Conservative as “Defender of Liberty”

         

“It requires only a little experience in politics or publishing for one to learn that the enemies of freedom today are the radicals and the militant liberals. Not only do they propose through their reforms to reconstruct and regiment us, they also propose to keep us from hearing the other side. Anyone who has contended with Marxists and their first cousins, the totalitarian liberals, knows that they have no intention of giving the conservative alternative a chance to compete with their doctrines for popular acceptance. If by some accident they are compelled to physically listen, it is with indifference or a contempt because they really consider the matter a closed question–that is, no longer on the agenda of discussable things.”

*Our predicament today, pegged 51 years ago.

 

In 1960, the great Southern political philosopher Richard Weaver penned an essay titled “Conservatism and Libertarianism: The Common Ground.”

Most people considered Weaver to be a “conservative,” and he accepted the term, but he also thought American conservatives and libertarians had much in common and should work together for a common goal: liberty.

The current internal warfare in both conservative and libertarian camps makes this essay relevant.

Weaver would not have found much in common with modern neoconservatives nor would he agree with left libertarians. The “conservatives” and “libertarians” in Weaver’s essay are the so-called “paleoconservatives” and the Right Libertarians like Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell and others.

And indeed, both of these groups do have much in common, as Weaver illustrated in this beautiful essay.

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