Should Libertarians Be Conservatives?
by
Laurence
M. Vance
Recently
by Laurence M. Vance: A
Conservative Christian Warmonger
In a recent
article for the online journal Public
Discourse, conservative Jay Richards asks the question:
“Should Libertarians Be Conservatives?: The Tough Cases of
Abortion and Marriage.”
Richards is
Director and Senior Fellow of the Center
on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality at the Discovery Institute,
a Visiting Scholar at the Institute
for Faith, Work, and Economics, and co-author, with James Robison,
of the New York Times bestselling book Indivisible:
Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It’s Too Late
(FaithWords, 2012). Richards and I have many common interests: Christianity,
theology, economics, politics. He sounds like my kind of guy – except
that he’s not.
Richards is
your typical “criticize the welfare state while you support
the warfare state conservative.” I wasn’t sure at first, but
after looking at his new book Indivisible, and especially
his remarks in chapter five (“Bearing the Sword”) on pacifism,
just war, the war on terror, the military, and defense spending,
my suspicions were confirmed.
Richards maintains
in his Public Discourse article that libertarians “tend
to disagree with conservatives on social issues.” He views
the issues of abortion and marriage as “the two greatest sources
of conflict between libertarians and conservatives.” He believes
that “there is a tacit if inarticulate conservative wisdom
that recognizes that the libertarian commitment to free markets
and limited government is best preserved within a broader conservative
context.” He posits that this “conservative wisdom”
should appeal to the “‘everyman libertarian’ who values limited
governments, individual rights, and free markets, but is not otherwise
committed to a deeply libertarian philosophy.” Richards concludes:
“We conservatives need to strengthen our base without alienating
our near allies. One way to do that is to show how the central convictions
of ‘everyman libertarians’ can find a peaceful repose in a conservative
home.”
Baloney.
One does not
have to be a conservative to oppose abortion and defend traditional
marriage. And one should certainly not be a conservative when it
comes to other important issues.
I have argued
that because the non-aggression axiom is central to libertarianism,
and because force is justified only in self-defense, and because
it is wrong to threaten or initiate violence against a person or
his property, and because killing is the ultimate form of aggression
that, to be consistent, libertarians should be opposed to abortion.
If conservatives
are so committed to pro-life principles, then why did they continue
to fund Planned Parenthood during the Bush presidency? Why did John
McCain and others vote to confirm pro-abortion judges like Stephen
Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg, and David Souter to the Supreme Court? Why
did George H. W. Bush even nominate Souter?
I agree with
Richards that “just as government may not redefine our rights
as individuals, it has no authority to redefine marriage.”
Marriage has always been and will forever be the union of a man
and a woman. God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Anything
else is just cohabitation, fornication, civil union, voluntary contract,
or domestic partnership, whether it is called a marriage or not.
Same-sex marriage, which is not even supported by some
homosexuals, is like a square circle, solid jello, or liquid
steel.
But more importantly,
and as I have also argued,
the state should get out of the marriage business. Why do governments
at every level require a license for people to engage in consensual,
peaceful activity? And not only that, in some states there is not
only a hefty fee to get a marriage license, but a required waiting
period or recommended premarital counseling course. Why do two individuals
need the state’s permission to get married? Who knows better if
two individuals are fit to be married than the two individuals?
If they want advice regarding their union, they can consult their
pastor, parents, co-workers, and/or friends. It is none of the state’s
business.
Marriage predated
the state. It needs no protection, regulation, or monitoring by
the state to continue its existence.
The real threat
to the institution of marriage is not homosexuals wanting heterosexuals
to recognize their same-sex marriages, it is Christians standing
in a church and saying “for better for worse, for richer for
poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till
death us do part” and then getting divorced a few years later.
The real assault on marriage is by serial adulterers who preach
family values like the thrice-married Newt Gingrich. As Doug
Bandow has recently said: “When it comes to sex the Republican
Party is divided. A few members actually don’t believe it is the
government’s business. However, the GOP is full of leaders with
multiple marriages engaging in multiple affairs who lecture everyone
else about the importance of sexual morality.”
So, should
libertarians be conservatives? Did not Ronald Reagan famously say:
“The very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism”?
The issues of abortion and same-sex marriage are used by conservatives
to sucker pro-life, pro-family libertarians into believing that
they should abandon libertarianism for conservatism. This would
be a terrible mistake, for there is much more to conservatism than
its emphasis on social issues.
There are four
areas I would like to briefly mention that show the incontrovertible
divide that exists between libertarians and conservatives.
First, the
state. As concisely summed up by Mises Institute chairman Lew
Rockwell:
The problem
with American conservatism is that it hates the left more than
the state, loves the past more than liberty, feels a greater attachment
to nationalism than to the idea of self-determination, believes
brute force is the answer to all social problems, and thinks it
is better to impose truth rather than risk losing one soul to
heresy. It has never understood the idea of freedom as a self-ordering
principle of society. It has never seen the state as the enemy
of what conservatives purport to favor. It has always looked to
presidential power as the saving grace of what is right and true
about America.
Second, the
welfare state. As recently explained by Future of Freedom Foundation
president Jacob
Hornberger:
Conservatives
are having a heyday calling President Obama a socialist. What
they block out of their minds is that by their own measure, they
are socialists too. . . . But while conservatives want to protect
the assets of the rich from IRS confiscation and welfare-state
redistribution, conservatives cannot deny that they themselves
also favor the welfare-state concept of taxing people so that
the state can redistribute the money to others. The only thing
different between conservatives and liberals is the identity of
the people they wish to tax and the identity of people they wish
to receive the loot.
Third, war.
I have said on more than one occasion that the very heart and soul
of conservatism is war. Patriotism, Americanism, and being a real
conservative are now equated with support for war, torture, and
militarism. I firmly stand by this assertion that I first made in
2009,
although it was true long before then.
And fourth,
the drug war. Out of one side of their mouth conservatives talk
about individual liberty, free markets, limited government, less
intrusive government, cutting regulations, personal responsibility,
and the Constitution, but at the same time they say out of the other
side of their mouth that if you buy, sell, or possess a substance
the government doesn’t approve of then we will lock you up in a
cage. And if you buy, sell, or possess too much, then we will throw
away the key.
Should libertarians
be conservatives? To be consistent, must pro-life, pro-family libertarians
be conservatives? Absolutely not.
May
14, 2012
Laurence
M. Vance [send him mail]
writes from central Florida. He is the author of Christianity
and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, The
Revolution that Wasn’t, and Rethinking
the Good War. His latest book is The
Quatercentenary of the King James Bible. Visit his
website.
Copyright
© 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.