"I think the new debate in the Republican Party needs to be between conservatives and libertarians. We have a common foundation of individual liberty and constitutionally limited government, and we can rationally debate some of the things we disagree on. I don’t think the government should impose my morals or anyone else’s on someone else, but at the same time I don’t want the government purging morals and religious values from our society. We can find a balance there. It really gets back to decentralization. The tolerance is going to come from decentralization and letting people make their own decisions, but we have to be able to put up with societal stigma of things we don’t like."
No, we don't have a common foundation.
Libertarians believe in freedom as license. Conservatives believe in ordered liberty, that there cannot be true freedom unless we respect the transcendent moral order. In recent times libertarians were easily allied with Democrats on social issues, and finally gave up on that and moved rightward on economic concerns. In doing so they demonstrated their unprincipled shape-shifting for what it is, and that Republicans have been too stupid to reject them. For example, I can't recall a single prominent Republican or so-called conservative descrying the many Republican victories spoiled by libertarians in either of the recent elections in 2010 and 2012. What is more we have idiot conservatives like Sarah Palin telling us we must make room for libertarians in the Republican Party while the Libertarian Party itself is encouraged by the races it has spoiled for Republicans by electing Democrats. This from the woman who vigorously supported John McCain and TARP.
Libertarians are not natural allies of conservatives, but they are of Republicans just as they are of Democrats, because the Republican Party has been liberalized beyond recognition. That a so-called conservative like Jim DeMint is friendly toward libertarianism tells you all you need to know about the state of conservatism in America. Conservatism in America is really and truly dead.
One of the favorite ideas of libertarians illustrates my point. The idea comes by analogy from Adam Smith's invisible hand at work in economics, namely, that the electorate always gets it right (Jude Wanniski). Is there a Republican who voted for Romney saying any such thing anywhere in the country now that Obama is re-elected? I doubt it. But that is the position of John Tamny and his ilk at Forbes Magazine. John Tamny, by the way, would like you to be a completely rootless person, with no house, no wife, no children, paying no property taxes for good schools and contributing no commitment to church and community but owning just two bags and a passport so that his beloved capitalist boss can send you wherever and whenever he needs you.
Good government, as the Scriptures teach, is a terror to bad behavior, not to good. That means there are moral absolutes, against which all libertarians do chafe, now more, now less, starting with "It is not good that the man should be alone."
To Demented Jim there are no such absolutes. He's a moral relativist who doesn't have the courage of his own moral convictions. "My morals" he says, as if they belong only to him and didn't come from the Author of Life. St. Paul, I remind you, ridiculed the Corinthian Christians for such an attitude, saying "What do you have that you did not receive?" Our faults are as ancient as the way of escape.
The Heritage Foundation had become reprehensible enough for having embraced Reagan liberalism, which contributed materially to what became the tyranny of the ObamaCare mandates. Now Heritage is to be headed up by the confused conservative DeMint, if he really isn't just a stealth libertarian. Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know about Heritage, that it remains to this day so intellectually confused about the meaning of conservatism that it welcomes a libertarian sleeper?
Conservatives should revolt against Heritage's choice of Sen. Jim DeMint, but don't count on it. I reckon there are only 500,000 of us in the whole country, and that's being generous. In the end, Sen. DeMint and Heritage will come to nothing, and the Republicans too if they are not careful.
"SAVE YOURSELVES FROM THIS CROOKED GENERATION!"
