26th
It is not a coincidence that nativists who hyperventilate about immigration’s effect on American language and attitudes, isolationists who fear that trade agreements will dissolve American sovereignty, culture warriors who regard gay marriage and evolution as a mortal threat to American values, and technological Luddites who rail against advances in bioengineering because they tamper with their idea of nature have all found a comfortable home within the conservative party. It is hard to imagine, say, the Freedom Party becoming a ready forum for such ideas.
But to truly become the party of liberty, conservatives have to accept liberty not just in name but also in attitude. They can’t be the party of liberty if they reject the consequences of liberty. This means they have to internalize the notion that leaving individuals free to incrementally revise existing institutions in response to shifting human needs adds to—not subtracts from—the overall social well-being. To put it in economics terms, liberty produces positive—not negative—externalities. It doesn’t destroy existing culture, community, and country, but rather produces what Hayek called “spontaneous order,” which, without bloodshed, allows the old and decrepit ways to be replaced by new and better ones. In short, they have to unabashedly welcome progress and finally purge the ghost of William F. Buckley, who keeps telling them to “stand athwart history and cry stop.”
