Morality & Politics
Freedom Requires Restraint:
Where Movement Conservatism
Went Wrong—And How to Fix It
By Joseph Baldacchino
In the wake of the 2008 elections the Republican Party looked to be
on its last legs. Not only had Barack Obama triumphed in the
presidential race, picking up the electoral votes of such previously
“red” states as Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, but the Democrats
had widened the majorities they had gained while taking over both
houses of Congress two years earlier. Flush with victory, the Democrats,
perhaps understandably, interpreted the 2008 election returns as a
mandate for their “progressive” policy agenda, which they proceeded to
enact into law with gusto, helping in the process to increase the total
public debt outstanding from $10.6 trillion on Inauguration Day 2009 to
$13.6 trillion a scant 22 months later .1
Then came the mid-term elections of 2010, and the liberal ideological
consensus that had seemed so palpable turned out to have been a mirage.
Not only did the GOP garner the biggest mid-term gain in House seats
achieved by either party since 1938, winning 56 percent of the 435 seats
in contention, but the GOP also won an even larger 65 percent of this
year’s thirty-seven Senate races.2 Perhaps even more
impressive were Republican gains in the state houses, where they are
poised to dominate the congressional redistricting process for the
coming decade by controlling 29 of the 50 state governorships3 and at least 57 of the 99 state legislative chambers.4
Will the apparent mandate for a pronounced rightward turn in matters
of public policy prove any more lasting or substantial than the one in
favor of progressivism that went a-glimmering in the 2010 election? If
recent American history is any guide, the answer to this question is:
Not very likely. Consider the elections of the past 30 years.
Certainly, 1980 seemed at the time to signal a sea-change in the
nation’s ideological allegiances. Not only did Ronald Reagan, the
undisputed leader of the conservative movement, sweep to victory over
the liberal Democratic White House incumbent, Jimmy Carter, but he also
brought in on his coattails Republican control of the Senate, marking
the first time the GOP had won a majority of either congressional
chamber since 1952. The Democrats, who had controlled the House
consistently since 1954, resumed control of the Senate in 1986.
The next significant change occurred in 1992 when the Democrats, led
by Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, regained the White House after a
twelve-year absence. A seemingly more seismic shift in the opposite
direction came just two years later when Republicans, spearheaded by
Rep. Newt Gingrich (Ga.), gained simultaneous control of both the House
and Senate for the first time since the election of 1952.
Though Clinton was reelected in 1996, the Republican congressional
ascendancy that began in 1994 continued with only a minor interruption
until the 2006 off-year election. In that year, as mentioned, the
Democrats regained control of the House: a victory that presaged the
Democrats’ sweep of the White House and both houses of Congress in 2008.
Based on the foregoing thumbnail history, the political contests that
were most worthy of the label “redefining” or “wave” elections during
the past three decades occurred, except for that of 2010, at
fourteen-year intervals in 1980, 1994, and 2008. It should be noted that
in each of these contests the party that triumphed was the beneficiary
of disgust in the electorate with the record of the party in power.
Reagan’s 1980 election was in large part a reaction to the economic and
foreign policy failures of Jimmy Carter, most notably inflation and
interest rates in double digits and the Iranian hostage crisis.
In 1994 the Republicans benefited from the Clintons’ overreaching on
national health care and from years of entrenched corruption in the
Democrat-controlled Congress, exemplified by scandals involving House
Speaker Jim Wright (Tex.), who resigned in 1989, and House Ways and
Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (Ill.), who was forced to
relinquish all leadership posts in 1994 before going down to electoral
defeat in that same year. By 2008, amidst the worst financial crisis
since the Great Depression, even many Republicans were worn down by the
George W. Bush Administration’s many domestic and foreign policy lapses,
which provided a ready audience for Obama and the Democrats’ siren song
of “change.”
On this evidence, neither major party can lay claim to the support of
a stable majority either for its espoused policy prescriptions or for
demonstrated political competence. Rather, the nation has become
polarized between ardent devotees of Fox News on the right and MSNBC on
the left. Elections are determined by a group in the middle that
oscillates between the two sides to register dissatisfaction whenever
the status quo becomes sufficiently difficult to tolerate. If the most
recent “wave” election suggests anything new at all, it may be that the
oscillations are becoming more frequent and more pronounced.
Yet Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., have assured us in the
wake of their 2010 congressional gains that their victory will not lull
them into a false sense of security. The GOP, they insist, recognizes
that it is on probation. The Democrats won in 2008 because the Bush
Administration failed to live up to conservative principles, and the
public will turn against the Republicans again if they don’t mend their
ways. But this time will be different, they assure us, because
Republicans have understood the public’s message, and this time, under
the watchful eye of “Tea Party” activists, Republicans will do the
public’s bidding.
“Across the country right now,” explained incoming Speaker John
Boehner on election night, “we are witnessing a repudiation of
Washington, a repudiation of big government, and a repudiation of
politicians who refuse to listen to the people, because, for far too
long, Washington’s been doing what’s best for Washington, not what’s
best for the American people. Tonight, that begins to change.”
How credible is such rhetoric? At first blush it may seem marginally
more plausible than the Democrats’ explanation that the voters would
have approved their programs if only they had understood them. But, in
fact, not only American government but American society in general have
grown increasingly dysfunctional over the past half century. Deep down,
many serious observers know this, but few, regardless of political
persuasion or walk of life, want to face the depressing reality. To do
so would require difficult changes in the way we live. Instead of
accepting the necessary pain, we are tempted to look away from the
actual situation. We create imaginative visions that paint our dominant
desires and inclinations in the best light and excuse us from mending
our self-indulgent ways.
Barring difficult efforts of will, the human tendency is to pick and
choose parts of reality that would justify sticking to our favored mode
of existence. We come up with ideas and slogans—even entire
ideologies—that present as actual historical reality not the world as it
is but the world as we would like it to be, this in order for us to be
able to live as we please. So, when politicians wax eloquent about
“conservative principles” no less than when they speak glowingly of
“progressive ideals,” the question must be asked: Are they addressing
the real world in all its complexity or are they presenting an
imaginative dream that advances hidden motives?
All humans are more or less prone to hiding inconvenient truths—from
others, certainly, but perhaps most significantly from themselves. The
reason is ultimately moral laziness. We know only too well our own
weaknesses, but we shrink from the hard inner work that morality and
happiness require. As Irving Babbitt observed, all humans want to attain
happiness on the cheap—to reap the fruits of the spirit without
exerting spiritual effort. This tendency toward escapism has become
increasingly common in modern Western society. The pre-modern
West—heavily influenced by classical and especially Christian
culture—taught that man is born with obligations not only to self but to
his fellow members of society: in Jesus’ words, to “love thy neighbor
as thyself.”
For Aristotle, as for Thomas Aquinas, the purpose of politics and law
was to further the common good of society which was shared by all in
the sense that it was good for its own sake. Differently put, there is a
self in man that is more than individual and higher than mere
enlightened self-interest whose nature is to foster genuine community
among people. But in the sixteenth century a philosophical and moral
revolution began. Encouraged by thinkers such as Bacon, Hobbes, Locke,
and Descartes, promotion of the common good was displaced as society’s
ultimate purpose by the lesser goal of trying to maximize the
satisfaction of conflicting individual and group interests.
Are the Republicans right? Will adhering to “conservative principles”
begin to correct the serious problems now besetting American society
and thereby provide what is “best for the American people”? Clearly,
that depends on what is meant by “conservative principles.” The think
tank intellectuals and hired guns are ready with glib answers.
Conservatism means “liberty” or “freedom.” It means “limited
government.” It means “constitutionalism,” “free markets,” “private
property.” But these are general terms, which can each have very
different—even opposite—meanings. Whether the mentioned ideas are good
or bad depends upon what is meant and the purposes served in each
instance.
Traditional conservatives—from Edmund Burke and John Adams in the
eighteenth century to Irving Babbitt and Russell Kirk in the
twentieth—supported liberty, property, and restraints on government but
not as ultimate ends in themselves. They saw them as conducive to
efficient production and other commodious arrangements, but most
importantly as means to the higher ends of society, which can be
summarized in the term “community.”
Contrary to much influential modern thought—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
being the most conspicuous example—goodness does not flow spontaneously
from human impulses but requires sustained moral effort and supporting
cultural and political institutions. Burke recognized the extent to
which in England and Europe the latter had been painstakingly developed
over centuries. Government, together with other social structures, is
necessary to put restraints on actions and desires inimical to man’s
higher potential. How much government is needed and what kind cannot be
determined in the abstract, but depends on the character of the people
of a specific time and place.
For Burke and other traditional conservatives, liberty understood as
equally appropriate to all conceivable circumstances is not only
irrational but dangerous. Concerning the abstract liberty promoted by
the French Jacobins and their supporters, Burke wrote: “I flatter myself
that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman .
. . . But I cannot . . . give praise or blame to anything which relates
to human actions . . . on a simple view of the object, as it stands
stripped of every relation, in . . . metaphysical abstraction. . . . Is
it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings
of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped
from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his
restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? . . .
“I should, therefore,” Burke continued, “suspend my congratulations
on the new liberty of France until I was informed how it had been
combined with government, with public force, with the discipline and
obedience of armies, with the collection of an effective and
well-distributed revenue, with morality and religion, with the solidity
of property, with peace and order, with civil and social manners. All
these (in their way) are good things, too, and without them liberty is
not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long.”5
Similarly, John Adams, in an October 18, 1790, letter to his cousin
Samuel Adams, wrote: “‘The love of liberty,’ you say, ‘is interwoven in
the soul of man.’ So it is, according to La Fontaine, in that of a wolf;
and I doubt whether it be much more rational, generous, or social, in
one than in the other, until in man it is enlightened by experience,
reflection, education, and civil and political institutions.” 6
In other words, when it becomes common for economic actors, be they
janitors or heads of hedge funds, to set aside normal moral and cultural
restraints when at work, it will undermine not only the quality of
their everyday existence but also damage the honesty and integrity on
which a well-functioning market and indeed all civilized life depend. It
needs to be understood that in a time of precipitous moral decline
freedom may actually become positively destructive of the higher
purposes of society. Imagine historical circumstances in which captains
of finance have, because of a general moral decline, become
unscrupulous, caring little about the welfare of their customers,
employees, or society at large. In such a situation, a mentality of
unmitigated greed might become pervasive. On the other hand, freedom may
become something altogether different where economic and cultural
elites embody and expect high standards.
Yet, when the conservative movement so powerful in American politics
over the past half century was getting its intellectual start in the
1950s, it became apparent very soon that its participants were
profoundly at odds concerning the meaning of freedom, which hinges on
the fundamental nature of man and society. Along with Burke and most
framers of the American constitution—and in keeping with the pre-modern
classical and Christian heritage—conservative academics such as Russell
Kirk, Robert Nisbet, and the economist Wilhelm Röpke denounced as
reductionism the notion that human beings, who are almost wholly
dependent on society for the very attributes that make them human, are
ultimately obligated to nothing beyond individual self-interest.
They agreed with Babbitt that freedom, property, constitutional
government, and similar rights derive their immense value not primarily
from their usefulness to the self-indulgent selves that divide men and
women one from another but from their usefulness to the higher or
universal self that wills what is good for its own sake and is the basis
of community. Indeed, Babbitt held that American liberties owed their
very existence to the classical and Christian moral and religious
heritage.
But other influential movement founders held the opposite view.
Taking sharp issue with the “New Conservatism” of Kirk, Nisbet, Peter
Viereck, and others, Frank S. Meyer, who would become a prime architect
of the movement, declared sweepingly in a 1955 article that “all value resides in the individual; all
social institutions derive their value and, in fact, their very being
from individuals and are justified only to the extent that they serve
the needs of individuals.”7 Meyer’s radical individualism,
which he attributed in large part to John Stuart Mill, was shared to
various degrees by numerous others whose ideas helped shape the early
conservative movement, including the economists Ludwig von Mises,
Friederich Hayek, and Milton Friedman.
Movement conservatism was thus divided from its beginning on the
central issue of man’s moral nature and its relation to politics and
liberty. Yet, by the mid-1960s, serious theoretical argument had given
way to an ostensible consensus, dubbed “fusionism.” This ideological
position, whose leading exponent was Frank Meyer himself, has been
summarized as holding that “virtue is the ultimate end of man as man,”
but that individual freedom is the “ultimate political end.”8
Indeed, according to Meyer’s relatively mature, “fusionist” position,
the “achievement of virtue” was none of the state’s business, hence not a
political question at all.9
Despite its label, Meyer’s “fusionism” never achieved a genuine
philosophical synthesis of Burkean conservatism and the ideology of
classical liberalism or libertarianism. A genuine synthesis would have
been impossible, for the two opposing positions are based on
contradictory assumptions. For traditional conservatives, the notion
that freedom can exist in the absence of moral restraint flies in the
face of all historical experience.
Adam Smith, who is widely regarded as the father of economics, noted in The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
for example, that “upon the tolerable observance” of such duties as
politeness, justice, trust, chastity, and fidelity “depends the very
existence of human society, which would crumble into nothing if mankind
were not generally impressed with a reverence for these important rules
of conduct.” Smith added that social order is not spontaneous or
automatic, but is founded on institutions that promote self control,
prudence, gratification deferral, respect for the lives and property of
others, and some concern for the common good.10
Burke, who was an admirer of Smith, similarly wrote: “Men are
qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to
put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love
of justice is above their rapacity . . . . Society cannot exist unless a
controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the
less of it there is within, the more there must be without.”11
Hence, for traditional conservatism as represented by Burke, by Smith
in important respects, and by the American constitutional framers, the
advancement of political liberty in any meaningful sense necessarily
entails the simultaneous advancement of an ethic of individual restraint
and responsibility in support of the common good. Success in the first
is impossible without success in the second. To suggest otherwise,
according to traditional conservatism, would be absurd.12
Yet Meyer’s fusionism does precisely that. He elevates the pursuit of
liberty to the highest goal of politics while ignoring freedom’s
dependence on moral restraint and its corresponding institutional and
cultural supports. True enough, in his overtures for the
traditionalists’ support, Meyer pays homage to man’s higher ends, even
to religion, yet it is clear from his writings that he remains at a loss
concerning what those ends entail. As late as 1962 he was still
asserting, for example, the reality of the “rational, volitional,
autonomous individual” versus the “myth of society.”13
Remove the effects of society on human life for but an hour, a Burke
or a Smith would respond to Meyer, and he would recognize soon enough
the part of reality he had missed.
A telling measure of morality’s lack of significance in Meyer’s
fusionism is that it paralleled the place accorded to religion by many
avid secularists: religion is all right as a private matter, but it has
no legitimate place in public life. According to Meyer, the
constitutional framers shared his preference for separating morality and
politics, but this would have come as startling news to George
Washington, among others, who said in his Farewell Address: “Of all the
dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and
morality are indispensable supports. . . . [R]eason and experience both
forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of
religious principle.”14
In the end, all that separated Meyer’s fusionist position from
libertarianism was the superimposition of a few traditionalist-sounding
rhetorical flourishes. In respect to their practical import for how
Americans participate in private and public life, the two positions were
identical. Such was the considered opinion of the late libertarian
scholar and activist Murray N. Rothbard, as expressed in the Fall 1981
issue of Modern Age.15 Yet, beginning in the
mid-1960s, large numbers of Americans who would have been reluctant to
embrace libertarianism that was labeled as such found themselves able to
do so when it was newly packaged, with the assistance of Meyer and his
fusionist allies, as “conservatism.”
As George Nash observed in his 1976 history of American intellectual
conservatism, “rather surprisingly, by the mid-1960s the tumult began to
subside. Perhaps, as Meyer remarked, the disputants had run out of
fresh things to say. Certainly, they had other topics on their mind—the
rise of Senator Goldwater, for instance. And, as the dust settled, many
conservatives made a common discovery: that Meyer’s fusionism had won.
Quietly, with little fanfare, by a process [Meyer] later called,
‘osmosis,’ fusionism became, for most National Review conservatives, a fait accompli.”16
What Nash here reports as a victory for fusionism may have been such
in practice but certainly not in theory. A major and festering moral and
philosophical problem had been swept under the rug. This could happen
because those most directly involved had much less interest in
philosophical stringency than in issues of practical politics.
Ironically, in the same 1981 issue of Modern Age in which
the libertarian Rothbard explained that Meyer’s fusionism was actually
libertarianism, Russell Kirk posed the question of what conservatism (of
the traditionalist or pre-fusionist variety) and libertarianism have in
common. His answer was that, except for sharing “a detestation of
collectivism”—an opposition to “the totalist state and the heavy hand of
bureaucracy”—conservatives and libertarians have “nothing” in common.
“Nor will they ever have,” he added. “To talk of forming a league or
coalition between these two is like advocating a union of fire and ice.”17
Leveling against libertarianism criticism that could have applied
equally to Meyer’s fusionism, Kirk wrote: “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, Kirk reported, borrowed whole from John
Stuart Mill’s 1859 book On Liberty the principle 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.”18
As noted previously, fusionism, too, made Mill’s principle
sacrosanct, denying any legitimate place in politics for promoting moral
restraint. The ability of every individual to act without regard for
the common good was elevated to the highest end of conservative
politics. All of conservatism’s subsidiary political goals—limited
government, free enterprise, private property, minimal taxation—became
similarly associated with the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest.
If society is considered less than real, the highest goal for which
the individual can strive is to be able to do as he or she pleases to
the greatest extent possible. And since doing as he or she pleases is
synonymous with freedom by the fusionists’ definition, it follows that,
for them in their heart of hearts, there never can be too much liberty
or (which is to say the same thing) too little government. To view the
world in the light of such broad generalizations discourages subtlety of
mind and attention to the needs of actual historical situations. “If
you believe in the capitalist system,” Rush Limbaugh explained in a
September 2009 television interview, “then you have to erase from your
whole worldview what does somebody need. It's not about need. . . . it
is about doing whatever you want to do.”19
In contrast with the one-sided emphasis on freedom characteristic of
movement conservatism since the 1960s, traditional conservatism views
both government and limits on government as necessary responses to man’s
flawed moral nature. Because men are not angels, as Madison observed,
government is needed to help restrain their passions. But since
governments are made of fallible men and not angels, governments also
must be limited: “In framing a government which is to be administered by
men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable
the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it
to control itself.”20
Similarly, Burke instructed: “To make a government requires no great
prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience: and the work is
done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide;
and only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government;
that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and
restraints in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep
reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.”21
Unfortunately, what America has lacked during much of its history and
increasingly so is “free government” such as advocated by the framers,
Burke, Babbitt, Kirk, and other traditional conservatives. Instead, the
tendency has been for political power and the control of government to
lurch back and forth between Big Government “progressives” who are prone
always and everywhere to “teach obedience” and Small Government
“conservatives” (or libertarians) who are prone always and everywhere to
“let go the rein.”
Because guided by abstract generalizations rather than historical
reality, ideologues of both types are blind to the changing proportions
of liberty and restraint appropriate to actual circumstances.
The assumption of power by either group, therefore, inevitably heralds
trouble. The response of the electorate almost invariably has been to
displace one set of rascals with its opposite number only to have the
process repeat itself ’ere long.
What about the most recent election? Does the latest shift in favor
of “conservative principles” signal a departure from the
long-established dysfunctional pattern? To reiterate what was stated
tentatively above: The answer depends on what is meant by conservative
principles. Almost certainly more dysfunction is on the way. Is there a
way to get out of this cycle? One necessary step is to face complex
reality and to break the morally and philosophically lazy habits that
stand in the way of understanding the prerequisites of liberty.
Some who think of themselves as libertarians may object to the
argument here offered that they do recognize that liberty needs moral,
cultural, and institutional supports and that liberty is not an end in
itself. Such libertarians may be closer to the traditional conservatives
than they realize. Their “libertarianism” does in fact suggest the kind
of philosophically tenable rapprochement between liberals and
conservatives that Meyer’s “fusionism” clearly failed to achieve.
Notes
1. The Daily History of the Debt Results, http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway.
2. Politics et Cetera, Novemer 8, 2010, 6.
3. State and Legislative Partisan Composition Following the 2010
Election, National Conference of State Legislatures November 23, 2010,
http://www.google.com/url?
sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncsl.org%2F
documents%2Fstatevote
%2F2010_Legis_and_State
_post.pdf&rct=j&q=State%20and%20Legislative%20Partisan%20Composition&ei=80XxTPqBLsWblgfUxo2YDQ&usg=AFQjCNEHaaxOHedqis
NbN7JaGNP5es-9mg&cad=rja
4. Map of Post-Election Partisan Composition of State Legislatures,
National Conference of State Legislatures,
http://www.ncsl.org/tabid/21253/default.aspx.
5. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968 [1790]), 90-91.
6. John Adams to Samuel Adams 18 October 1790, http://www.scribd.com/doc/12305/T-Jefferson-S-Adams-letters.
7. Frank S. Meyer, “Collectivism Rebaptized,” The Freeman (July 1955), 560 (emphases in the original).
8. George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 174 (emphasis in the original).
9. Ibid., 173.
10. See Mark L. Melcher and Stephen R. Soukup, “Capitalism: RIP,” Politics et Cetera, February 2, 2009, 1-5.
11. Edmund Burke, A Letter from Mr. Burke to a Member of the French Assembly (Paris and London, 1791), 68-69.
12. It should be emphasized that, for Burke
and for traditional Anglo-Saxon conservatism in
general, the ethic of restraint perceived as essential
to the free society does not consist of uniform
adherence to an a priori blueprint, to be followed
regardless of circumstances. Rather, it results
from a special quality of will—toward goodness—that exists at least potentially within every individual,
albeit in continuing tension with desires
of a lower quality.
The higher or ethical will seeks in ever-changing
conditions to restrain contrary impulses
toward narrow self-indulgence or arbitrariness
in order to create from the situation at hand new
historical reality that advances our highest human
potential. Compared with a social order that
views morality as conforming mechanically to
ideologies or dogmas that are always and everywhere
applicable, one that recognizes individual
creativity as necessary for moral action will tend
to place greater value on decentralization and on
the accommodation of diverse competing interests.
Still, a society influenced by traditional Anglo-
Saxon conservatism will see the need to place restrictions on certain types of behavior through
law. Owing to the inner tension between good and
evil within every person, it would be unrealistic to
expect people always to live up to the commands
of moral conscience for the sake of morality alone.
By having government enforce penalties for kinds
of activity that have proved especially harmful
to human dignity, society can enlist men’s desire
to avoid punishment—though itself not a moral
purpose—in the service of the higher good.
To allow broad scope for individual moral creativity,
however, a society guided by traditional
conservatism will limit the number of laws and
regulations to the fewest practicable. And, to reduce
the element of uncertainty that makes moral
and other actions always difficult, such a society
will avoid changing the law except when absolutely
necessary. See Joseph Baldacchino, “Ethics
and the Common Good: Abstract vs. Experiential,”
Humanitas, 15:2 (2002), esp. 39-59.
13. Frank S. Meyer, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1962), 22-23 and 28, cited in Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement, 172 and 173.
14. Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796, www.nhinet.org/ccs/docs/farewell1796.htm.
15. Murray N. Rothbard, “Frank S. Meyer: The Fusionist as Libertarian Manqué,” Modern Age, 25:4 (Fall 1981), 352-63.
16. George H. Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement, 178, 391n118, 391n119.
17. Russell Kirk, “Libertarians: The Chirping Sectaries,” Modern Age, 25:4 (Fall 1981), 345-51.
18. Ibid.
19. Rush on The Jay Leno Show September 24, 2009, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_092509/content/01125106.guest.html
20. Madison, Federalist No. 51.
21. Burke, Reflections, 373-74 (emphasis in the original).
Joseph Baldacchino is president of the National Humanities Institute and editor of Humanitas.
