The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1598130021 ISBN 13: 9781598130027

Verlag: Independent Institute, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Is Classical Liberalism Still Vital?

The quest for freedom has always been as much a battle of ideas as it is a popular struggle. Classical liberal pioneers such as John Locke and Adam Smith stressed the inherent worth of the individual, inalienable rights, and the benevolent consequences of the cooperative, peaceful pursuit of one’s own happiness. These ideas became the intellectual scaffolding for much of the West’s most fundamental institutions and achievements. Yet after its 19th-century high-water mark, classical liberalism lost much of its passion, focus, and popular support. Intellectual trends increasingly began to support coercive egalitarianism, empire, and central planning at the expense of individual liberty, personal responsibility, private property, natural law, and free institutions.

But the eclipse of classical liberalism by contemporary liberalism and conservatism is passing. The Challenge of Liberty restores the ideas and ideals of classical liberalism and shows how its contemporary exponents defend such pillars of free societies as individual rights, human dignity, market processes, and the rule of law.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Robert Higgs is Retired Senior Fellow in Political Economy, Founding Editor and former Editor at Large of the Independent Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation. His many books include Crisis and Leviathan; Depression, War, and Cold War; After Leviathan; Delusions of Power; Neither Liberty Nor Safety; Resurgence of the Warfare State; Taking a Stand; and multiple edited collections.

Carl P. Close is a former Research Fellow and former Executive Editor for Acquisitions and Content at the Independent Institute and former Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Starting in 1999 he wrote Independent's weekly email newsletter, The Lighthouse. He is also co-editor (with Robert Higgs) of Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy, The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today, and Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism. Prior to joining Independent Institute, he worked in various capacities in the financial services industry.

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The Challenge of Liberty

Classical Liberalism Today

By Robert Higgs, Carl P. Close

The Independent Institute

Copyright © 2006 The Independent Institute
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59813-002-7

Contents

Introduction Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close, 
PART I IS CLASSICAL LIBERALISM STILL VITAL?, 
1 The Soul of Classical Liberalism James M. Buchanan, 
2 Economics with Romance Dwight R. Lee, 
3 From Smith to Menger to Hayek: Liberalism in the Spontaneous-Order Tradition Steven Horwitz, 
4 Liberalism, Loose or Strict Anthony de Jasay, 
PART II FREEDOM AND THE MORAL SOCIETY, 
5 On the Nature of Civil Society Charles K. Rowley, 
6 Liberty, Dignity, and Responsibility: The Moral Triad of a Good Society Daniel B. Klein, 
7 Moral Capital and Commercial Society Suri Ratnapala, 
8 Liberalism and the Common Good: A Hayekian Perspective on Communitarianism Linda C. Raeder, 
PART III SECURING FREEDOM, 
9 Securing Constitutional Government: The Perpetual Challenge Suri Ratnapala, 
10 The Primacy of Property in a Liberal Constitutional Order: Lessons for China James A. Dorn, 
11 The Will to Be Free: The Role of Ideology in National Defense Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, 
12 The Inhumanity of Government Bureaucracies Hans Sherrer, 
PART IV INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS "GROUP THINK", 
13 Freedom of Religion and Public Schooling James R. Otteson, 
14 Is National Rational? Anthony de Jasay, 
15 A Critique of Group Loyalty Laurie Calhoun, 
16 The Therapeutic State: The Tyranny of Pharmacracy Thomas S. Szasz, 
PART V CLASSICAL LIBERALS RESPOND TO THEIR CRITICS, 
17 What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classical Liberalism Charles K. Rowley, 
18 The Ways of John Gray: A Libertarian Commentary Daniel B. Klein, 
19 An Original Omission? Property in Rawls's Political Thought Quentin P. Taylor, 
20 Has John Roemer Resurrected Market Socialism? Michael Wohlgemuth, 
About the Editors, 
About the Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The Soul of Classical Liberalism

James M. Buchanan

... the bizarre fact that alone among the great political currents, liberalism has no ideology.

— Anthony de Jasay

During the ideologically dark days of the 1950s, my colleague Warren Nutter often referred to "saving the books" as the minimal objective of like-minded classical liberals. F. A. Hayek, throughout a long career, effectively broadened that objective to "saving the ideas." In a certain sense, both of these objectives have been achieved: the books are still being read, and the ideas are more widely understood than they were a half-century ago.

My thesis here is that, despite these successes, we have, over more than a century, failed to "save the soul" of classical liberalism. Books and ideas are, of course, necessary, but alone they are not sufficient to ensure the viability of effectively free societies.

I hope that my thesis provokes interest along several dimensions. I shall try to respond in advance to the obvious questions. What do I mean by the soul of classical liberalism? And what is intended when I say that there has been a failure to save that soul during the whole socialist epoch? Most important, what can, and should, be done now by those of us who call ourselves classical liberals?

SCIENCE, SELF-INTEREST, AND SOUL

George H. W. Bush, sometime during his presidency, derisively referred to "that vision thing" when someone sought to juxtapose his position with that of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. He meant the "shining city on a hill," the Puritan image that Reagan invoked to call attention to the American ideal; that image, and others like it, were foreign to Bush's whole mind-set. He simply did not understand what Reagan meant and totally failed to appreciate why the image resonated so successfully in public attitudes. In a sense, we can say that Ronald Reagan was tapping into and expressing a part of the American soul beyond George Bush's ken.

The example is helpful even if it applies to a specific, politically organized, temporally restricted, and territorially defined society. The critical distinction between those whose window on reality emerges from a comprehensive vision of what might be and those whose window is pragmatically limited to current sense perceptions is made clear in the comparison. We may extend and apply a similar comparison to the attitudes of and approaches taken by various spokesmen and commentators to the ex-tended order of social interaction described under the rubric of classical liberalism.

Note that I do not go beyond those persons who profess adherence to the policy stances associated with the ideas emergent from within this framework, policy stances summarized as support for limited government, constitutional democracy, free trade, private property, rule of law, open franchise, and federalism. My focus is on the differences among these adherents, and specifically on the differences between those whose advocacy stems from an understanding of the very soul of the integrated ideational entity and those whose advocacy finds its origins primarily in the results of scientific inquiry and the dictates of enlightened self-interest.

The larger thesis is that classical liberalism, as a coherent set of principles, has not secured, and cannot secure, sufficient public acceptability when its vocal advocates are limited to the second group. Science and self-interest, especially as combined, do indeed lend force to any argument. But a vision of an ideal, over and beyond science and self-interest, is necessary, and those who profess membership in the club of classical liberals have failed singularly in their neglect of this requirement. Whether or not particular proponents find their ultimate motivations in such a vision is left for each, individually, to decide.

I have indirectly indicated the meaning of my title. Dictionary definitions of soul include "animating or vital principle" and "moving spirit," attributes that would seem equally applicable to persons and to philosophical perspectives. Perhaps it is misleading, however, to refer to "saving" the soul so defined, whether applied to a person or a perspective. Souls are themselves created rather than saved, and the absence of an animating principle implies only the presence of some potential for such creation rather than a latent actuality or spent force.

The work of Adam Smith, along with that of his philosophical predecessors and successors, created a comprehensive and coherent vision of an order of human interaction that seemed to be potentially approachable in reality, at least sufficiently so to offer the animating principle or moving spirit for constructive institutional change. At the same time, and precisely because it is and remains potentially rather than actually attainable, this vision satisfies a generalized human yearning for a supraexistent ideal. Classical liberalism shares this quality with its archrival, socialism, which also offers a comprehensive vision that transcends both the science and self-interest that its sometime advocates claimed as characteristic features. That is to say, both classical liberalism and socialism have souls, even if those motivating spirits are categorically and dramatically different.

Few would dispute the suggestion that an animating principle is central to the whole socialist perspective. But many professing classical liberals have seemed reluctant to acknowledge the existence of what I have...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Independent Institute
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1598130021
• ISBN 13: 9781598130027
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 464
• Herausgeber: Higgs Robert, Close Carl P.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; AA Utrecht; 3584; Niederlande