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