Political conservatives can never be pro-liberty, because liberty ultimately clashes with conservative goals. https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/liberty-upsets-patternsand-conservatism
@arossp Doesn't this kind of depend on what you think happens in the absence of government? A lot of libertarians (the laity anyway) assume that with government out of the way, natural hierarchies will be re-established and the powerful will be able to put their lessers in their natural place, which is sort of the essence of conservatism.
@fakegreekgrill Yes, but instituting hierarchies of domination would mean a decrease in liberty for those subject to them. Libertarianism as I'm using it in these essays is about maximizing liberty, not (necessarily) just minimizing the state. So if it turned out that anarchism led to slavery, say, then "libertarianism as liberty maximization" would reject anarchism. So my point is that liberty thought of in that way, and not just as shrinking the state, is incompatible with conservatism.
@arossp @fakegreekgrill this is precisely the argument that leads lots of utilitarian/consequentialist libertarians to minarchism, though ironically a lot of these are also on the cultural right…
