Libertarians and Conservatives

Conservatives are suspected of believing that the future will not be better than the past, and of tightly holding on to what they have, ignoring those who have nothing but hope for the future. “Conservative” thus rings gloomy to many ears. “Libertarian,” however, sounds sunnily optimistic. Who is against liberty? or prosperity, which, we are told, comes as a bonus with it? But how to get, and keep, both? The libertarian answer is beguilingly simple: the government is the problem, not the solution. Do away with it. and we will all be free and prosperous. Society has been wrong for the last few thousand years in making laws and demanding obedience to them. Murray Rothbard will put it right. (The temptation to be flippant is hard to resist.)

Our more and more intrusive, restrictive, paralyzing, and costly government makes the sweeping libertarian ideology quite appealing. Thus, what was once regarded as a crank nostrum is becoming a fad. But libertarianism has also attracted some good minds and bears serious examination. So does the well-financed libertarian movement.

EH

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Ernest van den Haag

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Conservatives are suspected of believing that the future will not be better than the past, and of tightly holding on to what they have, ignoring those who have nothing but hope for the future. “Conservative” thus rings gloomy to many ears. “Libertarian,” however, sounds sunnily optimistic. Who is against liberty? or prosperity, which, we are told, comes as a bonus with it? But how to get, and keep, both? The libertarian answer is beguilingly simple: the government is the problem, not the solution. Do away with it. and we will all be free and prosperous. Society has been wrong for the last few thousand years in making laws and demanding obedience to them. Murray Rothbard will put it right. (The temptation to be flippant is hard to resist.)

Our more and more intrusive, restrictive, paralyzing, and costly government makes the sweeping libertarian ideology quite appealing. Thus, what was once regarded as a crank nostrum is becoming a fad. But libertarianism has also attracted some good minds and bears serious examination. So does the well-financed libertarian movement.