Accueil
"One way of attempting to capture the essence of the conservative approach to change is given by the contemporary philosopher Roger Scruton, who remarks that the desire to conserve "is compatible with all manner of change, provided only that change is also continuity." Continuous change, according to Scruton, is good, discontinuous change bad.
Once again, this criterion seems implausible. If something is really bad its continuation is certainly no better than its termination. When, for example, the fundamental injustice of slavery finally penetrated the conscience of the civilized world there was only one thing to be done — abolish it forthwith. Such abolition was radically discontinuous with what had gone before — indeed radically discontinuous with human history from its earliest records — but who will argue that this change was not for the better ? What conservative is prepared to defend the perpetuation of slavery simply to avoid the discomfort of discontinuity ?"
"Libertarians value freedom as a hard core without which morally significant human action is simply not possible, but while libertarianism as such has nothing to say beyond asserting and defending individual liberty, this is not at all the same as thinking that libertarians in living out their lives are concerned with nothing other than liberty. This would be as absurd as to think that someone who insisted on the absolute necessity of water for human survival should be taken to assert that water was the only thing needed for a rich and interesting diet. As if to contradict Nisbet, Murray Rothbard, whose credentials as a libertarian none can doubt, remarked that "Only an imbecile could ever hold that freedom is the highest or indeed the only principle or end of life," and he agreed with Lord Acton's dictum that "freedom is the highest political end, not the highest end of man per se." "
"Libertarianism has one and only one basic principle — that all should be free to do whatever they wish to do provided only that in so doing they do not aggress against others."
"The conservative values order and virtue above all else, while liberty is only one value among others and is in no way preeminent. [...] If one starts from a conservative position, holding to conservative values, one will always be prepared to sacrifice freedom to other more important values. One can be, at best, a libertarian for the sunny day but not for the days of snow and ice."
-Gerard N. Casey, "Can Conservatives Be Libertarians ?", 05/16/2011: https://mises.org/library/can-conservatives-be-libertarians
Once again, this criterion seems implausible. If something is really bad its continuation is certainly no better than its termination. When, for example, the fundamental injustice of slavery finally penetrated the conscience of the civilized world there was only one thing to be done — abolish it forthwith. Such abolition was radically discontinuous with what had gone before — indeed radically discontinuous with human history from its earliest records — but who will argue that this change was not for the better ? What conservative is prepared to defend the perpetuation of slavery simply to avoid the discomfort of discontinuity ?"
"Libertarians value freedom as a hard core without which morally significant human action is simply not possible, but while libertarianism as such has nothing to say beyond asserting and defending individual liberty, this is not at all the same as thinking that libertarians in living out their lives are concerned with nothing other than liberty. This would be as absurd as to think that someone who insisted on the absolute necessity of water for human survival should be taken to assert that water was the only thing needed for a rich and interesting diet. As if to contradict Nisbet, Murray Rothbard, whose credentials as a libertarian none can doubt, remarked that "Only an imbecile could ever hold that freedom is the highest or indeed the only principle or end of life," and he agreed with Lord Acton's dictum that "freedom is the highest political end, not the highest end of man per se." "
"Libertarianism has one and only one basic principle — that all should be free to do whatever they wish to do provided only that in so doing they do not aggress against others."
"The conservative values order and virtue above all else, while liberty is only one value among others and is in no way preeminent. [...] If one starts from a conservative position, holding to conservative values, one will always be prepared to sacrifice freedom to other more important values. One can be, at best, a libertarian for the sunny day but not for the days of snow and ice."
-Gerard N. Casey, "Can Conservatives Be Libertarians ?", 05/16/2011: https://mises.org/library/can-conservatives-be-libertarians
