Chapter Four, Freedom, Reason, and Tradition; The Constitution of Liberty

Sub-chapters 1 - 5
1. Though freedom is not a state of nature but an artifact of civilization, it did not arise from design. The institutions of freedom, like everything freedom has created, were not established because people foresaw the benefits they would bring. But, once its advantages were recognized, men began to perfect and extend the reign of freedom and, for that purpose, to inquire how a free society worked. This development of a theory of liberty took place mainly in the eighteenth century. It began in two countries, England and France. The first of these knew liberty; the second did not.

As a result, we have had to the present day two different traditions in the theory of liberty: one empirical and unsystematic, the other speculative and rationalistic –the first based on an interpretation of traditions and institutions which had spontaneously grown up and were but imperfectly understood, the second aiming at the construction of a utopia, which has often been tried but never successfully. Nevertheless, it has been the rationalistic, plausible, and apparently logical argument of the French tradition, with its flattering assumptions about the unlimited powers of human reason, that has progressively gained influence, while the less articulate and less explicit tradition of English freedom has been on the decline.

This distinction is obscured by the fact that what we have called the “French tradition” of liberty arose largely from an attempt to interpret British institutions and that the conceptions which other countries formed of British institutions were based mainly on their descriptions by French writers. The two traditions became finally confused when they merged in the liberal movement of the nineteenth century and when even leading British liberals drew as much on the French as on the British tradition. It was, in the end, the victory of the Benthamite Philosophical Radicals over the Whigs in England that concealed the fundamental difference which in more recent years has reappeared as the conflict between liberal democracy and “social” or totalitarian democracy.

This difference was better understood a hundred years ago than it is today. In the year of the European revolutions in which the two traditions merged, the contract between “Anglican” and “Gallican” liberty was still clearly described by an eminent German-American political philosopher. “Gallican Liberty,” wrote Francis Lieber in 1848, “is sought in the government, and according to an Anglican point of view, it is looked for in the wrong place, where it cannot be found. Necessary consequences of the Gallican view are, that the French look for the highest degree of political civilization in organization, that is, in the highest degree of interference by public power. The question whether this interference be despotism or liberty is decided solely by the fact who interferes, and for the benefit of which class the interference takes place, while according to the Anglican view this interference would always be either absolutism or aristocracy, and the present dictatorship of the ouvriers would appear to us an uncompromising aristocracy of the ouvriers.”

Since this was written, the French tradition has everywhere progressively displaced the English. To disentangle the two traditions it is necessary to look at the relatively pure forms in which they appeared in the eighteenth century. What we have called the “British Tradition” was made explicit mainly by a group of Scottish moral philosophers led by David Hume, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, seconded by their English contemporaries Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke and William Paley, and drawing largely on a tradition rooted in the jurisprudent of the common law. Opposed to them was the tradition of the French Enlightenment, deeply imbued with Cartesian rationalism: the Encyclopedists and Rousseau, the Physiocrats and Condorcet, are their best know representatives. Of course, the division does not fully coincide with national boundries. Frenchmen, like Montesquieu and, later, Benjamin Constant and, above all, Alexis de Tocqueville are probably nearer to what we have called the “British” than to the “French” tradition. And in Thomas Hobbes, Britian as provided at least on e of the founders of rationalist tradition, not to speak of a whole generation of enthusiasts for the French Revolution, like Godwin, Priestly, Price, and Paine, who (like Jefferson after his stay in France) belong entirely to it.

2. Though these two groups are now commonly lumped together as ancestors of modern liberalism, there is hardly a greater contrast imaginable than that between their respective conceptions of the evolution and functioning of a social order and the role played in it by liberty. The difference is directly traceable to the predominance of an essentially empiricist view of the world in England and a rationalist approach in France. The main contrast in the practical conclusions to which these approaches led has recently been put, as follows: “One finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion, the other believes it to be realized only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose”, and “one stands for organic, slow, half-conscious growth, the other for doctrinaire deliberativeness; one for trail and error procedure, the other for an enforced solely valid pattern.” It is the second view, as J. L. Talmon has shown in an important book from which this description is taken, that has become the origin of totalitarian democracy.

The sweeping success of the political doctrines that stem from the French tradition is probably due to their great appeal to human pride and ambition. But we must not forget that the political conclusions of the two schools derive from the different conceptions of how society works. In this respect, the British philosophers laid the foundations of a profound and essentially valid theory, while the rationalist school was simply and completely wrong.

Those British philosophers have given us an interpretation of the growth of civilization that is still the indispensable foundation of the argument for liberty. They find the origin of institutions, not in contrivance or design, but in the survival of the successful. Their view is expressed in terms of “how nations stumble upon establishments which are indeed the result of human action but not the execution of human design.” It stresses that what we call political order is much less the product of our ordering intelligence than is commonly imagined. As their immediate successors saw it, what Adam Smith and his contemporaries did was “to resolve almost all that has been ascribed to positive institution into the spontaneous and irresistible development of certain obvious principles—and to show how little contrivance or political wisdom the most complicated and apparently artificial schemes of policy might have been erected.”

This “anti-rationalistic insight into historical happenings that Adam Smith shares with Hume, Adam Ferguson, and others” enabled them for the first time to comprehend how institutions and morals, language and law, have evolved by a process of cumulative growth and that it is only with and within this framework that human reason has grown and can successfully operate. Their argument is directed throughout against the Cartesian conception of an independently and antecedently existing human reason that invented these institutions and against the conception that civil society formed by some wise original legislator or an original “social contract.” The latter idea of intelligent men coming together for deliberation about how to make the world anew is perhaps the most characteristic outcome of thos design theories. It found its perfect expression when the leading theorist of the French Revolution, Abbe Sieyes, exhorted the revolutionary assembly “to act like men just emerging from the state of nature and coming together for the purpose of signing a social contract.”

The ancients understood the conditions of liberty better than that. Cicero quotes Cato as saying that the Roman constitution was superior to that of other states because it “was based upon the genius, not of one man, but of many: it was founded, not in one generation, but in a long period of several centuries and many ages of men. For, said he, there never has lived a man possessed of so great a genius that nothing could escape him, nor could the combined powers of all men living at one time possibly make all the necessary provisions for the future without the aid of actual experience and the test of time.” Neither republican Rome not Athens – the tow free nations of the ancient world—could thus serve as and example for rationalists. For Descartes, the fountainhead of the rationalist tradition, it was indeed Sparta that provided the model; for her greatness “was due not the pre-eminence of each of its laws in particular…but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual, they all tended to the same end.” And it was Sparta which became the ideal of liberty for Rousseau as well as for Robespierre and Saint-Just and for most of the later advocates of “social” or totalitarian democracy.

Like the ancient, the modern British conception of liberty grew against the background of a comprehension, first achieved by the lawyers, of how institutions had developed. “There are many things specifically in laws and governments,” wrote Chief Justice Hale in the seventeenth century in a critique of Hobbes, “that mediately, remotely and consequentially are reasonable to be approved, though the reason of the party does not presently or immediately and distinctly see its reasonableness…Long experience makes more discoveries touching conveniences or inconveniences of laws than is possible for the wisest council of men at first to foresee. And that those amendments and supplements that through the various experiences of wise and knowing men have been applied to any law must needs be better suited to the convenience of laws, than the best invention of the most pregnant wits not aided by such a series and tract of experience…This add to the difficulty of the present fathoming of the reason of laws, which, though it commonly be called the mistress of fools, yet certainly it is the wisest expedient among mankind, and discovers those defects and supplies which no wit of man could either at once foresee or aptly remedy…It is not necessary that the reasons of the institution should be evident unto us. It is sufficient that they are instituted laws that give a certainty to us, and it is reasonable to observe them though the particular reason of the institution appear not.”

3. From these conceptions gradually grew a body of social theory that showed how, in the relations among men, complex and orderly and, in a very definite sense, purposive institutions might grow up which owed little to design, which were not invented but arose from the separate action of many men who did nto know what they were doing. This demonstration that something greater than man’s individual mind may grow from men’s fumbling efforts represented in some ways an even greater challenge to all design theories than even the later theory of biological evolution. For the first time it was shown that an evident order which was not the product of designing human intelligence, but that there was a third possibility—the emergence of order as the result of adaptive evolution.

Since the emphasis we shall have to place on the role that selection plays in this process of social evolution today is likely to create the impression that we are borrowing the idea from biology, it is worth stressing that it was from the theories of social evolution that Darwin and his contemporaries derived the suggestion for their theories. Indeed, one of those Scottish philosophers who first developed these ideas anticipated Darwin even in the biological field, and later application of these conceptions by the various “historical schools” in law and language rendered the idea that similarity of structure might be accounted for by a common origin a common place in the study of social phenomena long before it was applied to biology. It is unfortunate that at a later date the social sciences, instead of building on these beginnings in their own field, re-imported some of these ideas from biology and with them brought in such conceptions as “natural selection,” “struggle for existence,” and “survival of the fittest,’ which are not appropriate in their field; for in social evolution, the decisive factor is not the selection of the physical and inherited properties of the individuals but the selection by imitation of successful institutions and habits. Though this operates also through the success of individuals and groups, what emerges is not an inheritable attribute of individuals, but ideas and skills – in short, the whole cultural inheritance which is passed on by learning and imitation.

4. A detailed comparison of the two traditions would require a separate book; here we can merely single out a few of the crucial points on which they differ.

While the rationalist tradition assumes that man was originally endowed with both the intellectual and moral attributes that enabled him to fashion civilization deliberately, the evolutionists made it clear that civilization was the accumulated hard-earned result of trial and error; that it was the sum of experience, in part handed from generation to generation as explicit knowledge, but to a larger extent embodied in tools and institutions which had proved themselves superior—institutions whose significance we might discover by analysis, but which will also serve men’s ends without men’s understanding them. The Scottish theorists were very much aware of how delicate this artificial structure of civilization was which rested upon man’s more primitive and ferocious instincts being tamed and checked by institutions that he neither had designed not could control. They were very far from holding such naïve views, later unjustly laid at the door of their liberalism, as the “natural goodness of man,” the existence of “a natural harmony of interests,” or the beneficent effects of “natural liberty” (even though they did sometimes use the last phrase). They knew that it required the artifices of institutions and traditions to reconcile the conflicts of interest. Their problem was “that universal mover in human nature, self love, may receive such direction in this case (as in all others) as to promote the public interest by those efforts it shall make towards pursuing its own.” It was not “natural liberty” in any literal sense, but the institutions evolved to secure “life, liberty, and property,” which made these individual efforts beneficial. Not Locke, nor Hume, nor Smith, nor Burke, could have argued, as Bentham did, that “every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty.” Their argument was never a complete laissez faire argument, which, as the very words show, is also part of the French rationalist tradition and in its literal sense was never defended by any of the English classical economists. They knew better than most of their later critics that it was not some sort of magic, but the evolution of “well constructed institutions,” where the “rules and privileges of contending interests and compromised advantages” would be reconciled, that had successfully channeled individual efforts to socially beneficial aims. In fact, their argument was never antistate as such, or anarchistic, which is the logical outcome of the rationalistic laissez faire doctrine; it was an argument that accounted both for the proper functions of the state and for the limits of state action.

The difference is particularly conspicuous in the respective assumptions of the two schools concerning individual human nature. The rationalistic design theories were necessarily based on the assumption of the individual man’s propensity for rational action and his natural intelligence and goodness. The evolutionary theory, on the contrary, showed how certain institutional arrangements would induce man to use his intelligence to the best effect and how institutions could be framed so that bad people could do least harm. The antirationalist tradition is here closer to the Christian tradition of the fallibility and sinfulness of man, while the perfectionism of the rationalist is in irreconcilable conflict with it. Even such a celebrated figment as the “economic man’ was not an original part of the British evolutionary tradition. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that, in the view of those British philosophers, man was by nature lazy and indolent, improvident and wasteful, and that it was only by the force of circumstances that he could be made to behave economically or could learn carefully to adjust his means to his ends. The homo oeconomicus was explicitly introduced, with much else that belongs in the rationalist rather than the evolutionary tradition, only by the younger Mill.

5. The greatest difference between the two views, however, is in their respective ideas about the role of traditions and the value of all the other product of unconscious growth proceeding throughout the ages. It would hardly be unjust to say that the rationalistic approach is here opposed to almost all that is the distinct product of liberty and that gives liberty its value. Those who believe that all useful institutions are deliberate contrivances and who cannot conceive of anything serving a human purpose that has not been consciously designed are almost of necessity enemies of freedom. For them freedom means chaos.

To the empiricist evolutionary tradition, on the other hand, the value of freedom consists mainly in the opportunity that it provides for the growth of the undesigned, and the beneficial functioning of a free society rests largely on the existence of such freely grown institutions. There probably never has existed a genuine belief in freedom, and there certainly has been no successful attempt to operate a free society, without a genuine reverence for grown institutions, for customs and habits and “all those securities of liberty which arise from regulation of long prescription and ancient ways.” Paradoxial as it may appear, it is probably true that a successful free society will always in a large measure be a tradition-bound society.

This esteem for tradition and custom, of grown institutions, and of rules whose origins and rationale we do not know does not, of course, mean – as Thomas Jefferson believed with a characteristic rationalist misconception – that we “ascribe to men of preceding age a wisdom more than human, and… suppose what they did beyond amendment.” Far from assuming that those who created the institutions were wiser than we are, the evolutionary view is based on the insight that the result of the experimentation of many generations may embody more experience than any on man possesses.

These following paragraphs, I think, do a good job of wrapping up the essence of Hayek's thoughts from this thread:

"In fact, their argument was never antistate as such, or anarchistic, which is the logical outcome of the rationalistic laissez faire doctrine; it was an argument that accounted both for the proper functions of the state and for the limits of state action.

The difference is particularly conspicuous in the respective assumptions of the two schools concerning individual human nature. The rationalistic design theories were necessarily based on the assumption of the individual man’s propensity for rational action and his natural intelligence and goodness. The evolutionary theory, on the contrary, showed how certain institutional arrangements would induce man to use his intelligence to the best effect and how institutions could be framed so that bad people could do least harm. The antirationalist tradition is here closer to the Christian tradition of the fallibility and sinfulness of man, while the perfectionism of the rationalist is in irreconcilable conflict with it. Even such a celebrated figment as the “economic man’ was not an original part of the British evolutionary tradition. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that, in the view of those British philosophers, man was by nature lazy and indolent, improvident and wasteful, and that it was only by the force of circumstances that he could be made to behave economically or could learn carefully to adjust his means to his ends. The homo oeconomicus was explicitly introduced, with much else that belongs in the rationalist rather than the evolutionary tradition, only by the younger Mill.

5. The greatest difference between the two views, however, is in their respective ideas about the role of traditions and the value of all the other product of unconscious growth proceeding throughout the ages. It would hardly be unjust to say that the rationalistic approach is here opposed to almost all that is the distinct product of liberty and that gives liberty its value. Those who believe that all useful institutions are deliberate contrivances and who cannot conceive of anything serving a human purpose that has not been consciously designed are almost of necessity enemies of freedom. For them freedom means chaos.

To the empiricist evolutionary tradition, on the other hand, the value of freedom consists mainly in the opportunity that it provides for the growth of the undesigned, and the beneficial functioning of a free society rests largely on the existence of such freely grown institutions. There probably never has existed a genuine belief in freedom, and there certainly has been no successful attempt to operate a free society, without a genuine reverence for grown institutions, for customs and habits and “all those securities of liberty which arise from regulation of long prescription and ancient ways.” Paradoxial as it may appear, it is probably true that a successful free society will always in a large measure be a tradition-bound society."

My interpretation on this, in a little more detail, is this:

Hayek is describing the only two systems of government, what I would call the model of internal control and external control, or the model of self-government vs. statism. The common strawman that is advanced that libertarianism = anarchy is exactly that - a strawman. Libertarians are not anti-government; if anything, they are pro-government in that they realize the legitimate role of the State and therefore acknowledge the state has a definite role to play in advancing freedom (though this libertarian is always for looking for ways to minimize the reliance on the state, maybe in ways the founders didn't think possible back in 1787, but that is another thread). Libertarians are pro-Constitutional government, and just because they don't support the transformational Marxist government we have today does not mean we are anarchists, nor does it make us "anti-government".

Second, it is most definitely true that "a successful free society will always in a large measure be a tradition-bound society". For instance, the focus on the rights of the individual and specifically, property rights, are a fundamental tradition of western thought. These same thoughts are embodied in our Bill of Rights. If you look closely at the first ten amendments, you'll see striking similarity to the Ten Commandments. This is no coincidence - our government was founded on the concept of "natural rights" which originated with God, not from any man, to be guaranteed (not granted) by government.

Being that natural rights are a fundamental axiom of libertarianism, I ask myself, as a Christian libertarian, how atheist libertarians view this. Objectivists are essentially atheists, though, and come to similar conclusions through "the power of reason" (if I understand correctly) instead of natural rights.

But does this reliance on established traditions, closely based on judeo-christianity, necessarily imply conservatism? That, to me, depends on what you're trying to conserve - hence my distinction between conservatives and neoconservatives. That is to say, I don't like to use the words "conservative" and "liberal" very much because the meanings change over time. Thomas Jefferson was a "liberal". If conservatives are trying to conserve the functions of basic constitutional government as it was stated back in 1787, then I am a conservative, though back in those days I would have been called a liberal. If conservatives are trying to cling to the eroded position of freedom, that 70 years ago was part of the platform of the Socialist Party of America (i.e. Social Security, Public Education, and other welfare state jewels which most all of America has come to accept as political reality), then I am no conservative, and libertarians and "conservatives" find themselves at odds. It's all in defining the label.

I think it also needs saying that admitting that our society is founded on judeo-christian thought does not mean that government is to be the tool to force morality on others (apart from this idea of natural law, that is which is morality, from the Ten Commandments) - we may disagree here. It is not that I believe in moral relativism; quite the opposite is true. It is the overall effect that I am looking at.

Take the War on Drugs, for example. Sure, many libertarians sound like "pro baby killers" when they say "my body is my body and I can do what I want" (while I do not think this argument can be correctly used in the abortion issue). While I believe this idea holds true for drugs and hence is a valid point, the main reason I believe drugs should be legal, while I believe them to be morally reprehensible, has to do with my belief in free will.

When God became man and went to the Jews, whose society was deliberately frought with all kinds of laws governing every aspect of their daily lives (to show that works and man's laws cannot possibly serve for Man to get to God on his own), Christ didn't seek to save the Jews by passing more laws or making more aspects of life "illegal". In fact, Christ stated that he came to fulfill the law and, going against the politics of the times, spent time openly in the company of sinners. He stressed personal responsibility through controlling your thoughts, focusing on what is in your heart as opposed to what your external acts suggested to others, and above all, love and devotion to God in your heart, expressing itself through external works, but works not being a part of the equation for salvation.

I believe He felt government and laws, when it came to personal morality, were inadequate at ultimately fulfilling His will. If He believed in force and coercion, he would not have given us free will to begin with. The law simply caused humans to want to push the limits, not to actually do everything they could to live like Christ.

I think we see the futility of regulating personal morality through external coercion in the Drug War. Government has proven to be a poor substitute for families and cultural bonds that, years ago, largely controlled the "drug problem" we have today. This was mainly accomplished by building stronger individuals from the inside, on the model of internal control, as opposed to superficial, external control, which is largely done for show anyhow, no different than the religious leaders of Jesus' day who prayed out in the open to impress other, instead of trying to relate to God.

External control and government have sought to replace the individual's rational thought, and as a result, the individual has grown weaker, less capable of self-control, becoming more dependent on the State, while the problem worsens. And in the meantime, all the abuses associated with the Drug War, such as property raids with no evidence, false warrants, asset forfeiture, cash seizure and banks reporting deposits over XX amount etc. all go unnoticed and are deemed to be "necessary to preserve our culture and to protect our children". I do not leave that job to government. Not only is it incapable of doing this - it actually erodes the culture of personal responsibility.

Yes, freedom means chaos to anarchists and also to those who hope to accomplish "freedom" through government force. Read the "Rage Against the Machine" website, and you'll see that they define "freedom" as sticking up for "workers' rights" by using force to get "living wages", or as tearing down tall buildings that scar mother nature's skyline, home to "the powerful establishment", which hoardes a finite amount of resources and robs "us" of "our" land and "opportunity", assets belonging to "all of us". One expects them to quote Marx directly and speak of the State "withering away" once "we" are all "liberated". Indeed, this "us" vs. "them" collectivism is the antithesis of freedom. They seek only to tear down, and have no plans of constructing anything on which to build stability.

I sincerely hope this came across as somewhat coherent. Thanks again for the post. I'd like to hear your thoughts on what I've written. Perhaps you can give me another point of view to consider.

That was a great post. I appreciate your sincerity and directness. I’m almost afraid to comment lest I seem argumentative or unappreciative of your contriburtion.

But, this is FR—the land of great debate and controversy—LOL.

First of all, your post points out that Principles, not simple formulas are the bedrock of true political integrity. If conservatives in general could agree on that their would still be a lot of common ground. I don’t know if you read the Nisbet article that I linked early in the thread, but he goes a long way in pointing out the common ground while not ignoring the differences.

Different views of Rights are indeed much of the difference. I found a wonderful explanation in both Thomas Sowell and in Burke. It deals somewhat in what Kirk called the Principle of Prescription. Prescription deals with things like property that are held, not from logic, metaphysical rights arguements or even law, but held from time and honor. The point that Sowell makes in A Conflict of Visions is that those holding with with Constrained view of mankind (Hayek's believers in the Whigish English classical liberalism) believe in Rights that they actually hold, or can hold. He contrasts that with the Unconstrained view holders who believe in rationalist logical constructs that can be debated away, argued away, prioritized away and utilitarian measured and put one right against another.

Burke points out that the Glorius Revolution insured Rights as Englishmen that they already held, not rights that they were due and which then could be legislated or argued away.

Like yourself, Hayek doesn't like the term liberal, or conservative. He also finds Libertarian somewhat lacking. He settles for "Old Whig" saying it is the only thing accurate enough.

I see libertarians who throw away the vagueries of Principles and want the cold logic of "one simple single formula" and while there are some in their rank I respect, and even enjoy, that system is not one I can admire. It sets them on the Rationalist Totalitarian line that Hayek condemns so heartedly. He even alludes to that exact simplistic failure directly when he brushes aside "the younger Mill"

I, quite frankly, don't feel that conservative implies that conservatives are largely defined as wanting to "conserve" anything as the central part of their thinking. The root was used to imply that they weren't ready to abandon civilized society and join the Jocobins. That's the total indictment.

Conservatives, in this day and age, have a radical agenda. And the root of radical is "root" as I recall.

That was a great post. I appreciate your sincerity and directness. I’m almost afraid to comment lest I seem argumentative or unappreciative of your contriburtion.

But, this is FR—the land of great debate and controversy—LOL.

Burke points out that the Glorius Revolution insured Rights as Englishmen that they already held, not rights that they were due and which then could be legislated or argued away.

Like yourself, Hayek doesn't like the term liberal, or conservative. He also finds Libertarian somewhat lacking. He settles for "Old Whig" saying it is the only thing accurate enough.

Conservatives, in this day and age, have a radical agenda. And the root of radical is "root" as I recall.

Nothing in your post implies that you are a libertarian limited by an ideological adherence to a simple formula to settle all issues of politcal thought -- an ideologue. Hence my compliment.

In fact, ol' tpaine and I sometimes find ourselves on the same side of issues, dispite general broad disagreement, because, equally, he is not a knee-jerk, ideologue.

You can see this by his ability to cite and revere constitutional principles of settled political compromise at the founding even when they differ from ideological cant of other libertarians.

Included in your ranks are many libertarians I find common cause with, hence my comments at post #1.

That being said, I also have an appreciation for the sincerity and solid honesty of some libertarians that I would place in the ranks of the rank-Ideological. Appreciation can bridge outright disagreement with political methods.

Over the years I have been involved with FR, the ranks of libertarians here are split equally between those casts.

I imagine that this division isn't clear without a solid understanding of my thoughts on Ideology in general which can be found in the first thread I ever posted: The Errors of Ideology which can be found on my profile page. The occasion for that thread was in the 98-99 Primary season and doesn't apply to this issue, but the issues of Ideology do. I have regaled many with that definition numerous times so I won't repost it.

Likewise, where the distinctions seem clear from my side, I'm sure they aren't as clear from within the libertarian ranks. I make my point because for the most part I am speaking to my conservative brethern and those on the libertarian side who get too wrapped up in J. S. Mill type rationality. I have hopes that some on my side of the spectrum will develope a more general appreciation of those who hold "libertarian principles" and reserve their diatribes for the pure ideologues that they can find no common cause with. I also have hopes that libertarians may find issues within their thought that are limiting and see that Hayek and others they respect have a broad set of principles and not a simple formula.

It is certainly an "odd view" as tpaine points out. It is more common for some on the board that object to libertaian ideology to disparage the tradition altogether. Likewise, it is much more the normal path for some libertarians to steadfastly deride all "traditional conservative" thought or posters as compromisers and RINOs willing to accept the views of the left in small increments. While I am not saying those two more common stances aren't sincere, or even thought out, I don't feel that they are correct.

In making this point, I have cited Chapter Four for a couple of years and your request some days back prompted me to make my point by typing the first half in.

Now, tpaine will tell you I could have made the points I just made in two sentences, without all the laborious detail, but that isn't how I seem to best express myself.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.