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To: BlazingArizona

You make it sound almost as if Kirk were himself a libertarian. Not so. Most libertarians seem to think that individuals are completely independent units, whose selfish and uncoerced actions will somehow work out magically to everyone's benefit in the end. Kirk valued custom and tradition for their stabilizing effect and thought societies were organic entities. He was fond of everything traditional, old, and customary. His idea that governments are instituted by God doesn't fit too well with your theory. That idea actually traces back to the New Testament, as does most conservative thinking, like the idea that man should have freedom and dignity. That's why free societies and limited government evolved only in the Christian West, not under Islam or in the Far East.


84 posted on 11/09/2006 5:57:17 PM PST by hellbender
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To: hellbender
You make it sound almost as if Kirk were himself a libertarian.

No, he obviously was not libertarian, as shown in "Chirping Sectaries" (which someone posts whenever the GOP loses an election). I'm saying that he was insufficiently cognizant of Burke's insight that tradition evolves in human societies through contact with the real world.

87 posted on 11/09/2006 7:26:34 PM PST by BlazingArizona
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