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Libertarian conservatism, also referred to as conservative libertarianismGraber, Mark A. (1991). Transforming Free Speech: The Ambiguous Legacy of Civil Libertarianism. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 18. .Narveson, Jan (2001). The Libertarian Idea (revised ed.). Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press. p. 8. .Passavent, Paul (2003). No Escape: Freedom of Speech and the Paradox of Rights. New York: New York University Press. p. 49. . and, more rarely, conservatarianism,Cooke, Charles C.W. (March 23, 2015). "Conservatarianism" . National Review. Retrieved September 23, 2020.Polumbo, Brad (April 4, 2019). "What Is a Conservatarian?" Libertarianism. Retrieved September 23, 2020. is a libertarian political and social philosophy that combines conservatism and libertarianism, representing the libertarian wing of conservatism and vice versa.
Libertarian conservatism advocates the greatest possible economic liberty and the least possible government regulation of social life (described as " small government"), mirroring laissez-faire classical liberalism, but harnesses this to a belief in a more socially conservative philosophy emphasizing authority, morality, and duty. Primarily an American ideology, libertarian conservatism prioritizes liberty, promoting free expression, freedom of choice and free-market capitalism to achieve conservative ends while rejecting liberal social engineering.Piper, J. Richard (1997). Ideologies and Institutions: American Conservative and Liberal Governance Prescriptions Since 1933. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 110–111. .
Although having similarities to liberal conservatism and therefore mainstream American conservatism with both being influenced by classical liberal thought; libertarian conservatives are far more anti-statist and are much more hostile to government intervention in both social and economic matters.
Other scholars, such as conservative philosopher Russell Kirk, have highlighted the contrasts between conservatives and libertarians, stating that "to talk of forming a league or coalition between these two is like advocating a union of ice and fire". Libertarian activist Jerome Tuccille wrote: "Libertarianism is basically Aristotelianism (reason, objectivity, individual self-sufficiency) while conservatism is just fundamentally Platonism (privileged elitism, mysticism, collective order)."
According to Andrew Gilbert, conservative parties such as the British Conservative Party and the American Republican Party hold a significant libertarian conservative wing, although Gilbert argues that "it is questionable to what extent conservatism and libertarianism are compatible".Gilbert, Andrew (2018). British Conservatism and the Legal Regulation of Intimate Relationships. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 40. . "Political parties which are usually considered to be conservative parties (such as the US Republican Party or the British Conservative Party) are also known for having a significant libertarian grouping within their ranks (especially in America), yet it is questionable to what extent conservatism and libertarianism are compatible." According to Mark A. Graber, libertarian conservatives are "philosophically consistent liberal legal individualists".Passavent, Paul (2003). No Escape: Freedom of Speech and the Paradox of Rights. New York: New York University Press. pp. 48–49. .
In 1998, George Wescott Carey edited Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate, a book which contains essays that Carey describes as representing "the tension between liberty and morality" and "the main fault line dividing the two philosophies".Carey, George Wescott, ed. (1998). Freedom & Virtue: The Conservative Libertarian Debate. Intercollegiate Studies Institute. . For Brian Farmer, "Libertarianism is a form of Conservatism often considered separate from the more mainstream conservative ideologies, partially because it is a bit more extreme, and partially because Libertarians often separate themselves from other forms of more mainstream Conservatism".Farmer, Brian (2008). American Conservatism: History, Theory and Practice. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 71. .
In a 1975 interview with Reason, California Governor Ronald Reagan appealed to libertarians when he stated to "believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism".Klausner, Manuel (July 1975). "Inside Ronald Reagan" . Reason. Retrieved May 2, 2020. Ron Paul was one of the first elected officials in the nation to support Reagan's presidential campaign and actively campaigned for Reagan in 1976 and 1980. However, Ron Paul quickly became disillusioned with the Reagan administration's policies after Reagan's election in 1980 and later recalled being the only Republican to vote against Reagan budget proposals in 1981, aghast that "in 1977, Jimmy Carter proposed a budget with a $38 billion deficit, and every Republican in the House voted against it. In 1981, Reagan proposed a budget with a $45 billion deficit—which turned out to be $113 billion—and Republicans were cheering his great victory. They were living in a storybook land". Ron Paul expressed his disgust with the political culture of both major parties in a speech delivered in 1984 upon resigning from the House of Representatives to prepare for a failed run for the Senate and eventually apologized to his libertarian friends for having supported Reagan. By 1987, Ron Paul was ready to sever all ties to the Republican Party as explained in a blistering resignation letter. While affiliated with both Libertarian and Republican parties at different times, Ron Paul stated to have always been a libertarian at heart.
In the 1980s, libertarians such as Ron Paul and Murray RothbardRothbard, Murray (1984). "The Reagan Phenomenon" . Free Life: The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance. Libertarian Alliance. '4 (1): 1–7. Retrieved September 20, 2020 – via the Mises Institute.Riggenbach, Jeff (February 5, 2011). "The Reagan Fraud – and After" . Mises Institute. Retrieved September 20, 2020. criticized President Reagan, Reaganomics and policies of the Reagan administration for, among other reasons, having turned the United States' big trade deficit into debt and the United States became a debtor nation for the first time since World War I under the Reagan administration.Kilborn, Peter T. (September 17, 1985). "U.S. Turns Into Debtor Nation" . The New York Times. Retrieved May 2, 2020.Johnston, Oswald (September 17, 1985). "Big Trade Deficit Turns U.S. Into Debtor Nation : First Time Since 1914" . Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 2, 2020. Rothbard argued that the presidency of Reagan has been "a disaster for libertarianism in the United States"Weltch, Matt (September 9, 2011). "Rothbard on Reagan in Reason" . Reason. Reason Foundation. Retrieved September 20, 2020. and Ron Paul described Reagan himself as "a dramatic failure".
Already a radical classical liberal and anti-interventionist strongly influenced by the Old Right, especially its opposition to the managerial state whilst being more unequivocally anti-war and anti-imperialist,See Raimondo, Enemy; Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (New York: Public Affairs 2007). Rothbard had become the doyen of libertarianism in the United States.Raimondo, Enemy 372–383.Doherty 565–569. After his departure from the New Left, with which he helped build for a few years a relationship with other libertarians,Murray N. Rothbard, "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty," Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 1.1 (Spring 1965): 4–22.Roderick T. Long, "Rothbard's 'Left and Right': Forty Years Later" (Rothbard Memorial Lecture, Austrian Scholars Conference 2006). Rothbard had involved the segment of the libertarian movement loyal to him in an alliance with the growing paleoconservative movement,Raimondo, Enemy 266–295.Doherty 561–565. seen by many observers, libertarian and otherwise, as flirting with racism and social reaction. Suggesting that libertarians needed a new cultural profile that would make them more acceptable to socially and culturally conservative people, Rothbard criticized the tendency of proponents of libertarianism to appeal to "'free spirits,' to people who don't want to push other people around, and who don't want to be pushed around themselves" in contrast to "the bulk of Americans", who "might well be tight-assed conformists, who want to stamp out drugs in their vicinity, kick out people with strange dress habits, etc." whilst emphasizing that this was relevant as a matter of strategy. Rothbard argued that the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America might result in the loss of "the tight-assed majority".Murray Rothbard, letter to David Bergland, June 5, 1986, qtd. Raimondo 263–264.
In the 1990s, Rothbard, Lew Rockwell and others described their libertarian conservative views as paleolibertarianism.. In an early statement of this position, Rockwell and Jeffrey Tucker argued for a specifically Christian libertarianism. Later, Rockwell would no longer consider himself a "paleolibertarian" and was "happy with the term libertarian".Kenny Johnsson, Do You Consider Yourself a Libertarian? , interview with Lew Rockwell, May 25, 2007. Those libertarians continued their opposition to "all forms of government intervention—economic, cultural, social, international" whilst upholding cultural conservatism in social thought and behavior. Paleolibertarians opposed a licentious libertarianism which advocated "freedom from bourgeois morality, and social authority". Rockwell later stated to have dropped that self-description because people confused it with paleoconservatism which libertarians such as Rockwell rejected. While distancing himself from the paleolibertarian alliance strategy, Rockwell affirmed paleoconservatives for their "work on the immigration issue", maintaining that "porous borders in Texas and California" could be seen as "reducing liberty, not increasing it, through a form of publicly subsidized right to trespass".
In 2001, Edward Feser emphasized that libertarianism does not require individuals to reject traditional conservative values. Libertarianism supports the ideas of liberty, privacy and ending the war on marijuana at the legal level without changing personal values. Defending the Fusionism of traditionalist conservatism with libertarianism and rejecting the view that libertarianism necessarily requires support for a liberal culture, Feser implied that a central issue for those who share his viewpoint is "the preservation of traditional morality—particularly traditional sexual morality, with its idealization of marriage and its insistence that sexual activity be confined within the bounds of that institution, but also a general emphasis on dignity and temperance over self-indulgence and dissolute living".
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a libertarian conservative, whose belief in rights of property owners to establish private covenant communities, from which homosexuals and political dissidents may be "physically removed",Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (2011). DemocracyThe God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order. Transaction Publishers. pp. 216–218 . . has been strongly criticized. Hoppe also garnered controversy due to his support for restrictive limits on immigration which critics argue is at odds with libertarianism.Guenzl, Simon (June 23, 2016). "Public Property and the Libertarian Immigration Debate ". Libertarian Papers. 8 (1): 153–177. "I conclude that supporting a legitimate role for the state as an immigration gatekeeper is inconsistent with Rothbardian and Hoppean libertarian anarchism, as well as with the associated strategy of advocating always and in every instance reductions in the state's role in society." In , first published in 2001, Hoppe argued that "libertarians must be conservatives".Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 2001) 189. Hoppe acknowledged "the importance, under clearly stated circumstances, of discriminating against communists, democrats, and habitual advocates of alternative, non-family centered lifestyles, including homosexuals".Hans-Hermann Hoppe, " My Battle With The Thought Police ," Mises Daily (Mises Institute, April 12, 2005). The quoted material in the text is intended as an elaboration of an earlier discussion in Democracy; Hoppe notes that "a few sentences" of Democracy: The God that Failed address this point and writes: "In its proper context these statements are hardly more offensive than saying that the Catholic Church should excommunicate those violating its fundamental precepts or that a nudist colony should expel those insisting on wearing bathing suits." In Democracy, he suggests that, in a stateless society, it would make sense for people forming communities "for the purpose of protecting family and kin" to eschew "tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal." He says that "the advocates of alternative, non-family-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism—will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order." Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 2001) 218.Stephan Kinsella, " Hoppe on Covenant Communities and Advocates of Alternative Lifestyles ," LewRockwell.com (n.p, May 26, 2010). In contrast to Walter Block,Walter Block, "A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration," Journal of Libertarian Studies 13.2 (Sum. 1998): 167–186. Hoppe argued that libertarianism need not be seen as requiring open bordersHans-Hermann Hoppe, "Natural Order, the State, and the Immigration Problem," Journal of Libertarian Studies 16.1 (Winter 2002): 75–97. and attributed "open border enthusiasm" to "egalitarianism".Hoppe, "Immigration" 93n23. Proponents of open borders, he maintains, "were initially drawn to libertarianism as juveniles because of its "antiauthoritarianism" (trust no authority) and seeming "tolerance," in particular toward 'alternative'—nonbourgeois—lifestyles. As adults, they have been arrested in this phase of mental development They express special 'sensitivity' in every manner of discrimination and are not inhibited in using the power of the central state to impose non-discrimination or 'civil rights' statutes on society. Consequently, by prohibiting other property owners from discrimination as they see fit, they are allowed to live at others' expense. They can indulge in their 'alternative' lifestyle without having to pay the 'normal' price for such conduct, i.e., discrimination and exclusion. To legitimize this course of action, they insist that one lifestyle is as good and acceptable as another. This leads first to multiculturalism, then to cultural relativism, and finally to 'open borders.'" While defending "market anarchy" in preference to both, Hoppe has argued for the superiority of monarchy to democracy, maintaining that monarchs are likely to be better stewards of the territory they claim to own than democratic politicians, whose time horizons may be shorter.Hoppe, Democracy.
Filmmaker and producer Ivan Reitman, described his political views as "conservative-slash-libertarian".
Notable people
Richard Epstein, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Albert Jay Nock, Richard Posner, Peter Schiff, Thomas Sowell, David Stockman, Dennis Miller, Peter Thiel, Jack Kemp, and Walter E. Williams have been described as libertarian conservatives.Rockwell, Lew; Tucker, Jeffrey (1991). "Cultural Thought of Ludwig von Mises" . Journal of Libertarian Studies. Mises Institute. 10' (1): 23–52. Former Congressman Ron Paul and his son Senator Rand Paul have been described as combining conservative and libertarian small government ideas and showing how the Constitution of the United States defends the individual and most libertarian views. Barry Goldwater who furthered conservatism in America was a libertarian conservative. Javier Milei, the current President of Argentina, has also been referred to as a libertarian conservative.
See also
Bibliography
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