Ponder The Distinction, Conservatives

Rush Limbaugh calls me his “favorite liberal” - a description that leads to no end of confusion. But the truth is, he’s got a point, despite the fact that I’ve voted for every Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan.

I am a liberal, in the classical sense - a real liberal, one who believes that liberty, the freedom of individuals to make their own choices with little or no interference from the state, is the prime political value.

“Liberals” in contemporary parlance are believers in state power, usually Democrats. But true classical liberals want to limit government severely. We want to end the Social Security system because Americans are perfectly capable of investing for their own retirement. We favor alternatives, like charters and vouchers, to provide competition for a monolithic, failing public school system.

We back free trade, not just because it creates good jobs but because all of us should have the liberty to exchange our labor for the goods and services we want - no matter where they’re produced.

On matters of technology, such as the Internet and cloning, we support the freedom of consumers and scientists to find their own way, without government restrictions. We’re for low taxes since, with rare exceptions such as defense, we can spend our own money better than Washington can. We’re for an end to affirmative action because we think the government shouldn’t discriminate.

“My own prescription for federal encouragement of the sublime in America,” writes Karl Zinsmeister, editor of the American Enterprise magazine, “is a time-tested one: Just get out of the way.” Exactly.

This brand of liberalism is rooted in a simple ideal, which you can find in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: We’re all endowed by God with certain rights that can’t be violated, that have to be taken as first principles, and “among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

In forming a government, we give a central, elected authority certain powers, but they’re clearly defined and restricted. What’s serendipitous about this philosophy is that it produces a thriving economy. But even if it didn’t, it would be the best way to order a society.

Still, pursuing happiness without the government at your side can be a scary thing. In an important book to be published next year, Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason magazine, divides Americans into two camps - dynamists, who embrace an unknowable but exciting future, and advocates of stasis, who, fearful of the abyss, want us to stay where we are or return to some idealized past, usually with the help or protection of the nanny state.

The recent debate over fast-track trade authority was a big victory for the stasis side. It’s evidence of how powerful the fear of freedom can be.

So, while the principles of liberalism - free markets, decentralized authority, democracy, individual rights - have won an immense intellectual victory over socialism and statism around the world, they still frighten many citizens of the country that invented and nurtured them.

There’s even a disturbing anti-liberal strain among some conservatives that’s beginning to rise to the surface. Instead of viewing government as merely a shield against armed threats and an enforcer of straightforward rules of the game, they’d like it to be active and forceful.

These conservatives want to govern - really govern. In a piece in The Wall Street Journal on Sept. 15, the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol and David Brooks lamented that “a new era of conservative governance hasn’t yet begun” - an era they think should be based on “national greatness.” They want to run the show and determine what that greatness is.

Friedrich Hayek, the philosopher and economist who is a patron saint of conservatives but who called himself a liberal, warned of this tendency:

“In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not be too much restricted by rigid rules. … Like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the values he holds on other people.”

Hayek’s description applies not only to Kristol and Brooks but to conservatives such as Bill Bennett, co-author of the lead piece in the November issue of Commentary, “What Good Is Government?” (his answer: very good indeed, when used for our purposes).

Bennett-style conservatives want government to be an instrument to fight what they see as decadence, to shape lives - statecraft as soulcraft, in George Will’s felicitous but ominous phrase.

In a speech at a conference at Georgetown University on the threat of homosexuality, for instance, Kristol criticized those who deny “the public’s right to uphold moral standards.”

Certainly, members of the “public” - alone or in groups - have an undeniable right to push for morality as they see it. But when government devotes itself to enforcing moral regimes, tyranny is around the corner.

In return for the right to pursue happiness, wrote Hayek, “we agree to tolerate much that we dislike.” This is a liberal idea, but it’s also conservative, since it seeks to conserve the basic liberal principles of the Declaration and the Constitution.

It may sound confusing, but at the heart of the current battle for the soul of conservatism is how seriously to take these liberal roots. “This particular debate,” as Kristol says, “is going to have to be had.” Yes, let’s get on with it.

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