Monday, April 18, 2005

Can a Conservative be a Libertarian?

An interesting discussion on the Conservative Philosopher where he claims that conservatives can't be libertarians.
Now this raises all sorts of questions, but it will suffice to make the point. I would argue that any attempt to give a moral foundation to libertarianism (e.g. utilitarian, Lockean) will inevitably end up either favoring moral conservatism to such an extent that it fails to count as genuinely "libertarian" at all (since it will end up denying that we can, strictly speaking, have a "right" to do many of the things libertarians want to claim we have a right to), or it will succeed in being genuinely libertarian, but in a way that rules out the possibility of moral conservatism. In short, there is no coherent way to be both morally conservative and strictly libertarian.

It seems to me that he reached this conclusion largely by tweaking the definition of libertarian. Read some of the comments on the site.

In that article he links to something he wrote three years ago that echoes my own thoughts on abortion, and crystalizes many on morality. It's not short, but it's worth reading:

Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of Children: Toward a More Conservative Libertarianism. (PDF)

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