conservatives but in America generally. The liberalism of the Founders focused on freedom for individuals — but also encompassed institutions and communities. In the early days of the republic, for instance, some states had established churches and others didn’t. What the Founders opposed was a one-size-fits-all approach from the top.

"As far as I can tell, the so-called post-liberals now want Washington to dictate how we should all pursue happiness, just so long as it’s from the right. In a country of nearly 330 million people, however, it is impossible to define the “highest good” for everybody....

"What America needs is less talk of national unity — from the left or the right — and more freedom to let people live the way they want to live, not just as individuals, but as members of local communities. We don’t need to move past liberalism, we need to return to it."

Read more: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/conservative-divide-libertarians-moralists/
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Conservatism vs. classical liberalism

Conservatism and Classical Liberalism Don’t Share the Same Values - James Peron, The Radical Centre:

November 3, 2018 - "Too many sympathizers to libertarian ideas think the core of liberalism is free markets and thus they fall for the delusion that conservatives are some variant of 'classical liberal,' because they claim to support markets.

"But, a classical liberal holds to individual rights as his core value, not markets. Markets are derivatives of rights theory ... intertwined with the liberal theory of rights. Conservatives tend to oppose individual rights for collectivist concepts. The 'common good' comes before individual rights to them.... It is no different with the illiberal Left, who make similar arguments.

"Individual rights means individualism  —  something for which conservatives don’t care. They are advocates of the herd, they preach social conformity in the name of tradition. They are happy for you to be free regarding which toothpaste to buy, just not thrilled if you assert the right to pick which person to marry....

"Economics, while individualistic at its core, is also very herd oriented.... Human economic needs are global, pervasive, and common to all ... what Abraham Maslow called lower order needs....

"Economic needs are not particularly individualistic. Thus conservatives don’t immediately oppose this freedom in the short term. I do think they oppose it in the long term, and there were plenty of times in history when conservatives opposed it in the short term as well.... Conservatives have not been friends of free markets overall. Economic rights just aren’t seen as automatically threatening to the conservative herd identity.

"What really gets the conservative’s back up is social freedom [or] freedom in the ... non-market realm. It is linked to markets but it is heavily about individualistic wants and needs, or what Maslow called self-actualization needs. Lower order needs tend to be relatively similar for all. Higher order needs are strongly individualized.

"The conservative is happy with freedom for the herd  —  that is in those areas where everyone has roughly similar needs — just not freedom for the individual  —  where needs and wants are unique, individualistic, perhaps even idiosyncratic or eccentric....

"The smaller the minority the more likely, I suggest, the conservative is to attack it. The closer it gets to the unique individual, the further it drifts from the herd, and conservative values are ultimately herd values. Theirs were values fit for a world where food was scarce and life was primitive....

"For the conservative mind it is easy to be 'liberal' when it comes to property rights, difficult when it comes to gender identity, same-sex marriage, religious skepticism, etc.... Given the consensus in favor of markets — impure ones perhaps, but still markets — it is much more telling to discover how much social freedom one is willing to grant. Where they stand on rights for LGBT people, or 'illegal' drugs, or censorship of erotica, is more indicative as to whether they are a classical liberal than their position on price controls or lower taxes."

Read more: https://medium.com/the-radical-center/conservatism-and-classical-liberalism-dont-share-the-same-values-25d80dd8b902
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Libertarians, conservatives, and progressives

The case for libertarianism in American politics | TheHill - David D'Amato:

June 8, 2017 - "Libertarianism is not conservatism, nor is it an offshoot of conservatism, a subset, or even a relative of common extraction ... because libertarian political philosophy is best understood as a radicalization of traditional liberalism.... The radical, going as she does to the root, hopes to provoke change at the deepest sub strata of society, motivated by the conviction that the political and economic status quo is fundamentally unjust.

"Libertarians believe that the best is yet to come, that history has been the bloodstained story of unscrupulous ruling thugs and their many misdeeds, their constant crimes against law, order, and justice....

"Historian Larry Siedentop goes so far as to argue that ... many of the concepts and modes of argument long credited to socialism were in fact 'introduced by liberal thinkers'.... For example, libertarians have been quick to call attention to the fact that early French liberals developed a pre-socialist (or perhaps proto-socialist) class theory, embedded in which was an argument for radical laissez-faire....

"In America, individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker explicitly identified themselves as socialists even as they advocated 'a perfectly free market,' in which only force or fraud would be out of bounds.... The capitalist, for Tucker, was 'guilty of criminal invasion,' of violating the central libertarian law against the use of aggression against the non-invasive individual. He worried that many of those employing what seemed libertarian-sounding language had actually become the mouthpieces of 'the capitalistic class.' That class had achieved wealth and power not by competing for consumers’ hard-earned dollars, but 'by abolishing the free market,' by using the coercive power of the state to artificially limit the range of competition.

"Throughout the 20th century, some stalwart proponents of the peaceful, cosmopolitan order produced by free trade and respect for private property rights have continued to identify as liberals.... Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, with whom modern libertarianism is so often associated, were such committed liberals, dependably opposed to conservatism and, in Hayek’s works, its 'propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge.'.... As a philosophy of universal individual rights, libertarian[ism] contemplates a deep break with centuries-old orders of power and privilege, in which a handful of political and ecclesiastical authorities made the rules and reaped the rewards....

"Because the dominance of today’s corporate powerhouses rests largely on government privilege, and thus violence — not voluntary, mutually beneficial trade — the anti-corporate rhetoric of progressives rings hollow; they emphasize wealth inequality and economic justice, yet they would expand the very power on which corporate abuses now rest. American political history finds self-described progressives among the most reliable guardians of corporate welfare.

"Libertarianism is a principled alternative to conservatism and progressivism, both of which, at base, represent authority against liberty."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/national-party-news/336992-the-case-for-libertarianism-in-american-politics
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Conservatism losing due to sacrifice of principles

The Right Needs Principle, Not Unity | Tim Moen - Huffington Post:

February 19, 2016 - "There was a time when conservatism was synonymous with small accountable government, protection of property rights, frugal government spending, a society organized around Burke's little platoons (family, business, charity, community, the church), fierce advocacy of free market capitalism, minding one's business, and an aversion to taxation. Those days are long past. Now the term conservatism is synonymous with a hawkish foreign policy influenced by Trotskyism, Christian fundamentalism, a fixation on muslims, a surveillance state, closed borders, a command and control economy, and dogmatic opposition to social freedoms.

"Once upon a time you could accuse a conservative of being principled. Newly elected party leader Maggie Thatcher said 'that's what we believe" and smacked down a moderate with Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty in response to his pleas for caution. Now conservatism is nothing more than a constellation of feelings and platitudes shifting with the zeitgeist of a left leaning culture. Conservatism has become an aesthetic in opposition to 'the left' rather than an ethos anchored in philosophical bedrock. Conservatives have traded away their soul and now we are all paying the price....

"What explains Stephen Harper's Keynesian apologetics and auto industry bailouts? What explains Brad Wall recently calling for federal money to employ oil and gas workers? How does Preston Manning explain his advocacy for taxing the primary energy source protecting us from a hostile climate in the name of 'climate action'?

"On what principle would Mr. Harper oppose a subsidy to Bombardier, or Mr. Wall oppose government green energy projects, or Mr. Manning oppose uniting all the parties under one giant feel-good umbrella? How does a conservative that loves socialized healthcare oppose socialized food production and distribution? How is a social conservative who rallies vociferously to get the state involved in marriage (ie to prohibit gay marriage) going to oppose a state agenda on marriage imposed on their church? How does a conservative who supports invasion of privacy vis-a-vis Bill C-51 and C-13 oppose a surveillance state interested in quashing conservative dissidents? What principle will a cannabis prohibitionist use to oppose banning sugary soft drinks?...

"I posit that the fall of conservatism in the West is because key leaders in the movement have sacrificed principle in order to win. In fact the problem is that their definition of winning is entirely misguided. The metric of success shouldn't be whether one wins a popularity contest or not. If you have to be Trotskyist on foreign policy, Marxist on healthcare and supply management, Keynesian in economic and monetary policy in order to get the win, well you haven't won anything worthwhile have you? The metric of success should be a society and government aligned with the enlightenment principles that undergird western civilization....

"We are in trouble not because of particular politicians but because of a culture devoid of an ethical compass, driven by base fears, that views government as a wish-fulfilling committee of virtue rather than a necessary evil to be restricted.

"The only thing that will turn this around is a shift in culture. To win an election you must reflect and reinforce status quo culture, but to create the kind of government conservatives want requires a cultural shift. Government emerges from culture. Do you want a conservative government or a conservative in charge of a socialist government?"

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/tim-moen/the-right-needs-principle_b_9267644.html
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GOP sells out on omnibus spending bill

Articles: RIP Republican Party - Brian C. Joondeph, The American Thinker:

December 19, 2015 - "If there was any question about the relevance of the Republican Party, this week’s budget deal removes all doubt. The Republican Party might as well close up shop and merge with the Democrats. Not as a merger of equals, but more of a capitulation, a surrender, a sellout. There is no need for two parties in Washington DC as only one party is relevant in terms of advancing an agenda. The irony is that the agenda driving party is in the minority and despite losing badly in two midterm elections, the Democrats are still running Congress.

"Another 2000-plus page bill passed by Congress with little transparency or discussion. You mean ObamaCare? No: Paul Ryan’s $1.1 trillion spending bill, his first major legislative 'achievement' as House Speaker.

"The deal suspends the debt limit until 2017, well after the presidential election, effectively taking unsustainable debt off the table as a campaign issue. Obama doubled the national debt? So what? Republicans are helping him. Don’t worry though, the spending cuts will take place in 2025....

"What has this latest budget deal done to thwart the Obama agenda? Very little. The omnibus bill fully funds Obama’s executive amnesty program. Sanctuary cities are funded.... The student and fiancée visa programs are funded, along with green card and other refugee programs.... Illegal aliens coming across the southern border? Ryan’s bill funds their resettlement.... Illegals even have their tax credits funded by Ryan’s bill.... Any funds allocated to complete the southern border fence promised in 2006? No. Somehow Congress ran out of money for that. But not for a tall security fence around Paul Ryan’s own home....

"Planned Parenthood is fully funded.... No funding cuts to ObamaCare either, kicking down the road some of the onerous ObamaCare taxes. Even Obama’s global warming climate change bill receives funding without any restriction.

"Instead of opposition to the Obama/Democrat agenda, Republicans have not only surrendered, but are also advancing this agenda.... Impeachment is off the table. So is Republicans' 'power of the purse' because the leadership has ruled out any government shutdown....

"Republican establishment types wonder why Donald Trump is leading in the polls.... The smart set at Fox News can’t understand why 'we the people' aren’t flocking to Jeb or Marco, and instead supporting racist/fascist Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.

"These two may be the last and only hope of maintaining a two-party system. If the establishment manages to destroy Trump and Cruz, then it’s lights out for the Republican party. The base will stay home and the Founding Fathers will roll over in their graves. As for any future support for the GOP, my answer be a Mrs. Clinton refrain, 'What difference does it make?' The Republican Party will be six feet under and we will have one-party rule in Washington, DC."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/rip_republican_party_.html
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John Robson: Why I’m voting Libertarian

John Robson: Why I’m voting Libertarian | National Post: 

August 27, 2015 - "So how am I going to vote? The short answer is, I will cast a ballot that doesn’t make me feel unclean. The medium answer is, the Libertarian party has solved my personal problem by finally finding a sacrificial candidate in my riding. The long answer is the short one: I won’t cast an unclean vote, and I hope people in other ridings follow the same advice....

"I have long described myself as libertarian on policy and conservative in metaphysics.

"I’m metaphysically conservative because I believe man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward and there is no remedy for the human condition on this side of the grave. So those libertarians who think dramatically reducing government will usher in a new and radiant form of human existence strike me as the mirror image of socialists who think dramatically expanding it will do the same.

"I also have significant differences with many libertarians on national security. Mind you, they couldn’t possibly run defence spending down further than Prime Minister Stephen Harper has. But I’m libertarian on most policy issues because conservatives who consider governments (both provincial and federal) that are as bloated and arrogant as ours to be compatible with anything they hold dear are out of their minds. And if they know, and don’t want to act, they’re in even worse condition."

"Those who espouse a conservatism of prudence too often and too easily sink into timid immobility, even smug complacency, in the face of looming disaster. Now is never a good time, and then never comes. But is it genuine prudence to set an aging population on a collision course with Soviet-style health care? Starve defence in an increasingly disorderly world, while aspiring to a major global role? Praise families in every other press release while watching that institution disintegrate?

"If not, then no mainstream party is prudent and anyone who considers themselves remotely conservative should be demanding that we dramatically shrink the welfare state. Even Liberals like Louis St. Laurent or Wilfrid Laurier would regard modern Canadian governments as a shocking affront to human dignity, as well as a menace to prosperity.

"The problem, Charles Murray argues in his book, In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, isn’t just that governments cannot deliver the free lunches they promised; it’s that free lunches don’t nourish. We are not cattle to be fed, watered and pastured. We must strive. That’s why G.K. Chesterton said self-government must mean ordinary people 'are to be, within reasonable human limits, masters of their own lives.' Can you find any party or candidate whose platform now embodies this understanding?

"It need not be libertarian. Obviously I think it should. But I grant that plenty of people of good will and sound mind are liberals or socialists because they genuinely believe the right sort of government intervention does, or can, help people regain control over their own lives and immediate circumstances. The thing is, to achieve that goal, the party or candidate you support must at the very least not be part of a vast, cynical, intellectually crooked partisan machine."

Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-robson-why-im-voting-libertarian
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The importance of David Boaz's Libertarian Mind

The 'Live And Let Live' Philosophy That Informs The Policies Of Rand Paul - Ralph Benko, Forbes:

March 23, 2015 - "Libertarianism no longer seriously can be considered marginal. It has emerged as an important part of our public discourse.

"Sen. Rand Paul writes, 'They say the libertarian moment has arrived.  If you want to understand and be part of that moment, read David Boaz’s The Libertarian Mind where you’ll be drawn into the "eternal struggle of liberty vs. power," where you’ll learn that libertarianism presumes that you were born free and not a subject of the state'....

"David Boaz, gentleman and scholar and long time friend, has picked a great time to help clarify libertarianism and define it with his revised and retitled book The Libertarian Mind: A manifesto for freedom.

"Once upon a time conservatism, too, was a tiny, marginal, and not very influential school of thought.... Thinkers on the Right lamented the condition of conservatism and the seemingly irresistible tides against it. To many, like F.A. Hayek, it seemed as if the whole world was turning Left. Seeking support for his new conservative magazine, William F. Buckley Jr. conceded that the Left easily dominated the realm of ideas in America and that 'the few spasmodic victories conservatives are winning are aimless, uncoordinated, and inconclusive.'

"There the matter might have rested, with liberals gloating and conservatives lamenting, except for the publication of a remarkable book by a young assistant professor of history at a Michigan 'cow college.' The unknown historian was Russell Kirk; the book was The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (1953); and modern American conservatism has never been the same.

"The days of irrelevance for conservatism and libertarianism are long gone. Libertarianism is gaining both in popularity and stature. The Libertarian Mind belongs in the canon with the writings of Nozick, Hayek, and Epstein....

"As it happens, long ago conservatism and libertarianism came to an intermittently tense but mostly happy modus vivendi, challenging and strengthening both. The rapprochement came about primarily thanks to National Review’s Frank Meyer. Meyer postulated, and brought forth upon this continent, a new doctrine. He called it “Fusionism,” wherein, to oversimplify, conservative ends are to be achieved by libertarian means.

"As contemporary conservative pillar Donald Devine wrote, last November, in The Federalist:

Reagan identified his philosophy with the great Western tradition especially as elaborated by the conservative theorist Frank S. Meyer, who "in his writing fashioned a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought—a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism."

[Reagan stated:] “It was Frank Meyer who reminded us that the robust individualism of the American experience was part of the deeper current of Western learning and culture. He pointed out that a respect for law, an appreciation of tradition, and regard for the social consensus that gives stability to our public and private institutions, these civilized ideas must still motivate us even as we seek a new economic prosperity based on reducing government interference in the marketplace"....

"Boaz’s manifesto for freedom presents as the contemporary gold standard of the libertarian creed ... 'the philosophy of live and let live,' which might serve well as any libertarian’s bumper sticker, and as extolled in The Libertarian Mind: A manifesto for freedom, has much to recommend it."

Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2015/03/23/the-live-and-let-live-philosophy-that-informs-the-policies-of-rand-paul/2/
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Conservatarian Manifesto "first-rate"

"Conservatarians" Welcome Both Cowboys, Community - Peter Berkowitz, Real Clear Politics:

March 8, 2015 - "Limiting government to protect individual freedom is the precious inheritance of the American constitutional tradition. Conserving that legacy is American conservatism’s unifying task.

"It is an appreciation of this task that lies at the core of Charles Cooke’s first-rate contribution, The Conservatarian Manifesto, to the robust debate within conservative circles about the future of conservatism. A writer at National Review and a proud immigrant to the United States from his native Britain, Cooke sets forth with vigor and subtlety a summons to conservatives to unite around the “timeless principles” that inform the American founding. In applying those principles to a host of prominent issues of public policy, he demonstrates refreshing common sense, a confident command of empirical realities, and savvy political judgment.

"What, specifically, does Cooke advise conservatives in America to conserve? His answer embraces the fundamentals of freedom: 'property rights; separation of powers; hard limits on the power of the state; staunch protections of the rights of conscience, assembly, speech, privacy, and self-protection; a preference for local governance over central planning; a free and dynamic market economy that permits rapid change and remarkable innovation; and, above all, a distrust of any government that would step in to answer questions that can be better resolved by civil society'....

"Cooke the fusionist, or 'conservatarian,' embraces the formula of Ronald Reagan, who 'reduced taxes, cut regulations, and relentlessly attacked the popular conceit that the answer to the nation’s problems was invariably more government intervention,' while recognizing that new times require new applications of that formula. For Cooke, as for Reagan, the essence of conservatism is limited government.

"But that does not, Cooke emphasizes, imply indifference to the moral questions. To the contrary, proponents of limited government, he argues, regard the virtues and moral beliefs as of the first importance, and therefore reserve the people’s responsibility for them and seek to assign legislation that touches them most directly to the level of government nearest to the people.

"Whereas progressivism, according to Cooke, 'is built on the core belief that an educated and well-staffed central authority can determine how citizens should live their lives,' Cooke’s conservatarian is a federalist who wishes, in conformity with the Constitution’s design, to decentralize power. Federalism promotes genuine diversity by offering Americans in different regions with varying sensibilities the opportunity to 'thrive on their own terms.'

"The conservative defense of federalism is not, as progressive critics and some misguided conservatives contend, anti-government. Rather, it strives to keep federal and local government focused on their proper tasks. Accordingly, the principled federalist whole-heartedly affirms the federal government’s constitutionally mandated responsibility to protect constitutionally proclaimed rights and uphold federal law everywhere in the United States."

The 'conservative movement' an obsolete model

PJ Lifestyle » No to Corporate Neoconservatism, No to Paleo-Libertarian Anarchism, Yes to Augustinian Realism - Dave Swindle, PJ Media:

August 9, 2013 - "Here’s the problem: on foreign policy today’s 'Conservative movement' is an obsolete model. And more importantly, a misnomer ... the 'Conservative Movement' is more accurately understood as a tool of the Anti-Communist movement. Defeating the Soviet Union is what animated William F. Buckley, Jr. and Ronald Reagan. The building of the Conservative Movement was just a means to that end.

"The philosophy of Fusionism was developed by ex-Communist Frank Meyer in the pages of National Review in the 1950s. The goal: get national defense conservatives, business conservatives, traditionalist conservatives, libertarian conservatives, and religious conservatives to unite around the common threat of Communism.

"Over the course of decades this ideological movement grew until it elected politicians, took over the Republican party, elected Ronald Reagan as president, and then successfully implemented the needed strategies to defeat the Soviet Union, freeing the millions of people enslaved within it. Reagan spoke publicly of his debt to Meyer and how he implemented the strategy. But without the unifying threat of the Soviet Union the coalition came apart in 1992. The Chris Christie vs Rand Paul fight of a generation prior was George H.W. Bush vs Ross Perot. The result of that split in the coalition was 8 years of Bill Clinton and a Conservative Movement adrift without a purpose anymore.

"Nowadays the three legs of the conservative stool squabble over which is the most important – foreign policy, economics, or social issues. There is no longer a consensus on who the enemy is or how to defeat them."

Read more: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/08/09/no-to-corporate-neoconservatism-no-to-paleo-libertarian-anarchism-yes-to-augustinian-realism/
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