I
ran across this quote at The Imaginative Conservative, one of my favorite internet sites. It’s worth quoting here because so much of it
is at the core of conservative governing principles.
So
much of the contemporary right-of-center governing coalition is made up of a
coming together of traditional conservatives with libertarians. The coalition is based on agreement on the general
scope of government (less is better) and on macroeconomics (free markets are a
good thing). There is even a book out by
Charles C. W. Cooke titled The
Conservatarian Manifesto, which draws out what this overlapping nature of
these two different philosophies. I
haven’t read it, but you can read a review of it here.
But
this quote I think draws the dividing line between conservatives and
libertarians. Ordered liberty requires the
power of government to maintain order and a citizenry filled with virtue, of
which can be only truly obtained by the values of the Judeo-Christian religions. That last one might be a bit
controversial. I’m not going to expand
on it here.
“The only liberty that is
valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with
order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in
good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.”
- Edmund Burke
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