Meyer var en fyndig mand. I en artikel i National Review i 1969 skriver han, formentlig i irritation over Rothbard og Karl Hess' flippede flirten med hippierne (læs Doherty om dette), følgende kloge ord af betydelig relevans også for forståelsen af de mange flippede danske libertarianere, der reelt er De Radikale + frie markeder:

The underlying issue between conservative libertarianism and libertine libertarianism is at bottom a totally opposed view of the nature and destiny of men. The libertines ... are ideologues first and last. That is, they reject reality as it has been studies, grasped, understood, and acted upon in five thousand years or so of civilized history, and pose and abstract construction as the basis of action. They would replace God's creations of this multifarious, complex world in which we live and substitute it for their own creation, simple, neat, and inhuman -- as inhuman as the blueprints of the bulldozing engineer.

 The place of freedom in the spiritual economy of men is a high one indeed, but it is specific and not absolute. By its very nature, it cannot be an end of men's existence. Its meaning is essentially freedom from coercion, but that, important as it is, cannot be an end. It is empty of goal or norm. Its function is to relieve men of external coercion so that they may freely seek their good.

It is for this reason that libertarian conservatives champion freedom as the end of the political order's politics, which is, at its core, the disposition of force in society, will, if not directed towards this end, create massive distortions and obstacles in men's search for their good. But that said, an equally important question remains. Free, how are men to use their freedom? The libertine answers that they should do what they want. Sometimes, in the line of the philosophers of the French Revolution, he arbitrarily posits the universal benevolence of human beings. He presumes that if everyone does whatever he wants, everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But whether so optimistically qualified or not, his answer ignores the hard facts of history. For it is only in civilization that men have begun to rise towards their potentiality; and civilization is a fragile growth, constantly menaced by the dark forces that suck man back towards his brutal beginnings.

The essence of civilization, however, is tradition: no single generation of men can of itself discover the proper ends of human existence. At its best, as understood by contemporary American conservatism, the traditionalist view accepts political freedom, accepts the role of reason and innovation and criticism; but it insists, if civilization is to be preserved, that reason operate within tradition and that political freedom is only effectively achieved when the bulwarks of civilizational order are preserved.

Libertine libertarianism would shatter those bulwarks. In its opposition to the maintenance of defenses against Communism, its puerile sympathy with the rampaging mobs of campus and ghetto, its contempt for the humdrum wisdom of the great producing majority, it is directed towards the destruction of the civilizational order which is the only real foundation of a real world for the freedom it espouses. The first victim of the mobs let loose by the weakening of civilizational restraint will be, as it has always been, freedom—for anyone, anywhere.

Krabasken har netop genlæst Hayeks fine essay fra 1945, "Individualism: True and False," som burde være pligtlæsning for alle propelhats- (eller måske snarere klaphats-) liberalister (tænk De hvide Giraffer). Essayet er desværre ikke online (så vidt jeg kan se), men findes i Hayeks Individualism and Economic Order, som under alle omstændigheder er en investering værd.  Som bekendt laver Hayek en skelnen i essayet mellem den "sande individualisme" som går tilbage til Locke, Mandeville, Hume, Ferguson, Smith og Burke, og betoner organisk fremvoksede traditioner, og den "falske," som er rationalistisk,  af kontinental oprindelse, betoner rationelt design og den sociale kontrakt, fornuft, og ser politik som et spørgsmål om deduktion fra "first principles".

Hayeks distinktion gælder klassisk-liberale/konservative  i forhold til mere eller mindre socialistiske samfundsingeniører. Men selvom denne distinktion stadig er relevant, har den fået en større bredde. For de "sande individualister," der lægger vægt på menneskelig fejlbarlighed, ikke mindst i politikken, og som derfor betoner inkrementalisme og betydningen af traditioner som ledetråde, står idag overfor en ny generation af "falske individualister."  De er ikke socialister, men de deler socialisternes tyrkertro på rationalitet. De er som regel ateister, og kerer sig i det hele taget ikke meget om traditionelle værdier. De er ofte revolutionære.  De er libertarianere!

Der er efter alt at dømme at tale om en storm i et glas vand, hvor Paul højst har udvist kritisérbar uagtsomhed ved ikke i tilstrækkelig grad at kontrollere indholdet i sit newsletter. Men virkelig problematisk er det, at sagen -- og Pauls kandidatur og person i det hele taget -- er i gang med at splitte den libertarianske bevægelse. 

Her er Tim Cavanaugh om "the Ron Paul controversy" med en karakteristisk reaktion:

... it is weird that a philosophy of non-aggression, ownership of self and property, individual choice, free trade and so on is so attractive to people whose greatest passsion is arguing that Abraham Lincoln was the foulest butcher in American history, that black people are stupider than white people, that Mexicans are naturally inclined to favor a welfare state, that our culture is being undermined by the feminization of boys, and so on. Folks of this stripe are present in not-inconsequential numbers in both small-l and big-L libertarianism. I can understand why drag queens, pot smokers, gun lovers and entrepreneurs are libertarians. I comprehend why localist, traditionalist, Chestertonian Christian types gravitate toward the movement.

But why are Confederate apologists attracted to a philosophy that draws so much of its thinking from either abolitionists (Lysander Spooner, Robert Green Ingersoll, Henry David Thoreau and others) or market-based freedom types (Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, etc.)? Why is Lincoln — whose one-liner "As I would not be a slave so I would not be a master" could easily be the motto of the Libertarian party — not given the same warts-and-all historical courtesy that is extended to Thomas Jefferson? Why does Woodrow Wilson's support for Jim Crow laws not get more attention among the many other particulars that cause libertarians to view him (rightly in my view) as the worst president of the twentieth century? Why the fascination with how different ethnic groups score on standardized tests if you believe in an individualistic, non-averaged universe?

Endnu et eEksempel: Her er venstre-libertarianeren Steven Horwitz om Paul som han absolut ikke kan lide. Også Virgina Postrel, som driver dynamist-blog'en har angrebet Paul.  Den aktuelle ballade er imidlertid kun symptomatisk for en dybtgående splittelse i amerikansk libertarianisme, der synes at blive større for hver dag. På den ene side står venstre-libertarianere som Howitz og Postrel, og på den anden de såkaldte "paleo-libertarianere" som hylder traditionelle værdier, er fundamentalt "bourgeois" og som står mere i gæld til "the old right" end til den fusion af ungdomsoprør og libertarianisme, der prægede bevægelsen i 197o'erne og som vel totalt set stadig dominerer. 

• James Bartholomew. The Welfare State We Are In.  En manende dokumentation af, hvordan den britiske velfærdsstat har ledt til konsekvenser, der dels er helt utilsigtede, dels overordentlig destruktive. Dækker hospitalsvæsenet, uddannelse, og meget andet.  Et projekt som CEPOS passende kunne efterligne her i DK.
• Alt af Theodore Dalrymple. Her er der tale om en konservativ "social critic". Lavmælt men indtrængende rapporterer Dalrymple fra sin dagligdag som fattig- og fængselslæge. Meget konkret dokumentation af velfærdsstatens nedbrydning af almindelig moral.
• Paul Gottfried. Conservatism in America, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt, og After Liberalism.  Gottfried er totalt ukendt i Danmark. Der er imidlertid tale om en konservativ sværvægter, der i de nævnte bøger giver en del af det mere abstrakte ideologiske grundlag for for eksempel Bartholomew og Dalrymples arbejder.

The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives tend to take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man's nature. The Conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires. What is more, these needs and desires reflect the superior side of man's nature, and thus take precedence over his economic wants. Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man's spiritual nature as the concern of conservative philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand -- in the name of a concern for "human beings" -- regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society. (p. 4-5).

Stærke ord der går lige til kernen, og som også moderne propelhatsliberalister burde annamme.  Bogen er forsynet med et fint lille forord af Pat Buchanan, der dels er selvbiografisk (Goldwater "vakte" Buchanan som så mange andre), dels redegør for Goldwaters betydning for det senere amerikanske højre.