For the sake of clarity I shall begin with what the two minds would appear to have in common.First is common dislike of the intervention of government, especially national, centralized government, in the economic, social, political, and intellectual lives of citizens. Edmund Burke was quite as adamant in this regard (see his strictures on French centralization and nationalization in the Reflections) as Mill or any other classical liberal was or would be, and that position has been maintained to the present day. Doubtless conservatives are more willing than libertarians to see the occasional necessity of suspension or abrogation of this position toward national government-as with respect to national defense, which I shall come back to later, but in general, over a substantial period of time, conservatism may be seen quite as clearly as libertarianism as a philosophy anchored in opposition to statism. Certainly by comparison with what today passes for liberalism, progressivism, populism, and social democracy or socialism, there is very little difference to be found between libertarians and conservatives in respect to attitudes toward the political state.Second, and again by comparison with the other groups I have just cited, there is a great deal of consensus among conservatives and libertarians as to what legitimate equality in society should consist of. Such equality is, in a word, legal. Again we may hark back to Burke and Mill on this matter. For one as much as the other, equality before the law was vital to the flourishing of individual freedom. I see nothing in the contemporary writings of libertarians and conservatives to suggest that anything more than an occasional nuance or emphasis separates the two groups when it comes to equality. There is equal condemnation of what has come to be called equality of result, of social condition, or income or wealth.
via www.imaginativeconservative.org
This is an exceptionally good piece that popped up in my Facebook feed today. Robert Nisbet actually wrote this piece in 1980, but like so many good philosophical pieces, the message is pretty timeless.
