Socialists of the Soul: Conservatives Vs. Social Liberalism

Marxists liked to condemn market liberalism. They called the lack of centralized control of the market economic anarchism. The socialists of the soul, our modern day conservatives, condemn social liberalism. The lack of centralized state control of morality, they argue, will lead to license.

But what is it that prevents liberty from turning into license?

First, social liberalism is merely liberalism applied to social issues and liberalism never argued that anyone is free to do anything, anywhere, anytime they please. Liberalism has also had important provisions, often ignored by conservative critics. Liberalism says that the freedom of each man is restricted by the equal liberty, or equal rights, of others. Herbert Spencer said that the “liberty of each, limited by the like liberty of all, is the rule in conformity with which society must be organized.”

But what does it mean? Thomas Jefferson wanted: "A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouths of labor the bread it has earned—this is the sum of good government."

The first limit to liberty is the rights of others. No one may injure another. No one may justly deprive another of their rights to their life, liberty or property.

Two New Projects That Need Your Help

As you may know, the Storey Institute is a non-profit organization. Our staff are volunteers, and in fact, help fund a great deal of our work. We have no wealthy benefactors behind us—but if you are one, we're here. There are numerous projects we are trying to work on, but lack of funds prevents it. Two are important.

First, we are doing research into the White Rose organization, which was a resistance movement to Nazism  in Germany. Several of these brave young people were beheaded by the Nazis because of their denunciation of the inhumanity of the Nazi regime. In order to publish the essays we have in mind, we need to obtain some research material currently not in our library. Approximate costs will be $250 to outfit our research library with this material. There are several areas of the White Rose that we wish to explore in particular to serve as reminders of what it means to fight for individual liberty.

Secondly, our main computer's hard disk crashed. This is quite serious as much of the work we have done on new book projects was on the computer. We are having to pay to recover the data and replace the hard disk. This repair will severely damage our cash flow. This is a bad time of year financially under normal conditions, but to have this expense hit us can be fatal. We can't afford to fix it, but we can't afford to not fix it. We don't have a confirmed cost but estimates to recover the data and replace the hard disk are in the range of $600.

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Donations are particularly urgent at this time.