Progress pill
Towards a new divide: freedom-coercion

Are you a cultural conservative or a political conservative?

What's your Political Leaning?

Are you a cultural conservative or a political conservative?

  • Two distinct conservatisms
  • You can be a cultural conservative and a libertarian

Two distinct conservatisms

The term "conservatism" can give rise to confusion. We must absolutely distinguish between cultural conservatism, which belongs to the realm of values, and political conservatism, which is a political philosophy that relies on imposing those values on the whole of society.
Political conservatism is an ideology, often represented in right-wing or far-right political parties. It aims to preserve established political institutions and social order, opposing any major structural upheaval. Its proponents wish to use power and law to safeguard their heritage. In France, this tradition traces back to counter-revolutionary thinkers like Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald, and more recently to Raymond Aron in the twentieth century.
Cultural conservatism, on the other hand, is a wisdom of life: the personal adherence to family, moral, aesthetic, and metaphysical values inherited from the past, whether Greco-Roman or Judeo-Christian. It is not a political philosophy. The cultural conservative believes that man, to be happy, needs elevation of the soul, spiritual values, and a certain nobility of feeling. These values are not imposed on others; they are lived as a personal and sometimes familial choice.

You can be a cultural conservative and a libertarian

These two branches, though distinct, are sometimes confused because they can be adopted simultaneously or separately. You can be a cultural conservative without being a political conservative. An individual may defend cultural traditions (family, religion, local customs) in their personal or community life, while advocating limited government that does not impose these values by law. Such a person encourages conservative norms through persuasion, education, and example, while respecting the right of others to live differently.
The culturally conservative libertarian may morally disapprove of certain behaviors, but does not advocate legal prohibition of consensual, non-aggressive actions. He may dislike such actions, oppose them, and actively discourage them, but always without resorting to the coercive force of the law.
This synthesis between libertarianism and cultural conservatism has taken the name of "paleo-libertarianism" in the United States. This current distinguishes itself from neo-libertarianism (a strand more sympathetic to egalitarianism and the social evolutions of the 1970s) by combining the rejection of the state as the institutional source of coercion with a reinforcement of traditional institutions and a preference for voluntary social structures over state authority. In other words, the paleo-libertarian does not oppose the existence of socialist or communitarian communities; what he refuses is that such communities impose their values on everyone by force of law. Two major figures incarnate this approach:
  • Murray Rothbard, an economist and philosopher who developed libertarian theory while recognizing the importance of traditional values, without ever advocating their imposition by the state.
  • Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas for decades who ran for the Republican presidential nomination. Personally conservative in his values, he consistently defended a vision of limited government respecting individual liberties. For example, Ron Paul always advised against drug use but simultaneously opposed drug prohibition. He was personally opposed to abortion yet consistently argued that the choice should be left to the federal states rather than imposed from above.
Quiz
Quiz1/5
What is cultural conservatism?