[Thorondir]

Freedom permits folks to make their own choices. Fundamentally the only valid limits regard the rights of others.

The Founders knew that freedom could not exist in a decadent society. They were as concerned about an internal moral collapse as they were about a foreign invader. Samuel Adams wrote: "A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." Samuel Adams was not alone in such a belief. James Madison said: "To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." Richard Henry Lee wrote: "A popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people." One only has to turn on television or read the popular press to realize that the Founders’ worst fears are coming to pass (or just look at recent SCOTUS decisions and the twisted arguments of those who support them). The virtue quotient in our culture and in our political system is approaching zero.

--http://www.bushcountry.org/news/columnists/jdaloia/c_111802_jdaloia_freedom-decadent-society.htm

[B-Chan]

Liberalism will destroy itself in practice as well as theory. Tyrants must be prudent, but liberalism cannot be prudent forever. It makes human desire [i.e. "freedom -- B-chan] the measure and so has no place for unpleasant facts. The consequences are everywhere; liberalism depends on competent elites, for example, but is reluctant to recognize human differences and so institutes affirmative action programs that make it impossible to deal with issues of relative competence. It cannot justify nonconsensual authority -- parental authority or even ordinary moral standards for example -- and so feels bound to undermine it as oppressive whatever the consequences. The resulting disorders permeate social life, and as the generations succeed each other make orderly government progressively harder to maintain.

Further, a philosophy based on independent individuals pursuing their own interests cannot deal with issues that go beyond one's life as a self-interested individual -- reproduction and child-rearing, loyalty and sacrifice, life and death. Such issues are fundamental to social survival, but liberalism can only treat them as matters of individual preference. The consequences are suicidally low birthrates, children growing up without parental care, and an army that cannot take casualties. If such things endure, and it is hard to see what within liberalism can stop them, they will mean the end of liberal society.

-- James Kalb, "The Tyranny of Liberalism", Modern Age, Summer, 2000

Most "conservatives" -- on FR and elsewhere -- are nothing of the kind. They may be classical Liberals, free-market libertarians, or out-and-out Max Stirner anarchists, but they are not Conservatives, because they hold Liberty and Reason rather than Duty and Faith to be the highest goods.

[spunkets]

" The Founders knew that freedom could not exist in a decadent society. They were as concerned about an internal moral collapse as they were about a foreign invader."

That's true. That's why the rats gained and were able to run things since FDR. Elections have been a places to get "your needs" satisfied for some time now. De Toqueville fingered that as the turning point.