# The Movement (May 1979) **URL:** **By** David Theroux **Published:** May 1, 1979 --- “As this meeting of the Philadelphia Society showed, the conservative clock is running out.” At the 1977 national meeting of the Philadelphia Society—a national conservative group at whose meetings intellectuals and businessmen mix to discuss their mutual interests—historian Stephen Tonsor addressed the assembly of faithful conservative highbrows on the American Right’s growing concern over the growth of libertarianism in America: “A\[n\] … important factor in what I believe to be the decline in the level and energy of intellectual theorizing is the impact of what has generally been called “libertarianism” on the quality and range of conservative concerns … Libertarianism as a _Weltanschauung_ positively prevents thought by reducing the range of options for dealing with post-industrial society to a few threadbare platitudes, which libertarian intellectuals recite superstitiously at every occasion … The major consequence of this crisis is the loss of _civitas_, that spontaneous willingness to obey the law, to respect the rights of others, to forego the temptations of private enrichment at the expense of the public ideal. … Instead, each man goes his own way, pursuing his private vices, which can be indulged only at the expense of public benefits.” Since World War II, the shattered strands of the radical classical liberal tradition have reemerged into a powerful new intellectual and political force in the United States. Today, libertarianism is asserting itself as one of the most challenging new perspectives in philosophy, economics, history, sociology, and other disciplines. Libertarian issues and the Libertarian Party are shifting political debate from its once sterile conservative-liberal polarity to the more substantial polarity of individual freedom versus government power and class rule. In recent years, it has been hard not to suspect that conservatives are in fact concerned with the amazing growth of libertarianism, because of the simple fact that it is individual freedom itself that they most fear. The conservative vision of a closed society relies upon the use of state power to crush diversity and social change. To the conservative, individual human lives are insignificant by comparison with the more “divine” pronouncements and desires of “throne and altar.” In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, individualism was a revolutionary creed pitted against conservative caste and privilege, feudalism, mercantilism and war. Today libertarianism poses no less a threat to such cherished conservative institutions as militarism and the Cold War, the FBI and CIA, the vice squad and Calvinist social regimentation, and the stereotyping of men and women in the molds of a pre-industrial era. And this libertarian challenge will simply not disappear, despite the efforts of the conservative guard to discredit it. Within recent years, an increasingly prevalent barrage of invective and distortion has appeared in the pages of the _National Review_, _The American Spectator_ and other conservative journals. In addition, Edith Efron, Anthony Harrigan, Kevin Phillips and other columnists have attempted to smear libertarian ideas and institutions. But the momentum of liberty and the failure of statism has proved too overwhelming at the gates of conservatism. Hence, the conservative guard was recently forced to invite libertarians to participate in the 1979 National Meeting of the Philadelphia Society, held in Chicago on April 6 and 7. Society President Ernest van den Haag had apparently hoped to portray libertarian radicalism as naive, unfounded, and antisocial, in the special program devoted to “Conservatism and Libertarianism”; many participants saw the meeting as an attempt to discredit libertarian ideas. But that is not what happened. Not only was the libertarian challenge proved fully reasonable and relevant as a political alternative, but it was the shallowness of the _conservative_ alternative which found itself unmasked. Beginning with a talk Friday evening by sociologist Robert Nisbet, author of _The Twilight of Authority_, the program centered around the standard critiques of libertarian theory. Murray Rothbard’s timely and discriminating talk Saturday morning set the pace for the libertarian response with a point-by-point refutation of the conservative complaints. From here, the program’s debate shifted toward the libertarian camp, with only token opposition from arch neoconservatives Walter Berns (American Enterprise Institute), William Kristol (_American Spectator_) and M. J. Sobran, Jr. (_National Review_). During the course of the meeting, libertarians Williamson Evers, Tibor R. Machan and David Friedman contributed exceptionally fine presentations. The audience of nearly 300—more than twice the 1977 program’s attendance—was clearly affected by the blind faith exhibited by the conservative ideologues, who, despite a firm defeat in panel after panel, remained undaunted in their devotion to militarism, statism, the morality of Elizabethan England, and an American world empire. Yet the blatant hypocrisy of conservatism was stripped bare with every call for more state power in the name of “virtue” and “civility.” The most pathetic illustration of conservative myth-making involved R. Emmett (“H. L.”) Tyrell, Jr., editor of _The American Spectator_, and his presentation of the “Worst Book of the Year.” Beginning with a feeble critique of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s _Robert Kennedy and His Times_, Tyrrell made a mockery of even this highly conservative audience by launching an astonishing call for all-out war mobilization against the Soviet Union and an unqualified defense of the CIA’s world-wide covert and paramilitary operations. The utter obscenity of the situation was made all the more grotesque by the fact that Tyrrell is billed by the conservative establishment as the heir to the great H. L. Mencken, with his unique wit, perceptions, and biting social commentary. In fact, the clown Tyrrell represents the myth of the American Right. Devoid of reason, economic or political relevance or constituency, the conservatives have desperately opted for an identity in American politics. In the past, their role lay in _opposing_ liberalism, while offering no alternative direction themselves. Conservatives have had the money, the leadership, and the organizations, but the culmination of decades of this charade is a bumbling red-neck-in-white-collar embarassment from Bloomington, Indiana. With the recent advent of “neoconservatism” (the “New Deal Right”), the conservatives have attempted to attach themselves to what appears to be a new formulation of their cherished vision of the authoritarian society. Unlike the conservative quest for power, the libertarian movement offers a new direction of hope for the future of the human race. As this meeting of the Philadelphia Society showed, the conservative clock is running out. For the future of humanity, libertarians are the only guide. _Guest columnist David J. Theroux is Director of Academic Affairs for the Cato Institute. Milton Mueller will return next month._