Perhaps he's merely brain dead.
Similar to Ayn Rand, who the author also seems to believe is alive and kicking.
Its all nice and well to imagine a world in which people could look after themselves and freedom could be kept going without any outside intervention like a perpetual machine is what libertarians think it would look like if government weren't around. This is placing a great deal of faith in human rationality and the assumption that people will be drawn to freedom as a matter of course.
On their own human beings do not always make the right choices and more often then not for most of mankind's history people have seldom lived in freedom. Conservatives realize that its precisely to have people committed to freedom that they insist people follow rules that make it possible for themselves and for others. Government has often been a force for evil and oppression which is why libertarians like to see as little of it as possible but for conservatives the existence of government to the extent the state does not completely overpower the individual, is seen as instrument of progress and security on behalf of freedom. This willingness of conservatives to accept that government can create and maintain conditions in which freedom can flourish and even be spread afield, is where they part company with libertarians.
Conservatives above all do not look to government as the solution to every problem under the sun as liberals do, but neither do they accept the libertarian view that we could do without government altogether. The truth is in a dangerous world free individuals on their own or even in cooperation as a private association lack the means to defend themselves from freedom's enemies. For conservatives, government is the important agent that provides the wherewithal and the resources to effectively defend freedom on whatever level and wherever it is threatened. As the war on terrorism has revealed that contrary to libertarian wishful thinking, it is exactly the government intervention they abhor that has smashed evil and enabled an oppressed people to taste the fruits of freedom for the very first time and for conservatives it is the power that government has that makes it possible to maintain both the fabric of society and preserve and strengthen freedom. In other words conservatives accept the premise of libertarianism that freedom is a good thing while tempering it with the knowledge (reality always intervenes) that in a dangerous world, government will be needed to ensure it has the means to keep it alive with every passing age.