Thanks for the link. I was hoping that Hayek might further explain his objection to the term 'libertarian'. -- I see below that you did not think of him as a libertarian, although Untenured did. - Any new thoughts on this issue? - Here's your old exchange:
To: untenured
I doubt if Hayek would have reversed himself and picked up the label of Libertarian. Remember this ol' thread?
But, yes, this essay, in the main does an exquisite job of showing our parents the weaknesses of 50s and 60s conservatism.
13 Posted on 07/03/2001 22:05:55 PDT by KC Burke
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To: KC Burke
That was a great thread. I have it bookmarked myself, and will use that article in a class next year.
I don't think Hayek would be an LP member (the LP being pretty much a non-serious money machine IMHO), but I believe he would feel compelled to call himself a small-l libertarian now, -- given the tendency of conservatives (especially after Reagan and Thatcher) to uncritically accept the idea that free enterprise is systematically flawed.
- Untenured
Even seperating big "L" Libertarian Party adherents from little "l" libertarians and Liberty Caucus people doesn't begin to show the variety of libertains. Would you have thought from the libertarians of the '70s era, that we would now have Bible-based libertarians that we see today? Few envisioned that. So to answer the question of would Hayek be a "libertarian" today is too open to interpretation about what is the core libertain. Heck, we can't even get you and OWK on the same page some of the time>
It is better, and easier I think, to get to the root of what Hayek believed about government systems and their development. And the best understanding for me was reached by reading the fourth (I think its the fourth) chapter of the Constitution of Liberty. Therein, he condemns the Rationalist Totalitarian Democracy forms and commends the evolutionary Old Whig forms. And he explains why.
If he were on one of our threads, while he was certainly one who spoke of the "freedom from coercive force" we would see him opposed to analyzing every thing from a "one simple principle" rationalism. Of that I am sure.
If I take the thinkers of our tradition that have spoken to me in my deepest core, the Hayeks, the Kirks, the Weavers, the Sowells, the Burkes and the Nisbets, why they are none of them people that are to be pigeon holed and I've felt that neither should I allow myself to speak against or for libertarians, neo-cons, paeleos, or any of our variety of broad conservative without looking at the specifics of each and every issue discussed. I hope to continue in that manner. If that means I side with a libertarian one day and a "paleo" the next, well then so be it. Ideolgy is the thing that is inconsistant, not conservatism in general.