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To: KC Burke; OWK
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.

Some? - Hardly ever. -- I temper my libertarian principles with the political reality of our constitution. I think they fit well, and I got that belief in part from Hayek's writings.

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.

The OWKs of libertarianism carry the 'one principle' too far, granted. Constitutional rights must prevail over anarchistic principle.

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.

I see the protection of inalienable individual rights as the prime purpose of our constitution, and of our government. If that is viewed as ideolgy, so be it.

90 posted on 10/16/2002 4:17:00 PM PDT by tpaine
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To: tpaine
I see the protection of inalienable individual rights as the prime purpose of our constitution, and of our government. If that is viewed as ideolgy, so be it.

No, that is not "Ideology" as I see it or as R. Kirk saw it. That is a fine collection of principles. And that is why though we disagree often, and are certainly not much alike in temperment, you and I find ourselves on the same side occasionally.

100 posted on 10/16/2002 6:33:56 PM PDT by KC Burke
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