American conservatives have always supported the politics of freedom and virtue. But which comes first? Cold War conservatism posited a “fusion” of order and liberty. Politics can promote man’s ennoblement in civil society, but only indirectly. Liberty is the essential goal of politics.
This consensus is now under siege. A new cohort of right-wing thinkers contends that liberty has devolved into license, and the only way to revitalize society is to make virtue, not freedom, the object of our politics. Patrick Deneen, a political philosopher at Notre Dame, argues the culprit was America’s Faustian bargain with Enlightenment liberalism.
Ropke was a classical liberal in politics, a capitalist in economics, and a Christian humanist in arts and letters. This is precisely the combination of scientific economics and artful political economy that we need to learn, to borrow a phrase from Deirdre McCloskey, “how to be human, though an economist.” We can’t shackle our market-based economy and expect to remain free and prosperous. At the same time, we shouldn’t demand markets give us merchandise and meaning in equal parts.
“I speak as a liberal,” Ropke asserts, in trusting “the spontaneous and free co-operation of the people through the market, price, and competition.” Property rights and the rule of law are essential for promoting human dignity. But healthy markets are not sufficient for a healthy society. We also need “widely dispersed” property, “genuine communities, from the family upward,” and “counterweights” to all-encompassing competition.
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