What conservatives and liberals often have in common is their opposition to certain forms of dirigiste and tendentially collectivist political measures. However, this is driven by very different motives, as elucidated by Friedrich A. von Hayek. The difference is still of high relevance today.
The French Revolution was a complex historical event, and its intellectual foundations were likewise complex. It is a mistake to reduce it to the Jacobin terror. It was a liberal revolution whose ideals sprang from the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition.
Inflation is profoundly socially unjust. Its causes lie above all in an expansionary monetary policy, and this must be stopped. If policymakers want to prevent the inevitable recession that will follow, they will only make the problems worse.
Since Putin’s war against Ukraine, the West once again has a clear enemy. Many now recall Carl Schmitt, who saw the essence of the political in the distinction between friend and enemy. But that is too simplistic.
An overview of Ukrainian history shows why the fight against the Russian aggressor is a matter of either supporting or not supporting the continued existence of Ukraine. The accusation that this is a form of genocide seems justified in this light.
Individual freedom by itself is not a political good. Classical liberalism understood the state not only as a threat, but always as a guarantor of freedom. To this end, it can also restrict freedoms, as in the case of fighting a pandemic. Everything is a question of proportionality—and about this some people have justified doubts.
Did the rich get rich by robbing the poor? Theology and Catholic social teaching have long known that wealth generation is not a zero-sum game, but a process from which everyone benefits.
The “primacy of politics” over the logic of the economy is repeatedly and categorically demanded. Insofar as such efforts undermine the private property-based power of disposition over the means of production, it is the first step in the direction of the “other socialism.”
