Friday, March 30, 2012

Are conservatism and libertarianism incompatible?

There are a lot of libertarians out there who think they are conservatives. Hold on, says Peter Schlueter:
The contemporary Tea Party Movement, like its revolutionary ancestor, looks to principles for guidance. Yet an old but active fault line runs just beneath the surface of the movement that has the potential to cause a fatal rupture. Tea Partiers simultaneously promote both a conservatism based upon the principles of the American founding and a libertarianism based on individualism, but the two are ultimately incompatible ...
Read the rest here.

5 comments:

KyCobb said...

To the extent that conservatism is identified with the culture war,it is nothing more than a series of wedge issues designed to get ordinary Americans to vote to dismantle government to the benefit of our Galtian overlords. Conservative government can no more turn the cultural clock back to 1950 than it can stop the tides.

Lee said...

"Turning the clock back" is a cliche. Of course we can't get time to run backward. What the phrase tries to communicate is that, once the left has made a gain, it will never give it up. As James Taranto points out, the cliche has more in common with the Brezhnev Doctrine than with physics.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577313750705052134.html

KyCobb said...

Lee,

What I said was conservative government can't turn back the clock. No matter how many culture warriors you vote into office, they can't make people act like its 1950 again. You might be able to convince people they should get married right out of high school, not get divorced, have a passel of children and stay in the closet if they're gay, but its not going to happen by government fiat. Politicians promising to make it 1950 again are just yanking your chain so that they can vote to cut taxes for the 1%, let them ship your jobs overseas and pollute your air and water.

Lee said...

Sneer at the Fifties all you like, but in those days most kids were raised in houses with moms and dads. A leading indicator of child poverty is whether they are being raised in a single-parent household. I would think even a liberal, concerned with poverty, would be alarmed at the direction this demographic is taking.

Some of us think that maybe what we need from government is not coercion but a good example. I know that's asking a lot of politicians.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

"Some of us think that maybe what we need from government is not coercion but a good example. I know that's asking a lot of politicians."

Do you find it ironic that President Obama's family provides the good example you want, at the same time Martin is supporting the guy who divorced two wives so he could marry his mistresses?