How About Standing For Liberty?

A wonderful article by Shikha Dalmia at Forbes online, discussing how the Republican party should rebuild (or at least refocus) on liberty as a unifying concept:

So what should the Grand Old Party do to resurrect itself enough to mount some semblance of resistance to the advancing Democratic juggernaut? The answer is that it needs intellectual coherence around a powerful idea, and that idea should be liberty. This is a principle that is both strong enough to intellectually moor the party in the way that those who want a "purer" GOP desire--and grand enough to appeal to a broad swath of the population, as those who advocate a more Big Tent approach recommend...

But to truly become the party of liberty, conservatives have to accept liberty not just in name but also in attitude. They can't be the party of liberty if they reject the consequences of liberty. This means they have to internalize the notion that leaving individuals free to incrementally revise existing institutions in response to shifting human needs adds to--not subtracts from--the overall social well-being. To put it in economics terms, liberty produces positive--not negative--externalities. It doesn't destroy existing culture, community and country, but rather produces what Hayek called "spontaneous order," which, without bloodshed, allows the old and decrepit ways to be replaced by new and better ones. In short, they have to unabashedly welcome progress and finally purge the ghost of William F. Buckley, who keeps telling them to "stand athwart history and cry stop."

What a concept! The party of Lincoln and Reagan once again standing for the single most powerful unifying idea in American history, LIBERTY, and throwing off some of the burdens associated with late 20th Century conservatism: religion, culture warfare, and exclusion.

I'm reminded of this quote from a conservative's Conservative, Barry Goldwater:

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests, " I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."