Sullivan on Libertarianism and Social Conservatism

Andrew Sullivan:

I guess what I’m saying is that libertarianism – defined as an instinct to trust people to figure their own collective problems out by trial and error – is not incompatible with social conservatism from the top down and, more importantly, from the bottom up. In fact, if you believe that the truths of social conservatism endure, you should be more confident that digressions away from them will eventually return to the mean.

There’s a phrase for these complex eddies and currents in social behavior: the pursuit of happiness. Only freedom allows us to enjoy it. And its end result, if left alone, may well be more conservative than many conservatives today are able to acknowledge.

About these ads