Liberty with Order: Economic Libertarianism and Legal Authoritarianism

The only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them.
—Edmund Burke

Conservatism is the doctrine of pragmatic pessimism. A conservative sees the human race as nature’s flawed sensation—a race whose talents have brought phenomenal progress, yet whose defects—primarily egoism-have survived its every innovation. Humankind is capable of great things, but to recast its fallen, selfish nature is not one of those things. One can live better than he would have, were he born a hundred years before. But he cannot be better-he cannot escape the limitations inherent in his species.However, a conservative does not accept these limitations asexcusesfor personal failings. Rather, he insists that the human race accept its shortcomings and strive to liveas wellaspossiblein spite of them. A quotation attributed to Winston Churchill dubs conservatism an ideology for mature-minded adults, and surely this stands to reason: the philosophy treats all asbeingsfully responsible for their lot in life.The two areas of societymost affectedby this orientation are economics and criminal justice. In economics, a conservative very closely resembles a libertarian, believing that people must rely on themselves and not on their neighbors or their government for support. In criminal justice, a conservative is a legal authoritarian who allows no excuse for breakinga duly enactedlaw.

Whereas vast inequalities of wealth are anathema to a liberal or socialist,a conservative regards them asentirely permissible in a free society. In an industrialized nation where millions are born in crushing poverty, yet are able to pull themselves up into the middle-class ranks, and where 70 percent of millionaires are first-generation, he will have no solicitude for those who claim to be disadvantaged. Quite often, people fare differently because they prepare differently. Yet, as a social Darwinist, he denies that one’s work ethic is the sole determinant of one’s fortunes. He also attributes poverty to humans’ endemic limitations: not every member of the species will add enough value to the world to earn his own bread; not every idiot is a savant. As Professor Thomas Sowell maintains in The Questfor CosmicJustice, merit (hard work) and productivity (value) are two very different concepts, and only the latter drives society’s estimation of a person’s or a company’s value. Thus, even if a person is prepared to work hard, but has little or nothing to offer any prospective employer, it is only natural that he be unemployed. To a conservative,there is no reason for the economy to operate on a different principle than this. No one will buy low-quality food simply to reward the farmers for their commitment to a difficult profession. The reason for this is that people normally use their limited funds where they will have the greatest positive impact on their lives.

People constantly reward each other for their abilities to supply needs and desires, and do so without considering how they acquired (or whether or not they deserve) those abilities. It makes no difference to a company whether its employees have natural gifts for their occupations or simply worked hard to become proficient at those occupations. From a cosmicperspective, it may seem unfair that a movie star or singer can earn hundreds of times more than an equally industrious person, but merit is not the sole determinant of aperson’s fortune.Aperson’s natural abilitiesmay justifiably reap great wealth, as other individuals pay to see him in films or at concerts. It is difficult to understand why he should not get to keep the money that they give him. It is no sufficient answer to say that entertainers are unnecessary: every private individual is the world’s foremost authority on his own needs and interests. What he does not buy, hence does not need, is useless.