Was Benjamin Franklin mistaken when he said that “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom”? Or Benjamin Rush, who likewise insisted that “without virtue there can be no liberty”? Or Gouverneur Morris, when he asserted “that morals are the only possible support of free governments”? Or John Adams, who contended that the American constitution “was made only for a moral and religious People” and was incapable of serving any other?
Or Edmund Burke, who stated that "liberty does not exist in the absence of morality," and also that "among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist".
Can both parties not agree on created equal? Inalienable right? Life liberty and .. (Well that last one is hard to nail down)
But as for created equal if only the libertarians could see that mom and dad matters, always... To to the child. Not Adam and Steve, not the throuple of genitally confused people who are themselves creatures of the state... But Mom and Dad, the natural dyad that forms the nucleus of the natural family that is the cell of society. Frankensteinian New World must be rejected by the libertarians and perhaps the only way they will see that is to consider the treasure of the Church's teaching (Dignitas Personae)... Very relevant today.
I'm still going through this excellent essay, and the first one. But for now I'd share a couple salient points:
(1) Most libertarians would consider J.S. Mill as very much not a libertarian, and actually not even a liberal. The great historian Ralph Raico pegged Mill as a weird deviation from classical liberalism that by the vagaries of politics and messaging, became associated with being a standard bearer of liberalism. But Raico saw Mill as very much a break from the purer tradition of Charles Comte, Gustav de Molinari and Frederic Bastiat.
(2) The most prolific libertarians descend from Murray Rothbard, often considered its godfather. There is a well-worn history, but the short version is that the best libertarians get it now. They are anti-libertine. Murray as he aged, and his many ideological descendants, came to understand and appreciate that a free society must be a moral one and will almost certainly be Christian.
Murray in particular wrote the masterpiece volumes "History of Economic Thought." Despite the dry title, Volume I in particular shows a tremendous appreciation of Catholic thought, the Scholastics and the late Spanish Scholastics as being the bearers of the West's best thoughts and developers of the earliest economic science. He became quite pro-Catholic according to his close friends.
And his late work, the Ethics of Liberty, substitutes Mises' Kantian rationalism for an Aristotelian natural law approach as a justification for his libertarian framework. He was well aware he was borrowing and building from the Catholic medieval tradition.
Many of the prominent libertarians and economist-scholars in the Rothbardian ambit are traditionally minded Catholics. Tom Woods. Lew Rockwell. Guido Hulsmann. I believe Jesus Huerta de Soto too. And there are quite a few others.
Hans Hoppe is considered the greatest living luminary in this scholarly area, and is famously seen as an arch-conservative due to his view that a real libertarian society will look nothing of the sort. It will exclude anti-social people, communists, etc.
Here's a semi-recent essay of his that even explores the Decalogue with an eye to demonstrate that it feasibly served as a great foundation in the West for the flourishing of freedom and responsibility--responsibility of the sort that Hoppe emphasizes as a prerequisite for civilization, based around his concept of time preferences and the willingness of a people to save and invest in the future:
Was Benjamin Franklin mistaken when he said that “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom”? Or Benjamin Rush, who likewise insisted that “without virtue there can be no liberty”? Or Gouverneur Morris, when he asserted “that morals are the only possible support of free governments”? Or John Adams, who contended that the American constitution “was made only for a moral and religious People” and was incapable of serving any other?
Or Edmund Burke, who stated that "liberty does not exist in the absence of morality," and also that "among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist".
Dear Professor Farrow,
When I read you, my faith is strengthened. Keep fighting the good fight.
"Virtuous freedom." I like that. I have pondered this libertarian / conservative tension often and I like your paradigm.
Can both parties not agree on created equal? Inalienable right? Life liberty and .. (Well that last one is hard to nail down)
But as for created equal if only the libertarians could see that mom and dad matters, always... To to the child. Not Adam and Steve, not the throuple of genitally confused people who are themselves creatures of the state... But Mom and Dad, the natural dyad that forms the nucleus of the natural family that is the cell of society. Frankensteinian New World must be rejected by the libertarians and perhaps the only way they will see that is to consider the treasure of the Church's teaching (Dignitas Personae)... Very relevant today.
I'm still going through this excellent essay, and the first one. But for now I'd share a couple salient points:
(1) Most libertarians would consider J.S. Mill as very much not a libertarian, and actually not even a liberal. The great historian Ralph Raico pegged Mill as a weird deviation from classical liberalism that by the vagaries of politics and messaging, became associated with being a standard bearer of liberalism. But Raico saw Mill as very much a break from the purer tradition of Charles Comte, Gustav de Molinari and Frederic Bastiat.
(2) The most prolific libertarians descend from Murray Rothbard, often considered its godfather. There is a well-worn history, but the short version is that the best libertarians get it now. They are anti-libertine. Murray as he aged, and his many ideological descendants, came to understand and appreciate that a free society must be a moral one and will almost certainly be Christian.
Murray in particular wrote the masterpiece volumes "History of Economic Thought." Despite the dry title, Volume I in particular shows a tremendous appreciation of Catholic thought, the Scholastics and the late Spanish Scholastics as being the bearers of the West's best thoughts and developers of the earliest economic science. He became quite pro-Catholic according to his close friends.
And his late work, the Ethics of Liberty, substitutes Mises' Kantian rationalism for an Aristotelian natural law approach as a justification for his libertarian framework. He was well aware he was borrowing and building from the Catholic medieval tradition.
Many of the prominent libertarians and economist-scholars in the Rothbardian ambit are traditionally minded Catholics. Tom Woods. Lew Rockwell. Guido Hulsmann. I believe Jesus Huerta de Soto too. And there are quite a few others.
Hans Hoppe is considered the greatest living luminary in this scholarly area, and is famously seen as an arch-conservative due to his view that a real libertarian society will look nothing of the sort. It will exclude anti-social people, communists, etc.
Here's a semi-recent essay of his that even explores the Decalogue with an eye to demonstrate that it feasibly served as a great foundation in the West for the flourishing of freedom and responsibility--responsibility of the sort that Hoppe emphasizes as a prerequisite for civilization, based around his concept of time preferences and the willingness of a people to save and invest in the future:
https://mises.org/library/libertarian-quest-grand-historical-narrative
Apologies if you have already addressed this and I missed it, but is happiness not a by-product rather than a goal or a pursuit?
Your essays are like a breeze that clears away the mist. Thank you.
This two-part piece has given me so much to ponder. Thank you so much.
brilliant analysis