The Brothers Austrian

If spending is the new conservatism, please label me a liberal. I consider myself a liberal in the classical sense of the word. Below is excerpt from Amity Shales “The Forgotten Man”, an absolute must read.

On August 3rd 1938 George Gallup, the pollster reported that Willkie would have the edge over Roosevelt if the election was held that day…Back home in Elwood, before a crowd of 200,000 and with weather 102 degrees in the shade, Willkie asked the public to think about what it meant to be liberal . Was being liberal merely a left progressive? OR was a liberal someone that believed in liberalism in the classic sense, in the primacy of the individual and his freedom? Willkie railed against Roosevelt’s “philosophy of distributed scarcity.” …and he argued, speaking of both the United States and Europe, it a was a weakness ”that people reached for dictators and concentrated government power…”

Currently it seems to me that both Democrats and Republicans have both headed down the path of concentrated government power and away from liberialism and ultimately liberty. Classical liberalism is making a comeback and has been an undertone to the recent tea parties. The libertarian movement, which is ultiminately one in the same with Austrian economic policy , is not a conservative undertaking in my eyes (as most pundits seem to think), rather the movement embodies what it truly means to be “liberal”.

MisesBeliever Uncategorized