“Liberty is the cornerstone upon which the greatness of America is based. Our prosperity and status as a world leader surely will continue if we strive to foster liberty at home. The challenges before us are great, but we must never forget to appreciate the wonderful liberty we enjoy every day.” – Ron Paul
The discussion of liberty in the context of political ideology can sometimes be a sore point for conservatives. While the essense of the conservative ideal of freedom is based in the libertarian ideal of individual liberty, conservatives bristle at the idea of losing their values of community and familial sacrifice at home. Where do the bounds of community rule begin? What are their limits? Is individual liberty possible as an ideal when ones values are rooted in the inherent sacrifice to community and family?
Further, if we do not have the liberty to create community, do we really have liberty? This is the place where your hardcore, “wild west” libertarians cannot join with conservatives in the fight for freedom. Many feel that community itself is antithetical to individual liberty – but without the right to create community, we don’t really have liberty at all.
Much of the strife and confusion over this issue is mitigated by understanding how the ideal of individual liberty is supported by the ideals of family and community. We might even find that an understanding of the exact spot where these ideals and values meet is the heart of modern conservative thought. For example, the collectivist view states that our rights come from our group memberships – they claim people have “gay rights” or “women’s rights” or “ethnic rights” or any number of rights which are gleaned not from being alive, but from identification with a group. In the conservative view of individual liberty, we have the right to identify with a group, be it political or cultural, because we are individuals, and that includes the right to assemble as families, churches and communities.
We recommend this excellent article from the Future of Freedom Foundation, which discusses the role of individual liberty in civilized society:
“Modern men wished, Constant explained, “each to enjoy our own rights, each to develop our own faculties as we like best, without harming anyone…. Individual liberty, I repeat, is the true modem liberty.” As a consequence, while a concern for the preservation of political liberty was essential to the preservation of individual liberty, Constant believed that politics was a distraction from the proper affairs of free men, and these proper affairs were the peaceful pursuit and cultivation of their personal, family, commercial and voluntary societal relationships.”
Our individual ideals of “community rule” and family authority fit quite well into the framework of a nation built on the ideal of individual freedom. The collectivist ideal of group membership – and the inherent “us/them” paradigm that follows – have slowly creeped in to our Republican Party, and we now find many supposed conservatives claiming rights based on group membership, be they religious or ethnic. Certainly it is tempting, particularly when values we find morally reprehensible are at issue, to use government force to will our ideals of right and wrong on others. We must resist the temptation to use Federal Government to force our values on others, because most assuredly, that power will eventually be turned on us to force values of which we do not approve. Our personal values are best left to pursue in our own communities, and the Federal Government must be made to adhere to the rule of law in this matter if we hope to maintain our rights to practice our values and promote them by example.
Our ability to promote our values in society is grounded only in the individual right to liberty. Without the liberty to promote our values in society, it simply doesn’t matter what we think about anything… for while the power of federal force is handy while your representatives are in charge, it becomes a grave threat when this power is transferred to others who seek to use it in the same way for their own ends.
