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March 26, 2005
Libertarians: Huh? Part 5
Libertarians Huh? Part 5
Jonah Goldberg made a point (possibly unintentionally) that relates to why Libertarians make me go Huh?:
This is an old and rich topic, but I think one part of the problem with "conservatism's over" school is that people confuse intellectual conservatism for popular conservatism generally. They are overlapping and mutually dependent movements, to be sure, but less so than most of the disgruntled intellectual types think. If the popular political movement does something at odds with the intellectual precepts of the eggheads, someone invariably yells "aha! the movement cannot sustain such internal contradictions!"The problem is that all serious and large political and ideological movements contain internal contradictions. Internal contradictions come with growth. Perfect internal consistency comes with contraction and insularity. Small cults are internally consistent on every point. Large movements must deal with coalitions of competing interests.
I think the Libertarian Party fits this description of a small and unserious group that is internally consistent on all points and many small l libertarians do as well. Unfortunately for them, to get anything done politically in this country you have to be willing to be inconsistent some of the time.
Previous Libertarians: Huh? post.
Posted by Pete at March 26, 2005 03:14 PM
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