Saturday, November 12, 2005

A new take on tradition, what exactly are we conserving?

There has been much talk about the great conservative crack-up. Here's an attempt from Lexington Green over at the the ChicagoBoyz blog to recast the tension between dynamist libertarianism and traditional conservativism. He thinks the answer lies in the exploration of what's called the Anglosphere developed by author Jim Bennet

The critical contribution that Jim Bennett is making is providing a unifying framework to do re-found both conservatism and libertarianism. He is taking [traditionalists'] insights and a bunch of other stuff, identifying a genuine tradition which really is ancient, common to us all, at the core of what makes us what we are, that has caused the freedom and prosperity we value. These ideas are not really new, but they needed to be repackaged and re-presented.

This means that the question of "what do conservatives want to conserve" can be coherently answered, finally. The question ?what liberties do libertarians value? can be answered better, by showing where the liberties they value came from, and how they they got here.

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