Rebutting Russell Kirk

Prolific conservative thinker Russell Kirk once wrote a polemical essay denouncing libertarianism and libertarian views, entitled Liberatarians: Chirping Sectaries.

Here, I will aim to debunk the venerable Kirk's argument, line by line.

"Any discussion of the relationships between conservatives (who now, to judge by public-opinion polls, are a majority among American citizens) and libertarians [liberals] (who, as tested by recent elections, remain a tiny though unproscribed minority) naturally commences with an inquiry into what these disparate groups hold in common. These two bodies of opinion share a detestation of collectivism. They set their faces against the totalist state and the heavy hand of bureaucracy. That much is obvious enough."

Nothing to disagree with thus far. Libertarians and Conservatives share in common an opposition to totalitarianism.


"What else do conservatives and libertarians profess in common? The answer to that question is simple: nothing. Nor will they ever. To talk of forming a league or coalition between these two is like advocating a union of ice and fire."

This may be true, depending on what you mean by "conservative" and what you mean by "libertarian". I will demonstrate below that Kirk's understanding of libertarian ideas falls painfully short.

"The ruinous failing of the ideologues who call themselves libertarians is their fanatic attachment to a simple solitary principle-that is, to the notion of personal freedom as the whole end of the civil social order, and indeed of human existence. The libertarians are oldfangled folk, in the sense that they live by certain abstractions of the nineteenth century. They carry to absurdity the doctrines of John Stuart Mill (before Mill's wife converted him to socialism, that is). To understand the mentality of the libertarians, it may be useful to remind ourselves of a little book published more than a hundred and twenty years ago: John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Arguments that were flimsy in 1859 (and were soundly refuted by James Fitzjames Stephen) have become farcical today. So permit me to digress concerning Mill's famous essay. Some books tend to form the character of their age; others to reflect it; and Mill's Liberty is of the latter order."

Charming. Of course, John Stuart Mill was not a libertarian, nor do libertarians consider him a key thinker in their movement. Mill always supported various state-run programs, such as government controlled schooling, that libertarians do not. Kirk demonstrates his severe lack of understanding of the subject matter in the opening paragraphs of his essay.

"That tract is a product of the peacefulness and optimism of Victorian England; written at the summit of what Bagehot calls the Age of Discussion, it is a voice from out the vanished past of nineteenth-century meliorism. The future, it turned out, was not to the school of Mill. As Mill himself was the last of the line of British empiricists, so his Liberty, with its foreboding remarks on the despotism of the masses, was more an epilogue to middle-class liberalism than a rallying-cry. James Mill, John Stuart Mill's austere doctrinaire father (what sour folk many of these zealots for liberty turn themselves into!) subjected his son to a rigorous course of private study. By the time he was eight years old, J. S. Mill knew nearly everything that a doctor of philosophy is supposed to know nowadays; but his intellect was untouched by the higher imagination, and for that Mill groped in vain all his life long. J.S. Mill became all head and no heart, in which character he represents Jeremy Bentham; yet in truth, it was Mill himself, rather than Bentham, who turned into defecated intellect."

As before, Kirk continues to embarrass himself, by demonstrating that he also holds the view that James Mill, who was, if anything, less of a libertarian than his non-libertarian son, was, in fact, a part of the movement he so clumsily aims to criticize.

"Mill exhibited but one failing, so far as emotions go, and that not an uncommon one—being too fond of another man's wife. F. A. Hayek has discussed this association and its consequences for Mill and his followers. Mill eventually married this dismaying blue-stocking, Harriet Taylor, the forerunner of today's feminist militant. He was devoted to her, and she to humanitarian abstractions. It was under her tutelage that he wrote On Liberty. The intellectual ancestors of today's libertarians were no very jolly crew."

“By slaying all his animal spirits,” Ruth Borchard writes of Mill, “he was utterly cut off from his instincts—instinct for life, instinctive understanding of nature, of human nature in general and of his own in particular.” It might be interesting to examine how these deficiencies in Mill characterized and vitiated the whole liberal movement in English and American thought; and how they affect the vestigial form of nineteenth-century liberalism that now styles itself “libertarianism.” But we must pass on, remarking only that this imperfect apprehension of human nature is readily discerned in the pages of Mill's essay On Liberty."

This paragraph does a good job of demonstrating Kirk's nasty, condescending, disrespectful, and generally unpleasant attitude, but does little to advance his views, other than accusing Harriet Taylor (yet another non-libertarian. Really now, Russell) of being a feminist.

"Now the younger Mill, in his essays on Coleridge and Bentham, had remarked truly that the cardinal error of Bentham was his supposition that the affairs of men may be reduced to a few simple formulas, to be applied universally and inflexibly-when actually the great mysterious incorporation of the human race is infinitely subtle and complex, not to be dominated by neat little abstractions. Yet into precisely this same pit Mill falls in his Liberty. In his introductory chapter, he declares his object to be the assertion of “one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used by physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

This seems an attractive solitary simple principle. It sufficiently defines the convictions of twentieth-century libertarians, I believe. But the trouble with it is that solitary simple principles, however tidy, really do not describe human behavior, and certainly cannot govern it."

Kirk's believe here that libertarians are devoted to the solitary creed of utilitarianism, is contradictory with his other view, that they are devoted to the solitary creed of personal liberty, recklessly and regardless of the consequences. Of course, maybe your views don't need to be consistent when you are a vaunted paleoconservative like Mr. Kirk, brilliant enough to come to conclusions based only on your feelings about things. Really, reason is for the peasants.

"James Fitzjames Stephen, a forthright man of affairs and a scholar in the law, perceived with irritation that fallacy which makes Mill's Liberty a frail reed in troubled times; and in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, which Stephen published in 1873, he set upon Mill with a whip of scorpions. John Stuart Mill, in Stephen's eyes, was hopelessly naive:

To me the question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing [Stephen wrote] appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing? It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, in what cases is liberty good and in what is it bad? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer. I do not believe that the state of our knowledge is such as to enable us to enunciate any `very simple principle as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control.' We must proceed in a far more cautious way, and confine ourselves to such remarks as experience suggests about the advantages and disadvantages of compulsion and liberty respectively in particular cases."

The quote that Mr. Kirk uses to buttress his argument here reveals quite plainly that it is in fact he himself that is guilty of the utilitarianism which he accuses libertarians of, arguing that we should not be for or against liberty on principle but only in regard to the level of utility it will create for society, given the circumstances.

"In every principal premise of his argument, Stephen declared, Mill suffered from an inadequate understanding of human nature and history. All the great movements of humankind, Stephen said, have been achieved by force, not by free discussion; and if we leave force out of our calculations, very soon we will be subject to the intolerant wills of men who know no scruples about employing force against us. (So, one may remark, many twentieth-century libertarians would have had us stand defenseless before the Soviet Russians.) It is consummate folly to tolerate every variety of opinion, on every topic, out of devotion to an abstract “liberty”; for opinion soon finds its expression in action, and the fanatics whom we tolerated will not tolerate us when they have power."

Of course, who should be in charge of deciding which opinions are to be tolerated is never questioned. Of course, it would have to be in the hands of the state, thus setting up the very framework of the counter-intolerance that Mr. Kirk seeks to avoid. For once the state has been given this power to regulate opinion, it will only be a matter of time until evil men come to power to use it for evil ends.

Mr. Kirk displays the classic conservative fault: He only ever thinks one step ahead.

"The fierce current of events, in our century, has supplied the proof for Stephen's case. Was the world improved by free discussion of the Nazis' thesis that Jews ought to be treated as less than human? Just this subject was presented to the population of one of the most advanced and most thoroughly schooled nations of the modern world; and then the crew of adventurers who had contrived to win the argument proceeded to act after the fashion with which we now are dreadfully familiar. We have come to understand, to our cost, what Burke meant by a “licentious toleration.” An incessant zeal for repression is not the answer to the complex difficulties of liberty and order, either. What Stephen was saying, however, and what we recognize now, is that liberty cannot be maintained or extended by an abstract appeal to free discussion, sweet reasonableness, and solitary simple principle."

Of course, Mr. Kirk ignores that it was the Nazis, and not some omnipotent philosopher-king, who were in control of the state, and as such could decide which views should be allowed to be heard. Mr Kirk's assumption, that the state should regulate speech so that evil is not heard, is predicated on the very, very, false concept that the state is always wise and just, and therefore will only use the enormous powers that he seeks to invest in it for good.

"Since Mill, the libertarians have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Mill dreaded, and they dread today, obedience to the dictates of custom. In our time, the real danger is that custom and prescription and tradition may be overthrown utterly among usfor has not that occurred already in most of the world?-by neoterism, the lust for novelty; and that men will be no better than the flies of a summer, oblivious to the wisdom of their ancestors, and forming every opinion merely under the pressure of the fad, the foible, the passion of the hour."

Kirk points out a inherent flaw in human nature, and then proposes absolutely no possible solution, indeed does not address the question of a solution at all (many libertarians agree that the problem exists, arguing only that the state cannot solve it). This is a classic tactic of his. Point out a problem that his existed since time immemorial, and then act as if it is somehow the creation of his opponent, paying no attention to what his opponent actually has to say about the problem itself.

Needless to say, it is a flimsy one.

"It may be objected that libertarian notions extend back beyond the time of Mill. Indeed they do; and they had been refuted before Stephen wrote, as John Adams refuted them in his exchange of letters with Thomas Jefferson and with John Taylor of Caroline. The first Whig was the devil, Samuel Johnson informs us; it might be truer to say that the devil was the original libertarian. “Lo, I am proud!” The perennial libertarian, like Satan, can bear no authority temporal or spiritual. He desires to be different, in morals as in politics. In a highly tolerant society like that ofAmerica today, such defiance of authority on principle may lead to perversity on principle, for lack of anything more startling to do; there is no great gulf fixed between libertarianism and libertinism."

You know that you are truly desperate when you are reduced to equating your opponent with Satan.

"Thus the typical libertarian of our day delights in eccentricityincluding, often, sexual eccentricity (a point observed by that mordant psychologist Dr. Ernest van den Haag). Did not John Stuart Mill himself commend eccentricity as a defense against deadening democratic conformity? He rejoices, our representative libertarian, in strutting political eccentricity, as in strutting moral eccentricity. But, as Stephen commented on Mill, “Eccentricity is far more often a mark of weakness than a mark of strength. Weakness wishes, as a rule, to attract attention by trifling distinctions, and strength wishes to avoid it.”

Of course, he points to no example of any libertarian thinker who was also a sexual eccentric. He simply asks us to take him at his word.

Once again, Dr. Kirk, Mill was not a libertarian, either. Do keep up.

Amen to that. Passing from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, by 1929 we encounter a writer very unlike Mill exposing the absurdities, of affected eccentricity and of doctrinaire libertarianism: G. K. Chesterton. Gabriel Gale, the intuitive hero of Chesterton's collection of stories entitled The Poet and the Lunatics, speaks up for centricity: “Genius oughtn't to be eccentric! It ought to be the core of the cosmos, not on the revolving edges. People seem to think it a compliment to accuse one of being an outsider, and to talk about the eccentricities of genius. What would they think if I said I only wish to God I had the centricities of genius?”

A stirring quote, and probably an accurate one. An irrelevant one as well, since Kirk hasn't supported his original assertion about the inherently eccentric nature of libertarians.

No one ever has accused libertarians of being afflicted with the centricities of genius: for the dream of an absolute private freedom is one of those visions which issue from between the gates of ivory; and the dreadful speed with which society moves today flings the libertarians outward through centrifugal force, even to the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. The final emancipation from religion, convention, and custom; and order is annihilation-”whirled/ Beyond the, circuit of the shuddering bear/ In fractured atoms.”

As was usually the case with Kirk, none of this makes a lick of sense.

"In The Poet and the Lunatics, Chesterton offers us a parable of such licentious freedom: a story called “the Yellow Bird.” To an English country house comes Professor Ivanhov, a Russian scholar who has published The Psychology of Liberty. He is a zealot for emancipation, expansion, the elimination of limits. He begins by liberating a canary from its cage-to be torn to pieces in the forest. He proceeds to liberate the goldfish by smashing their bowl. He ends by blowing up himself and the beautiful old house where he has been a guest."

Theres that utilitarianism again. Oh wait, I seemed to be under the impression that it was the libertarians who were too utilitarian? Now they aren't utilitarian enough? Pick a side.

Of course the parable has absolutely nothing to do with any real debate. Instead, having consented that he cannot hold his own in the arena of ideas, Kirk is reduced to accusatory parables that do not reflect the truth.

"“What exactly is liberty?” inquires a spectator of this series of events-Gabriel Gale, Chesterton's mouthpiece. “First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself. In some ways the yellow bird was free in the cage. It was free to be alone. It was free to sing. In the forest its feathers would be torn to pieces and its voice choked forever. Then I began to think that being oneself, which is liberty, is itself limitation. We are limited by our brains and bodies; and if we break out, we cease to be ourselves, and, perhaps, to be anything.”

To put it succinctly, no. Liberty is the lack of physical coercion. What Chesterton is referring to is many other things, which are desirable, but which are not liberty.

"The Russian psychologist could not endure the necessary conditions of human existence; he must eliminate all limits; he could not endure the “round prison” of the overarching sky. But his alternative was annihilation for himself and his lodging; and he took that alternative. He ceased to be anything but fractured atoms. That is the ultimate freedom of the devoted libertarian. If, par impossible, American society should accept the leadership of libertarian ideologues."

Dishonestly, Kirk equates the natural limitations of our existence with the unnatural limitations of physical coercion placed on us by other humans.

I can't tell which plays a bigger role in Kirk's paper thus far: Dishonesty or Unfamiliarity with the topic on which he speaks.

".Notwithstanding, there is something to be said for the disintegrated Professor Ivanhov-relatively speaking. With reference to some remarks of mine, there writes to me Mr. Marion Montgomery, the Georgia novelist and critic: “The libertarians give me the willies. I much prefer the Russian anarchists, who at least have a deeply disturbed moral sensibility (that Dostoevsky makes good use of), to the libertarian anarchists. There is a decadent fervor amongst some of the latter which makes them an unwelcome cross for conservatism to bear.”

Just so. The representative libertarian of this decade is humorless, intolerant, self-righteous, badly schooled, and dull. At least the oldfangled Russian anarchist was bold, lively, and knew which sex he belonged to."

What moral sense the libertarians are mission, or examples of these nightmarishly sinister "representative libertarians" are not produced. Instead we must, once again, take Mr. Kirk's slanderous assertions at his word.

"But surely, surely I must be misrepresenting the breed? Don't I know self-proclaimed libertarians who are kindly old gentlemen, God-fearing, patriotic, chaste, well endowed with the goods of fortune? Yes, I do know such. They are the people who through misapprehension put up the cash for the fantastics. Such gentlemen call themselves “libertarians” merely because they believe in personal freedom, and do not understand to what extravagance they lend their names by subsidizing doctrinaire “libertarian” causes and publications. If a person describes himself as “libertarian” because he believes in an enduring moral order, the Constitution of the United States, free enterprise, and old American ways of life why, actually he is a conservative with imperfect understanding of the general terms of politics."

Kirk has already made clear that personal freedom plays no major role in his world view, with his assertion that the state must regulate speech. What Mr. Kirk does not understand is that the greatest tyrants rarely set out to be tyrants but rather are, through their boundless faith in the ability of the state to remake the world (which Kirk evidently shares with them) turned into tyrants. They take the sort of illogical and extremely dangerous leaps that Kirk takes as well. Such as going from the opinion that View X is evil to the opinion that The State must ban View X and punish anyone who expresses it. A libertarian is not what Mr. Kirk describes. Rather, a libertarian is, in many cases, simply a conservative who thinks more than one step ahead.

It is not such well-intentioned but mislabeled men whom I am holding up to obloquy here. Rather, I am exposing the pretensions of the narrow doctrinaires who have imprisoned themselves within a “libertarian” ideology as confining and as unreal as Marxism-if less persuasive than that fell delusion.

Once again, we are provided with no example of such men. Presumably John Stuart Mill would be among them, but as we already went over, he was not even actually a libertarian.

Why are these doctrinaire libertarians, with a few exceptions, such very odd people-the sort who give hearty folk like Marion Montgomery the Willies? Why do genuine conservatives feel an aversion to close association with them? (Incidentally, now and again one reads of two camps of alleged conservatives: “traditionalist conservatives and libertarian conservatives.” This is as if a newspaperman were to classify Christians as “Protestant Christians and Muslim Christians.”) Why is an alliance between conservatives and libertarians inconceivable? Why, indeed, would such articles of confederation undo whatever gains conservatives have made in this United States?

I don't know Russell, why are they so strange? Perhaps you could tell us who some of them are first. That would narrow it down a bit, yes?

"Because genuine libertarians are mad-metaphysically mad. Lunacy repels, and political lunacy especially. I do not mean that they are dangerous; they are repellent merely, like certain unfortunate inmates of “mental homes.” They do not endanger our country and our civilization, because they are few, and seem likely to become fewer. (I refer here, of course, to our homegrown American libertarians, and not to those political sects, among them the Red Brigades of Italy, which have carried libertarian notions to grander and bolder lengths.) There exists no peril that American national policy, foreign or domestic, will be in the least affected by libertarian arguments; the good old causes of Bimetallism, Single Tax, or Prohibition enjoy a better prospect of success than do the programs of libertarianism. But one does not choose as a partner even a harmless political lunatic."

Yes, those mad old libertarians, always rebelling against nature itself. They have such crazy views!

What are their views? Who are they? Kirk goes into none of this, likely because he does not know.

However finally, after his usual long winded and substance-less rhetoric, Kirk does arrive at some actual statements. I will reply in kind:

The great line of division in modern politics—as Eric Voegelin reminds us-is not between totalitarians on the one hand and liberals (or libertarians) on the other; rather, it lies between all those who believe in some sort of transcendent moral order, on one side, and on the other side all those who take this ephemeral existence of ours for the be-all and end-all-to be devoted chiefly to producing and consuming. In this discrimination between the sheep and the goats, the libertarians must be classified with the goats-that is, as utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct. In effect, they are converts to Marx's dialectical materialism; so conservatives draw back from them on the first principle of all.

As we already saw, Kirk cannot decide whether libertarians are simply crass utilitarians, believing only in that which creates "the greatest good for the greatest number" or blindly devoted to principle, advancing liberty even if it means smashing the goldfish's bowl.

As we have also seen, Kirk does not have a definition for what liberty is, what a libertarian is, or, seemingly, what a utilitarian is. Accordingly, he appeals only to some terrible charicature of the libertarian, and unsurprisingly comes to the inane conclusion that to be a libertarian means to reject the concept of a transcendent moral order.

This point is extremely ineffectual, because it points the finger at libertarians for being profoundly immoral, while failing utterly to outline who they are or what they believe.

"In any society, order is the first need of all. Liberty and justice may be established only after order is tolerably secure. But the libertarians give primacy to an abstract liberty. Conservatives, knowing that “liberty inheres in some sensible object,” are aware that true freedom can be found only within the framework of a social order, such as the constitutional order of these United States. In exalting an absolute and indefinable “liberty” at the expense of order, the libertarians imperil the very freedoms they praise."

I know not where Kirk got this view from, for if he believes that John Stuart Mill was a libertarian, he certainly does not believe that libertarians reject the need for a social order.

In any event, Kirk's assertion is left unsupported. He asserts correctly that to have liberty we must have a social order. That this social order must be the state is not addressed, as if the second assertion is simply proven by the first.

"What binds society together? The libertarians reply that the cement of society (so far as they will endure any binding at all) is self-interest, closely joined to the nexus of cash payment. But the conservatives declare that society is a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet unborn; and that it coheres through what Aristotle called friendship and Christians call love of neighbor."

What Kirk addresses as the conservative view, is, in fact, the libertarian one. By his belief in the necessity of a coercive state Kirk has made clear that what he believes holds society together is the use of organized military force against the citizens. For clearly, he believes that society would fall apart if the agent of this coercive force, the state, were to fall away.

Libertarians believe, in contrast to this, that society is a voluntary compact, which needs no coercive and violent state to hold it together. Libertarians see society as a "community of souls" to quote Mr. Kirk. Conservatives, if they follow Mr. Kirk, see it as a community of slaves.

"Libertarians (like anarchists and Marxists) generally believe that human nature is good, though damaged by certain social institutions. Conservatives, on the contrary, hold that “in Adam's fall we sinned all”: human nature, though compounded of both good and evil, is irremediably flawed; so the perfection of society is impossible, all human beings being imperfect. Thus the libertarian pursues his illusory way to Utopia, and the conservative knows that for the path to Avernus."

That this is a belief of libertarians is left utterly unsupported. As a libertarian myself, there are few things I have more faith in than the utterly depraved nature of mankind.

"The libertarian takes the state for the great oppressor. But the conservative finds that the state is ordained of God. In Burke's phrases, “He who gave us our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed therefore the state-its connexion with the source and original archetype of all perfection.” Without the state, man's condition is poor, nasty, brutish, and short-as Augustine argued, many centuries before Hobbes. The libertarians confound the state with government. But government-as Burke continued --”is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. “Among the more important of those human wants is “a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individual, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can be done only by a power out of themselves; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue.” In short, a primary function of government is restraint; and that is anathema to libertarians, though an article of faith to conservatives."

Here Mr. Kirk is finally correct. He recognizes that the libertarian approaches the state from a rationalist and earthly perspective, while the conservative approaches it as a worshiper bowing before His God.

As such, the conservative believes, in his heart of hearts, in the essential omnipotence of the State, and therefore its moral authority to engage in violent coercion against the citizenry in order to keep them from mucking up their own lives.

Of course, if one believed, as do libertarians, that the state is run by mortal men, a mortal institution, and as subject to folly as any of us, one could never accept this view, for how could one mortal man know enough to ensure the happiness of all other mortal men, to know what they want better than they know themselves? It takes the conservative view, of the state as a divine institution with the authority of God, to believe in this hogwash.

As such, to be a Christian and to take Kirk's view towards the state is deeply heretical and shockingly blasphemous. For it is only God, and not Caesar, who wields the omnipotent authority necessary to make the kind of decisions Kirk is willing to put in the hands of the State.

"The libertarian thinks that this world is chiefly a stage for the swaggering ego; the conservative finds himself instead a pilgrim in a realm of mystery and wonder, where duty, discipline, and sacrifice are required-and where the reward is that love which passeth all understanding. The conservative regards the libertarian as impious, in the sense of the old Roman pietas: that is, the libertarian does not venerate ancient beliefs and customs, or the natural world, or his country, or the immortal spark in his fellow men. The cosmos of the libertarian is an arid loveless realm, a “round prison.” “I am, and none else beside me,” says the libertarian. “We are made for cooperation, like the hands, like the feet,” replies the conservative, in the phrases of Marcus Aurelius."

Once again, Kirk places the libertarian view in the mouth of the conservative. For it is the libertarian who believes we are made for cooperation. Cooperation is an inherently non-coercive, voluntary, process. The conservative, by contract, feels that we are made for slavery to a divinely omnipotent state.

"Why multiply these profound differences? Those I have expressed already will suffice to demonstrate the utter incompatibility of the two positions. If one were to content himself simply with contrasting the beliefs of conservatives and libertarians as to the nature ofliberty, still we could arrive at no compromise. There is the liberty of the wolf, John Adams wrote to John Taylor; and there is the liberty of civilized man. The conservative will not tolerate ravening liberty; with Dostoevski, he knows that those who commence with absolute liberty will end with absolute tyranny. He maintains, rather, what Burke called “chartered rights,” developed slowly and painfully in the civil social order, sanctioned by prescription.

Yet even if libertarian and conservative can affirm nothing in common, may they not agree upon a negative? May they not take common ground against the pretensions of the modern state to omnicompetence? Certainly both bodies of opinion find that modern governments, even in such constitutional orders as the United States, seem afflicted by the libido dominandi. The primary function of government, the conservatives say, is to keep the peace: by repelling foreign enemies, by maintaining the bed of justice domestically. When government goes much beyond this end, it falls into difficulty, not being contrived for the management of the whole of life. Thus far, indeed libertarian and conservative hold something in common. But the libertarians, rashly hurrying to an opposite extreme, would deprive government of effective power to undertake the common defense or to restrain the passionate and the unjust. With the libertarians in mind, conservatives repeat Burke's aphorism: “Men of intemperate mind never can be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

So in the nature of things conservatives and libertarians can conclude no friendly pact. Conservatives have no intention of compromising with socialists; but even such an alliance, ridiculous though it would be, is more nearly conceivable than the coalition of conservatives and libertarians. The socialists at least declare the existence of some sort of moral order; the libertarians are quite bottomless.

It is of high importance, indeed, that American conservatives dissociate themselves altogether from the little sour remnant called libertarians. In a time requiring long views and self-denial, alliance with a faction founded upon doctrinaire selfishness would be absurd-and practically damaging. It is not merely that cooperation with a tiny chirping sect would be valueless politically; more, such an association would tend to discredit the conservatives, giving aid and comfort to the collective adversaries of ordered freedom. When heaven and earth have passed away, perhaps the conservative mind and the libertarian mind may be joined in synthesis-but not until then. Meanwhile, I venture to predict, the more intelligent and conscientious persons within the libertarian remnant will tend to settle for politics as the art of the possible, so shifting into the conservative camp.

"

If we are to believe Mr. Kirk's view, he is correct that libertarianism and conservatism have no common ground. He errs, however, in missing his greatest friend! For if his view of conservatism is the correct one, than it and socialism were made for each other! For both are the world-views of slavers, scrambling wildly for a moral justification for keeping their slaves in chains.