Probing the Libertarian Mind

John Horvat II has a post at American Thinker with the above title where he delves into David Boaz’s book The Libertarian Mind — and clearly Horvat is not impressed with what he finds. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Boaz’s primer on libertarianism is all about the individual and stays micro-focused on choices and associations that make each person happy. Its central tenet is simple enough: “We should be free to live our lives as we choose as long as we respect the equal rights of others.”

The tenet is not problematic in a world where some kind of strong cultural heritage and moral framework exists. In fact, Boaz traces pre-libertarian origins to medieval times where Christianity introduced notions of human dignity, representative government and common law. Inside the close-knit medieval society, choices were maximized within the context of family, faith and community that led to an amazing development of freedom.

However, the Protestant reformation began the long fragmentation of the unity and moral framework of Christendom. The libertarian central tenet comes to be interpreted according to the Enlightenment boilerplate of denying man’s fallen nature and affirming the supremacy of reason. It easily degenerates into the ethos of what Brad S. Gregory so expressively called the “Kingdom of Whatever.”

Horvat concludes that what libertarians are pushing is

a bland secular society officially stripped of its spiritual elements, from which, to recall the words of Irving Kristol, we can expect “no high nobility of purpose, no selfless devotion to transcendental ends, no awe-inspiring heroism.”

Returning to a moral order allows the maximum human freedom and is a better choice than entering the Kingdom of Whatever.

Read the entire article here.

Image credit: difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com.