John Medaille wrote:
>
> Hayek (and Mises), on the other hand, were proto-neo-conservatives: 
> they combined an extreme form of economic liberalism with a rather 
> rigid social conservatism. 


Could we get some textual support for this claim John?  I see nowhere in 
either author's work that would suggest that they would use the law to 
enforce their own beliefs about the importance of particular moral 
rules.  (I assume that is what is meant by a "rigid social conservatism" 
and the link to neo-conservatism.)  Both Hayek and Mises refused to call 
themselves conservatives and their generally classical liberal view of a 
limited state saw little to no role for it in regulating conduct that 
did not harm others (think Mill here). 

For example, here's Hayek in Law, Legislation, and Liberty v. 2 (p. 57):

"A wholly different question is that of whether the existence of 
strongly and widely held moral convictions in any matter is by itself a 
justification for their enforcement.  The answers seems to be that 
within a spontaneous order the use of coercion can be justified only 
where this is necessary to secure the private domain of the individual 
against interference by others, but that coercion should not be used to 
interfere in that private sphere where this is not necessary to protect 
others.  Law serves a social order, i.e., the relations between 
individuals, and actions which affect nobody but the individuals who 
perform them ought not to be subject to the control of law, however 
strongly they may be regulated by custom and morals.  The importance of 
this freedom of the individual within his protected domain, and 
everywhere his actions do not conflict with the aims of the actions of 
others, rests mainly on the fact that the development of custom and 
morals is an experimental process, in a sense in which the enforcement 
of uniform rules of law cannot be...."

And then later, in The Fatal Conceit (p 51, authorship issues noted):

"Limits of space as well as insufficient competence forbid me to deal in 
this book with the second of the traditional objects of atavistic 
reaction that I have just mentioned:  the family.  I ought however at 
least to mention that I believe that new faculty knowledge has in some 
measure deprived traditional rules of sexual morality of some of their 
foundations, and that it seems likely that in this area substantial 
changes are bound to occur."

Neither of those sound to me like the words of someone best described as 
being a "rather rigid social conservative." 

It is very frustrating to see this kinds of sweeping claims made about 
thinkers' ideas without any textual evidence to support them and when 
other evidence exists that would suggest the contrary.  It's very 
possible that Mises and Hayek do not fit in the neat little 
pre-fabricated ideological boxes ("proto-neo-conservative") that we have 
at our disposal in the early 21st century, and that understanding what 
they believed might require deep engagement with the texts, rather than 
the easy categories we have to hand.

Steve Horwitz