Libertarianism: What It Is And What It Isn’t

The One Utah blog has become regular reading for me since Paul Mero from The Sutherland Institute has become a contributer.  The outrage he generates from the leftists is entertaining and the discussions he is involved in there are nearly always very informative.

While reading through comments on this post (the comments are much better reading than the post itself) I saw that Mr. Mero referred to a document published by the Sutherland Institute in their “Defining Conservative Series”. It is titled, “Learning What It [conservatism] Is By Learning What It Isn’t”. This interesting paper, based mainly on primary sources found in this scholarly work, does a pretty good job explaining conservatism but it has some serious flaws in its description of my political beliefs.

Libertarianism as it is understood by most of its proponents is not the nihilism or hedonism described in the Sutherland paper (see especially the end section with the heading, “Sixth, conservatism is not libertarianism) rather it is a desire among its advocates that individual liberty should be of primary political importance. Society should be organized based on the principle that a man’s life, liberty, and property must not be forcefully taken from him by any individual or by society collectively in the form of a government. Libertarianism is not the idea that in non-political realms the traditional concepts of virtue, classical culture, religion, and duty should take a back seat to the primacy of an individual’s desires or needs.

I don’t mind The Sutherland Institute endeavoring to better understand their founding conservative philosophy by discussing what it isn’t. I do mind them creating and then knocking down a straw man then labeling it libertarianism. Libertarians value our heritage every bit as much as conservatives. Many libertarians (including me) agree with The Sutherland Institute and other political entities which argue that more should be done in our society to restore and maintain the institutions and values of the past that have proven beneficial to mankind. We just don’t advocate doing these things by resorting to the use of government’s guns. Libertarianism is far more compatible with conservatism than The Sutherland Institute argues in their paper. In fact, a great argument could be made that I’m every bit as conservative as Mr. Mero…I just don’t advocate for the use of violence to achieve my desired ends.

One more thing!  The paper has one statement in it that should warm the hearts of most One Utah readers and other Utah Democrats:

Lastly, we can call upon local wisdom and experiences peculiar to Utah, perhaps the bluest of blue states and, presumably, one of the nation’s most conservative.

As one who has been a conservative Democrat since moving to Utah I sure do wish we lived in one of the bluest of blue conservative states. Unless “blue state” means something other than “leans Democratic in elections” The Sutherland Institute’s uncredited author might have gotten things a little mixed up