The Intellectual Incoherence of Conservatism

Ludwig von Mises Institute ^ | March 4, 2005 | Hans-Hermann Hoppe

[jackbob]

Excellent and quite accurate reply from a conservative perspective. Now I offer back to you your same reply rewritten from a libertarian perspective.

I'd say that conservatives and libertarians begin at opposite ends. Conservatives begin with what could have been and ask how they can get back to that one possible past so as to preserve what's good about it and improve things. Libertarians on the other hand, start with what is, and ask how they can realize their dream of what could be. So of course we will disagree. It's the difference between what could have been for the conservative, and what can be for the libertarian. That is between taking people and the world as they were perceived to be in the past, and taking people as they are while looking at potential for what people can achieve in the future.

[Pelayo]

He is a radical to be sure, in his book he makes a convincing argument that we must be radicals if we hope to in any way roll back the Levithan state.

Forgive me for beinga Hobbesian advocate but I don't believe one CAN roll back the Leviathan. And I thank it's a waste of time trying... if not outright hypocritical on the part of any political demagogue or demagogues to invoke the dangers of the Leviathan.

[x]

Clever, but I don't think it works. Love him or hate him, Bush starts where we are now. He's not talking about repealing every law passed since 1965 or 1933 or 1913. Maybe he ought to, but he doesn't, and he more or less counts as a conservative. By contrast, some libertarians pretty much do want to scrape away everything that's been done in recent decades to get back to a purer ideological model.

On social issues, many conservatives may want to get back to an earlier social condition, but they mostly just try to hold the line on pernicious social changes. Bush even promotes more government support for policies that he believes will strengthen families. By contrast, whether they want a sterner or a looser morality, libertarians tend to take a "root and branch" approach to pruning away government agencies and rules.

I'm not saying that the libertarian approach is wrong, just that it does seem to involve abstract blueprints and starting over again from scratch than the conservative way.

[jackbob]

No doubt about it, the President starts where we are now, but he hardly qualifies as a conservative by any model in current use. Of course you are quite correct, if you use the more accurate dictionary approach, something rejected by most self proclaiming conservatives. In that case, the President is without a doubt a conservative as he seeks to preserve and strengthen the status quo.

On the other hand, a closer examination of libertarians will show that they are not seeking any purer ideological model of the past. What they propose over all is quite new, and cannot be reached by any means of scrapping away everything done in recent decades. Even if we limit Libertarianism to that which is proposed in the more conservative LP platform, the ideas proposed there in, involve a complete new look at the nature of government. Something not achievable by simple roll back.