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| Buckley -- National Review |
“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same) -- French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849.
Most Americans – including, of course, citizens of
Connecticut – are unfamiliar with libertarianism as a political orientation.
Libertarianism has a long historical pedigree and a
sometimes tangled history. Were the anarchists of the post Romantic period in
Europe libertarians? Some historians would answer yes. Was Robespierre, partly
responsible for the worst excesses of the French Revolution, a libertarian?
Some historians believe he was. May the revolutionary writings of the Marquis
DeSade be characterized as libertarian?
Were DeSade’s moral judgments likewise libertarian? What is the
difference between libertinism and libertarianism?
Historically, libertarianism has two taproots, one on the
left, rooted, though not inexorably,
in what might be called anarchic individualism, and another on the right,
rooted in ordered liberty, a resistance to disorder not at all incompatible
with American conservatism.
William F. Buckley Jr., largely credited with the
regeneration of American conservatism in the post-World War II period, several
times in his writings unabashedly identified himself as a libertarian. One of
his last books, Happy Days Were Here Again,
is subtitled Reflections Of A Libertarian
Journalist.
It must be obvious to objective observers who have been
paying attention to political ruminations in the post-World War II period that
Buckley was never an anarchist, and his religious precepts put him at odds with
DeSade’s attempts to eroticize traditional morality or to make a cultural
virtue of, say, sadism.
So, “things change,” as the French say. And the more they
change, the more they do not remain the same. The broad political
and cultural thrust of both American conservatism and libertarianism is similar:
to preserve the good in politics and culture, while showing the door to what is
harmful.
Both American conservatism and libertarianism recognize that
there are limits to things both good and bad.
Libertarianism is not a doctrine; rather it is a cultural
and political orientation that values liberty and is watchfully suspicious of
any attempt by agents of force to suppress free expression. “I have sworn upon the
altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of
man,” said Thomas Jefferson while in the grip of a libertarian mood.
The most important American libertarian economist in the
modern period is Milton Friedman, whose posture
towards unnecessary governmental force is similar to Jefferson’s. Friedman, an
apostle of liberty, is a conspicuous spokesman of American libertarianism,
which supports the maximization of ordered individual liberty – provided my
liberty does not abort your liberty.
Friedman’s libertarianism is rooted in classical liberal
free market property notions. His chief idea, he says, is that no one is better
able to care for and make decisions
related to property than its owners. The poorest regulators of property
– which necessarily includes the distribution of money and goods – are those
busybodies who have no direct interests in economic, cultural and political outcomes.
Disinterest is not always benign. Sometimes, it can be positively unhinged from
reality.
American libertarianism carries all these golden perceptions
with it in its ideational portmanteau. Libertarianism is not motivated by
greed, even less so by self-interest, despite the disposition of Ayn Rand, the
high priestess of atheistic libertarianism, to raise selfishness to the level
of a secular virtue.
The average libertarian reacts intemperately to the many
uses of autocrats’ “big sticks”, and they are rightly suspicious of tasty
carrots as well. They demand that choice be unfettered by political
machinations , which is less likely in the era of top-down government by
noxious special interest groups, whatever they may be called: “one party”
states, narrow-minded “experts,” and “politicians for life “ who cannot bear to
leave the political stage to their betters.
“Every profession,” George Bernard Shaw used to say, when
overcome by a fleeting libertarian spasm, “is a conspiracy against the laity.” The
unchecked rule of experts often leads in short order to a gulag, where liberty
itself expires. And a rule by doctors – as the now departed head of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, 1984 to 2022) “I
am science” Anthony Fauci reminds us – may be worse.
Such notions as cited above do not arise from selfishness.
They are the result of an application of skeptical, in the best sense of the
word, common sense to an uncommonly disordered society.
Let us not forget that it was Buckley the libertarian who
told us that he would rather be governed by the first 100 people picked at
random from the phone book than the Harvard Law School faculty.
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