Why the “Issue” of Morality Will Always Matter, and Why it Must Never be Suppressed or Denied

TCH | February 11, 2011 | TCH

[Persevero]

I agree with your sentiments, but for shorthand, I usually describe conservatism as strict adherence to the Constitution.

A little longer form is the three legged stool view, with the legs being social issues, foreign policy, and fiscal conservatism.

[TCH]

You might want to re-examine that remark. My reasoning is on target...

“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.” –Edmund Burke

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” –Alexis de Tocqueville

“The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.” –Theodore Roosevelt

The failings of the libertarian philosophy summarized thus:

Libertarianism has to do with maximum individual freedom, without restraint or limitation. The libertarian principle is thus antithetical to the concept of morality. This is not to say that individual libertarians are not moral people; but they are moral people only insofar as they are acting inconsistently with libertarianism. They are good folks because they are bad libertarians.

Edmund Burke understood quite that liberty – not license, but true liberty – was connected to moral order, to the linking of people together by the bonds of custom, tradition, religion, fellow-feeling and virtue. Absent those qualities, individuals are incapable of governing themselves and the state must rise to provide order and security for the populace.

Burke’s point is that morality – embraced by the individual but also reflected in the public institutions and laws of a given culture – must have a role in the public square, otherwise tyranny will lurk at the door until an opening arises. Libertarianism makes this situation more likely, not less. Rather than being a guard against tyranny, libertarianism makes the collapse of freedom more likely, not less, by replacing liberty with license and eroding the connections between people that are essential for both personal and private morality.

In this, libertarianism shows forth its origins as an ideological movement, grounded not in the preservation of rights and duties traditionally understood, but rather the dogmatic erosion of civic community and social order necessary for the concepts of rights and duties to exist within the interactions of human beings with each other.
The entire idea of libertarianism is self-refuting. Again, this is not to say that individual libertarians are incapable of virtue or devoid of moral conduct. It is to say that insofar as they are virtuous and moral, it is because they are not really libertarians.

http://markinspokane.blogspot.com/2011/01/libertarianism-and-erosion-of-civic.html

End citation.

[little jeremiah]

Placemark.

[little jeremiah]

‘Nother placemark.