INTERESTING: A DEROGATORY COMMENT ABOUT LIBERTARIANS Yesterday, I went to a cons

INTERESTING: A DEROGATORY COMMENT ABOUT LIBERTARIANS

Yesterday, I went to a conservative political event and listened to two candidates. One of the comments they made was that the group was for ‘conservatives not libertarians’. (Really.) Which was followed by another giggle over a quote by a libertarian candidate — the implication being that libertarians will never get elected.

Now I’m aware that libertarians and conservatives argue from different frameworks, and I”m aware that those frameworks are intellectual and economic on the libertarian end, and emotional and moral-historical-allegorical on the conservative end. But I”m also aware that conservatives have failed to produce an intellectual program, or a policy program to counter the progressive left. Most progress at resisting the left has come not from conservatives, but from the libertarians.

It’s also ironic that the Village Voice can call me a member of the ‘Hard Right’ yet I’m not ‘right’ enough to get into a conservative political meeting.

I’m working on providing conservatives an intellectual framework, so that libertarians and conservatives can cooperate, and so that we libertarians can leverage some of the conservative movement.

But I am also struck by the vision of how difficult it will be to speak about political ideas in intellectual terms to conservatives.

I mean, libertarians tend to be ‘smart folks’. And Like democrats, conservatives all too often are not.

The thought leadership battle is between libertarians and liberals. The democrats and conservatives are just a measure of how well each side’s intellectuals do at convincing the middle of the curve.