From Buckley to Reagan (1960 - 1988)

A brief history of conservatism: Part 13

July 4, 2008
Fred Hutchison, RA analyst

The last installment of this series (Part 12) ended with the nomination of Barry Goldwater for president in 1964. Senator Robert Taft, who was the preeminent conservative figure from 1938 to 1952, paved the way for Goldwater's rise. The young Goldwater was an enthusiastic foot soldier for Taft's conservative coalition.

However, by the time Goldwater ran for president in 1964, he was materially different in political philosophy from the late Robert Taft. In contrast to Taft's paleoconservatism, Goldwater had become an exemplar of "fusionism," which was a blend of traditionalism, libertarianism, and anti-communism.

Fusionism: promising, but problematic

Goldwater's free-wheeling and colorfully eccentric and outspoken ways were ridiculed by the Democrats during the 1964 presidential campaign. His eccentricity was indicative of the intense individualism of a deeply libertarian man.

As Senator Goldwater aged, he became increasingly libertarian and eccentric, and expressed outspoken annoyance with his party's opposition to abortion, the gay agenda, and the individual use of drugs. This kind of declension in moral reasoning often accompanies the emergence of hyper-individualism, as libertarians drift away from their fusionist moorings. Such a drift is common among the unanchored libertarians of our day. However, Goldwater's drift was unusual because it occurred during the heyday of fusionism. It was an early warning sign of troubles to come.

Fusionism was generally a good thing for the conservative movement for several decades. The conservative movement extracted some important ideas from libertarian writers.

There was a tension between the moral codes of the traditionalists and the implicit libertinism of the libertarians. That tension seemed to hold the process of decadence in check for many libertarians. This was particularly true prior to the sexual revolution (1967–1980). Libertarians who faithfully read National Review, the fountainhead of fusionism, were regularly exposed to moral reasoning — which hopefully kept some of them from running amok.

I remember some jovial comments I made about "libertarians running rampant" when my group at a conference could not determine the whereabouts of some of the libertarians we brought to the conference.

The political awakening of Evangelical moral conservatism occurred during the later part of the heyday of fusionism. The upsurge of moral conservatism that led to Ronald Reagan's electoral landslides (1980, 1984) was another influence that slowed the moral decay of libertarians.

Libertarians were enthusiastic supporters of Reagan and remained a loyal and indispensable part of the Republican team. Their enthusiasm for Reagan's crusade against big government trumped their individualist rationalizations for the sexual revolution for a season.

The heyday of fusionism (1960–1988)

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) founded National Review magazine in 1955. Frank Meyer, the editor of Buckley's magazine, invented fusionism. Buckley had a long personal association with Goldwater, in which he encouraged Goldwater's budding fusionism. Brent Bozell, Buckley's brother-in-law, was the ghostwriter of Goldwater's 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative.

The publication of this famous and influential book is a convenient marker of the beginning of the heyday of fusionism. Ronald Reagan was a fusionist. Therefore, 1988, his last year in office, is a good marker for the end of the heyday of fusionism.

These years were also the heyday of Buckley, the pioneer fusionist, in his influence upon American political philosophy. Prior to 1960, Buckley was a colorful upstart and the enfant terrible who dared to challenge the liberal establishment. From 1960–1988, he and his memorable team were the leading lights of American conservative political philosophy. After 1988, Reagan and Buckley were the elder statesmen of conservatism.

With the retirement of the fusionist Reagan in 1989 and the retirement of fusionist Buckley from being the editor of National Review in 1990, the two powerful personalities holding fusionism together were gone. Although Buckley was still personally involved with National Review and was still active in conservative causes, his absence from the tiller at National Review, the flagship of fusionism, created a vacuum that could not be filled.

Buckley was irreplaceable. In hindsight, we can now appreciate that it was Buckley's powerful and winsome presence that made leading American conservative thinkers eager to affiliate with National Review and to thoughtfully discuss their differences with other kinds of conservatives.

Buckley, the pioneer debater against statism

Buckley used libertarian arguments against the creeping socialism and statism advocated by liberals. He reached a mass audience with these arguments on his TV debate show Firing Line. Through his pioneering enterprise, he showed conservatives the way to defeat the arguments of the liberals, an example that conservatives generally followed for several decades.

Throughout the heyday of fusionism, conservatives generally got the best of the argument for free enterprise and personal freedom in those venues where rational argument trumps ideology. This was part of the reason why the appeal of liberalism began to lose its luster after 1970.

Those baby boomer fusionists and I

The great mass of fusionists were baby boomers whose formation as conservatives occurred during their campus years. Their heroes were Buckley, Goldwater, and Phyllis Schlafly. They read National Review and books written by both traditionalists and libertarians.

I was already a traditionist when I went to college. I joined the Miami University Conservative Club, which was headed by a fusionist. His early awakening as a conservative was inspired by the Goldwater campaign.

I found myself in a perpetual debate with the club's intellectual libertarian. Both he and I resisted fusionism, but we were the exceptions. I was a traditionalist and a Christian with no admixture of libertarianism. He was a libertarian and an atheist with no admixture of traditionalism. We were the two poles of the philosophical spectrum of that club, and we stood out from the crowd by defying the fusionist tides of the time.

My praise for fusionism in this essay in no way implies that I am or ever have ever been a fusionist. However, I am appreciative of the remarkable historical achievements of fusionism. It is impossible to understand the conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century apart from fusionism.

Fusionism and the greatest generation

President Nixon's lapse into Keynesian economics and price controls is remembered by young fusionist conservatives as an unexpected and painful setback in the middle of the great advance of fusionist ideas. Nixon was a naval officer in World War II and was a leading anti-communist crusader in the late 40's and early 50's. He was part of a generation of Republicans who seemed to have had a hard time understanding libertarianism and fusionism.

Buckley, the great pioneer of fusionism, was 12 years younger than Nixon. He had none of the insularity of Nixon's generation and none of the self-absorption, moral declension, or cultural decadence of the baby boomers. For all his published protestations about the liberalism of Yale, his alma mater, he lived in a marvelous time to be educated and to do something new in the world.

Buckley was raised amidst the community of the international elite in a day when high culture still meant something to the members of the American patrician class. His father, William Frank Buckley, was a professor of romance languages, a lawyer, and a tycoon in the Texas oil industry.

Buckley's father was part of the generation of T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Although Ernest Hemingway called this the "lost generation," in one important respect it was the last generation that was not lost. This was the last generation of the American elite who were assured of getting a fine classical education untainted by the depredations of John Dewey, an ultramodernist and antitraditionalist. The children of the classically educated parents of Eliot's generation were nourished by the environment of a brilliant culture.

Ronald Reagan was 14 years older than Nixon and yet was an enthusiastic fusionist. In contrast to Nixon, a lifelong main street Republican, Reagan had been a New Deal Democrat in his youth, and became a Hollywood Republican around age forty. His philosophical formation as a fusionist conservative was not complete until around age fifty. Reagan's famous televised speech for Goldwater in 1964 had the excitement, passion, and conviction of a recent convert.

Interestingly, several of the great pioneers of conservatism switched from liberalism to conservatism in their mature years. This hall of fame includes Locke, Montesquieu, Burke, Goethe, and Churchill. Now we can add Reagan's name to the honor roll.

Reagan never listed as far to the libertarian side as did Buckley. The two disagreed about giving the Panama Canal away, with Reagan opposing it and Buckley favoring it. Buckley advocated the legalization of drugs, and Reagan strongly opposed it and launched a war on drugs.

Buckley's father was a friend of libertarian writer Albert Jay Nock and encouraged his son to read Nock's books. Because Buckley was introduced to libertarian ideas as a young man, these ideas were essential to his formation as a conservative. In contrast, Reagan was not introduced to libertarian ideas until his forties.

Buckley and the multiple streams of conservatism

Buckley blended several streams of conservatism, a practice that is highly relevant to this series of essays. My thesis is that the rapprochement and philosophical interaction of the five historical kinds of conservatism can lead to an intellectually vigorous, culturally fecund, morally articulate, and political potent kind of conservatism.

Apparently, William F. Buckley Jr. had some insights along these general lines more than fifty years ago. He encouraged and promoted Frank Meyer's fusionism. He often argued along libertarian lines on his TV show Firing Line. He incorporated mainstream anticommunism into the conservative movement, but rejected the paranoid right wing. He used both libertarians and traditionalists as writers.

Buckley encouraged Brent Bozell, his brother-in-law, to found Triumph magazine (1966), the pioneer magazine of Catholic theological, intellectual, and political conservatism. Triumph was the precursor of Richard John Neuhaus' First Things Magazine and the inspiration for the founding of Christendom College.

This restoration movement of classical orthodox Catholicism and traditional Catholic intellectual, moral, and literary culture was desperately needed after the embarrassing Catholic meltdown after Vatican II. Serious Catholics still wince at the memory of the hideous "clown masses," when frolicking priests, dressed as clowns, celebrated mass while jamming to rock music. No one winced more than Buckley and Bozell.

The passing glory of a classical education

Buckley encouraged Tracy Lee Simmons, who served a term as Associate Editor of National Review, to write Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Latin and Greek. According to legend, the nine muses, goddesses devoted to Apollo, sang, danced, and played musical instruments at the top of Mount Parnassus. Greek poets used to climb the mountain hoping to dance with the muses and be inspired by them.

Simmons made the case that students ought to learn Latin and Greek and read the Western classics in these languages. Classical education develops the mind, helps to impart wisdom and virtue, inculcates a taste for things of quality, stimulates the pursuit of truth and excellence, and transmits the traditional culture of the West.

I was a friend of the last Latin teacher of the Columbus Public Schools after her retirement. She taught me to be a writer in her spare time. Her unfailing good judgment in matters of critiquing, editing, and the formulation of words was a testimony to her classical education.

When she retired from teaching, the school system abolished the Latin program and the classics program. The foolish education establishment replaced these gems with wretched multicultural programs such as making multicultural quilts. The multicultural quilts were symptomatic of the meltdown of public education, just as the clown masses were symptomatic of the meltdown of Catholicism.

The complete man

Buckley was a Renaissance man. As the product of a classical education, he mastered Latin, spoke several European languages fluently, and was the maestro of English vocabulary. One can imagine him bandying words with Samuel Johnson and holding his own with the great craftsman of words. One can visualize the clever and playful Buckley in a contest of wit with Voltaire, who was the grand master of parlor games of wit.

Buckley played Baroque music on the harpsichord and had a technique worthy of a soloist of chamber music. He opened his show, Firing Line, with music from Bach's Brandenburg Concerto. The joy, charm, complexity, and playfulness of the Brandenburg is a perfect expression of Buckley's temperament. Even though the show had a pedantic and polemic quality, it had a big audience because of its joyous and playful mood.

As a man who exhibited the "full human flourishing" we often write about, but seldom see exemplified, Buckley had an extraordinary zest for life. He had a gift for friendship — even friendship with liberal opponents. He was fascinated with the variety, irony, mystery, and surprise of human nature. When he met acquaintances at random, he would beam with pleasure and wonder at encountering a remarkable and unique specimen of humanity. In like manner, he took pleasure in each of the historic streams of conservatism.

In the Renaissance sense, Buckley was the complete man.

Classical Liberalism

In order for us to learn from our voyage through the stormy seas of fusionism, we must be properly introduced to libertarianism and understand its glories and its horrors. Libertarianism originated with the classical liberalism of the late 18th century, a political philosophy that deeply influenced the American founders. Libertarianism's roots in classical liberalism is the greatest of its glories.

The original definition of "liberal" is "that which is fitting for a free man." Hence, the phrase a "liberal education," the "liberal arts," and classical liberalism. Renaissance ideals of the complete man were the context for what is suitable for a free man.

Classical liberalism came into existence through the combination of classical economics and natural law philosophy. This was the late 18th century's version of fusionism! It was the merger of two freedoms: the freedom of the complete man and economic freedom.

The love of freedom during America's founding era influenced the development of classical liberalism. Classical liberal ideas led to the founding of the Liberal Party in Great Britain in the early nineteenth century.

If one would understand libertarianism, one must understand the passion for freedom of the individualist and must know something about classical economics.

Classical economics

The free market economic theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo explain how competitive market forces can lead to a dynamic economy and the production of better goods at a lower cost in abundant quantities that are efficiently distributed to convenient markets. The goods are priced high enough to make a profit, but low enough to be sold in the face of competition from similar or alternative products.

Products that compete mainly in terms of price are standard commodities or part of the thrift market. Products that compete mainly in terms of quality, uniqueness, service, specialty tailoring, craftsmanship, reputation, prestige, new technology, scarcity, or limited availability through ordinary markets are franchises, market niches, and luxury markets.

For example, extremely expensive art glass by prestigious artists is displayed in an anonymous warehouse in Cleveland's "Little Italy." After a gourmet Italian meal, I stumbled through the door of the warehouse by accident — which is the only way one can know about this art collection apart from word of mouth. The buyers of these curious objects are museums, international art brokers, and multimillionaires of many countries who all know about the warehouse through word of mouth.

Every glass piece was unique. The collection had an aesthetic range from gorgeous to incredible to revolting to weird. Some of the glass pieces were the size of a refrigerator. Moving the larger and more fragile pieces required expensive specialty movers.

The name of the artist was the most important determiner of price. The turnover of inventory is very slow and the mark-up can be extremely high. The market value of a glass piece might change radically as it sits in inventory, due to the haggling and speculating of international art collectors. It might increase tenfold from the acquisition price or fall to one tenth the original price. This is the very archetype of a niche market for luxury collector goods.

In contrast, corn in a silo in Iowa is the ultimate commodity for which price, supply, and demand trump all other considerations in the market. Thrift market retail goods are sold in large quantities in big box stores or strip malls. The inventory turnover of these goods is very rapid and the mark-up is a very small percentage. Some grocery items have a 1% mark up.

Down with socialism

A socialist regulated economy is radically incompetent in these activities. When the regulators mandate low prices, the invariable result is a scarcity of goods. Some goods that are urgently desired by the people could only be obtained through bribes or through the black market. Corruption kept the Soviet economy in motion. Without corruption, a fatal stagnation would have settled in.

When soviet regulators decreed abundance of products, the stores filled with surplus goods that no one wanted.

When products are protected from competition, the quality falls drastically. The quality of goods in the stores of the old Soviet Union often fell below what was acceptable in the rummage sales and flea markets of slum neighborhoods in Western cities.

In contrast to the moribund socialist economies, free enterprise tends towards a bustling marketplace, a resilient economy, innovation, human dynamism, and increasing productivity.

The bustling West

Interestingly, the bustling market town seems to be a Western innovation. The frenetic bustle of the market place of a medieval city or trade fair was almost unique in the world of that day. Most markets in large cities of other civilizations did not bustle. They concentrated on luxury trade goods for the aristocracy and subsistence staples for the poor. Rome of the Republic was too poor to have a bustling market. Rome of the rich Empire was a central market for imported luxury goods, trinkets for tourists, and bread for the rabble.

In contrast, Medieval towns had a manic and bustling bourgeois class and large numbers of eager, bustling artisans. Luxury goods for the aristocracy, specialty items for the church, and staple goods for the servile classes were secondary specialties.

One can still hear the sounds of bustling on certain streets of New York and Chicago. It is a fading clue of the merry mayhem of the thronged streets of Medieval towns.

During the Renaissance, the commercial bustling of the cities increased in intensity. The cities of renaissance Italy and the trading towns of northern Germany invented modern capitalism. After the industrial revolution came to bustling England, Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations (1776), in which he explicated his seminal theories of classical economics.

The free market and personal freedom

To the delight of those who love freedom, a free market can, to some degree, set one free from direct government supervision. The realization of a connection between free markets and personal freedom was an epiphany to natural law theorists who loved freedom and preferred republics to monarchies.

Natural law philosophers provided a metaphysical basis for private property and access to free markets as human rights based upon the laws of nature. Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Viscount Bolingbroke, and Baron Montesquieu laid the Natural Law foundations of classical liberalism that inspired the American founders. The classical education and well-stocked personal libraries of the founders gave them access to these writers.

Modern libertarians have wonderfully preserved the love of freedom and a devotion to classical economics. Unfortunately, libertarians have preserved only remnants of natural law philosophy. As a result, contemporary libertarianism has become metaphysically anemic.

Natural rights libertarians

Modern libertarians who come the closest to classical liberalism are the "natural rights" libertarians. They hold that "life, liberty, and property" should be protected as ends in themselves. "Life, liberty, and property" is a phrase coined by John Locke and enshrined in the English Bill of Rights and the Fifth Amendment to the American Constitution, to wit: "No one shall be... deprived of life, liberty, and property without due course of law."

According natural law theory, life, liberty, and property are indeed natural rights based upon the imperatives of human nature. Those "certain unalienable rights" endowed by the Creator are proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence and enumerated by the Bill of Rights — which consists of a set of early amendments to the Constitution.

These rights are unalienable precisely because they are based upon natural law. Human nature never changes, and therefore natural law never changes. As a result, human rights derived from natural law never change. The old rights are unalienable, and judges cannot logically create new rights at will.

The chief ends of natural law

But are these rights ends in themselves? That is what natural rights libertarians believe. But it cannot be so, if the principles of natural law philosophers are true. Beginning with Aristotle, all the natural law philosophers said something like the following: "The chief end of man is the full flourishing of his nature according to the design of that nature." Thus, the discovery of that nature — perhaps through a classical education, and the disciplined and developmental application of man's design — can lead to human flourishing.

As Plato and Aristotle explained, the practice of virtue is imperative to the formation of a complete man. Natural rights provide the opportunity to pursue virtue, but do not ensure that men will seek virtue.

What was the vocation of a Renaissance man?

The complete Christian gentlemen of the Italian Renaissance were recognized as the natural political leaders of those republics. Leonard Bruni, Sir Thomas More, and Thomas Jefferson were excellent exemplars of this model. They exhibited their flourishing lives to an awestruck public through amazingly versatile talents as they steered the affairs of state.

Life, liberty, and property are natural rights, but are also means to higher ends. The natural law theorist asks, "After securing freedom, property, and leisure, what then shall a man do to fulfill his nature and design? Collect expensive art glass, build a business, or rule a republic?"

The Renaissance answer was that the best employment of the complete Christian gentleman was leadership in politics, literature, and education for the cultural and political renovation of society. Cosimo Medici ran an international business, ruled a republic, dabbled in papal politics, established a premier school and a library, collected art and classical documents, and sponsored literary scholars and artists. Two of his apprentice artists were Michelangelo and Botticelli.

Absolute freedom?

What ought a free man to do? Some libertarians are so zealous about their freedom and their privacy that they are offended that such questions should even be asked. They feel that freedom requires a hermitically sealed personal solitude during which the individual is alone with himself and at counsel with himself concerning his mode of living and his freedom of choice. Questions about what he ought to be or to do are reckoned as an intrusion and a trespass into the holy of holies of his sacred personal solitude. Libertarianism is a very poor substitute for religion.

Unfortunately, if questions about what men ought to do with their freedom are not admissible, freedom will be drained of its meaning. Plato said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Existentialists like Sartre and Camus discovered that when they insisted on an absolute existential freedom, life became absurd. Absolute freedom is a one-way ticket to madness.

Milton, the great poet who wrote Paradise Lost, said, "Liberty hath a double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their hands." Tracy Lee Simmons wrote, "Books and life both teach them (i.e., classically educated people) that a freedom without discipline may not only be useless, but a hindrance to grasping something true beyond the veil of illusion." That is to say, undisciplined freedom leads to illusions instead of leading to truth.

Rights and duties

According to natural law theory, all rights are balanced by obligations and duties. Therefore, we are obliged to ask what implicit duties does a free man have to his family, his neighbors, his community, and his country? The marvel of freedom is that it opens the eyes of the conscience to see one's true duties and obligations. Nothing merits the name of virtue apart from meeting these true duties and obligations.

The very idea that individuals have rights but not duties is metaphysically impossible. Such a world cannot logically exist. There cannot exist a being that requires rights based on the imperatives of his nature, but is free from duties that are required by his nature.

Renaissance men often discussed what it means to be human. They agreed that it is inhuman to deny our natural duties and obligations, and a sign of humanity to fulfill them.

Noblesse oblige means that nobles have duties. By virtue of their power, wealth, education, and free time, aristocrats have many obligations to society. But this principle applies in some measure to every man. All men are endowed with a measure of reason, free will, talent, and other human faculties. Therefore, all have duties. When the idle rich or the idle poor reject their duties, their vices multiply and they become wretched men living an inhuman half-life.

Some libertarians argue that their obligations consist solely of those duties they have agreed to by their own choice. They are correct in the contractual and legal sense — but not in the metaphysical sense. Man does not live by contractual obligations alone. Human affiliations and obligations cannot be reduced to the perfunctory formality of mere contracts. One must fulfill his overt contracts while not ignoring his implicit obligations. Every wife of a workaholic businessman understands this.

Individualist libertarians

Robert Zarick, Murray Rothbard, and Ron Paul are sometimes classified as natural rights conservatives. However, Rothbard and Paul could just as easily be classified as individualist libertarians.

Individualist libertarians are an offshoot of natural rights libertarians. Instead of regarding life, liberty, and property as ends in themselves, the individualist libertarian regards the individual person as an end in himself. According to this view, individuals are absolute owners of their lives and property, and should be free to do anything they please, provided they do not infringe upon others who are trying to enjoy their freedom and property.

This is a conception of liberty as absolute freedom from boundaries and limitations, with the sole exception that one may not hurt others or deprive them of their rights and freedom. Although this has become a popular idea, it represents the triumph of wishful thinking over rationality.

Human nature has a design. All designs must function within limits and according to rules. All of human life must be conducted within boundaries. To refuse to recognize limits and boundaries is to deny we have a nature. If we have no nature, we can claim no rights.

Individualist libertarianism is self-refuting

Consider that the presupposition that we have a nature designed by God provides us with the only grounds we have for claiming natural rights. Our rights are based upon the design of our nature. The denial of personal limitations is a denial that we have a nature — which undercuts our claim to rights. Therefore, individualist libertarianism is self-refuting — and a short route to nihilism and chaos.

Libertarians running rampant at the conference is a hint at this chaos. In William Golding's book Lord of the Flies, the boys on the island began with freedom without boundaries. Lawless freedom led to chaos, and chaos led to tyranny and the absolute denial of rights.

The impossible belief in absolute rights and freedom from boundaries represents the magical thinking of New Age cultists, half-mad existentialists, illogical hyper-individualist libertarians, and boys running wild on an island.

Thomas Jefferson was a classical liberal, but occasionally slipped into an individualist libertarian frame of mind. He wrote: "Rightful liberty is an unobstructed action according to our will within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." Now I know why I never cared for Jefferson.

Unfortunately, individualist libertarianism is becoming the default position of American individualists. Wherever you go, you can hear Americans saying, "I can do anything I want provided I do not hurt anyone else. Conservatives, liberals, and moderates casually repeat the same illogical mantra.

The libertarian ubermensch

John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spenser, and Ayn Rand made important contributions to the corpus of individualist libertarian ideas. Of these, Rand ran the farthest afield.

A student of Aristotle, Rand determined that human rights are grounded in man's rational faculties. Therefore, the individualist libertarians are not utterly devoid of metaphysics. However, her principle of the virtue of selfishness is a metaphysical impossibility.

No coherent design for human nature can make the self the chief end of the self. Full human flourishing must include reaching out to something that is transcendent to the self. The renaissance man might start a school or rule a republic. The Christian reaches up to God and out to his neighbor.

Rand's novels feature the romantic worship of the superior man of ability who is an end in himself and despises lesser beings who need others. Her self-enclosed heroes sound like Nietzsche's "ubermensch" (superman) who has the "will to power," and has contempt for lesser beings and those who are compassionate for lesser beings.

Buckley drummed Ayn Rand out of the conservative movement. Complete men do not like hollow men. Ubermensches are empty of humanity.

Libertarian reductionism

My original objection to individualist libertarianism when I first encountered it in college was that it posits a reductionist view of man. When metaphysics gets anemic, the view of human nature contracts. If the mind and will of the individual is the only thing that exists, we are very poor creatures indeed. We must then lead a narrow and barren existence that is the opposite of the humanity and versatility of the Renaissance man.

Hatred of government

Individualist libertarians insist upon a very limited role for government and regard that role as a necessary evil. The government, they believe, should protect property and contract and protect the citizens from crime, foreign invasion, and infringement of their rights. Beyond that, the government can establish a currency and perhaps build roads — but libertarians cannot agree about the roads.

An intelligent political philosophy cannot regard the government as a necessary evil. After all, it is natural law, not pragmatic necessity, that assigns a role to government. If government has a legitimate role to play in society and it plays that role well and does not go beyond the boundaries of its role as defined by natural law, then government should be praised.

Malice towards government is the source of the grudging epithet "necessary evil." This malice is based upon disappointment and fear. One may be disappointed when government overruns its natural boundaries and mishandles those tasks not assigned to it by Providence. One may rightly fear that a growing government authority and jurisdiction might take away our rights and freedoms. Let us therefore be vigilant to prevent this as good citizens. But let us not call government a "necessary evil" as the libertarians do.

Consequentialist libertarians

Consequentialist libertarians were inspired by philosopher-economists Milton Friedman, Ludwig Von Mises, Friderich Hayek, and the British Utilitarians John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. The consequentialists justify human freedom and free enterprise by its good fruits. They concentrate upon the economic prosperity of free markets and the economic stagnation and dislocations caused by socialism.

From the point of view of individual people, consequentialists dwell upon the tyranny and horrors of living under socialist government. In contrast, free markets enable the individual to be happily free of such tyranny.

When I was in college I recall briefly arguing for free markets on the grounds of economic prosperity. A natural rights libertarian asked me, "Are you a pragmatist?" From this reproof, I understood for the first time the difference between consequentialists and natural rights libertarians and. Consequentialists are pragmatists. "Freedom makes us richer." Natural rights libertarians stand on principle. "I would choose freedom even if it makes us poorer."

Historical conclusions

The remarkable achievements of the fusionist movement have put the conservative movement in a much stronger position than it was in 1960. At the Iowa straw poll in August 2007, most of the Republican candidates were in competition to see who was the most conservative. Conservatives are now the majority of Republicans. This could not have happened without the fusionist movement.

However, everything created by man has within it the seeds of its own destruction. The fusion of traditionalists and libertarians has fallen apart. Many libertarians have gone through a declension in moral reasoning. Rights without responsibilities and freedom without boundaries is the ideology of the narcissist. Republican narcissists have embarrassed the party with corruption and lack of restraint in government spending.

Final rejoinder

When libertarians broke free from natural law, they implicitly rejected the transcendent moral order and the universal moral law. Those who reject a universal moral law are de facto atheists, for a denial of universal law and universal truth implies a denial of the God who is the source of universal law and truth.

Libertarianism is a new version of an old heresy called "antinomianism," which means "against law." Or perhaps it means "usurper of the law." Those who are against law become lawless rebels and nihilists. Usurpers of the law become little gods making their own arbitrary laws according to their own whims.

When one rejects the possibility of a transcendent moral authority, one implicitly rejects authority and hierarchy. Everyone who rejects the invisible authority and hierarchy will chafe under visible authorities and hierarchies. Such a one will go through life as a rebel against authority. At best, he will pragmatically pander to authority while secretly despising authority.

The existence of a social order requires authority, hierarchy, and tradition. Those who reject authority invariably wind up rejecting hierarchy, tradition, and the social order. Without hierarchy, the pursuit of excellence vanishes. The pursuit of excellence requires the ascent up a staircase of increasing perfection. The pursuit of truth involves a similar ascent. Without tradition, the Western cultural heritage vanishes. Without a social order, only atomistic individualism remains. Such a world yields to chaos and barbarism. Chaos yields to tyranny.

That is the reason why I cannot be a libertarian or a fusionist.

© Fred Hutchison