Libertarians provide a very interesting challenge to the study of variations on a central model. Libertarians see themselves as forming a separate political category, neither liberal nor conservative, but something unto itself. An analysis in terms of variations on central models suggests that their view of themselves is not entirely accurate.
Suppose we start by looking at the central conservative model. Consider a variant on that model that is pragmatic in the extreme, that is, think of a conservative who sees the pursuit of self-interest as the principal end and conservative morality (self-discipline, self-reliance, etc.) as a means to that end. Someone who is extremely pragmatic will be willing to sacrifice aspects of conservative morality if it interferes with the pursuit of self-interest. Now imagine such a pragmatic conservative having the moral focus: noninterference by the government.
So far as I can tell, this is what a 'libertarian' is, namely an extremely pragmatic conservative whose moral focus is on noninterference by the government. In short, a libertarian is two steps away from a mainline conservative.
Such a person will believe that free enterprise should be as unrestricted as possible and that people should be self-disciplined and self-reliant in order to pursue their self-interest. He will be very much against social programs, taxation, government support of education and the arts, government regulation, and gun control. But the libertarian’s moral focus on noninterference by the government and his extreme support of the pursuit of self-interest will make him a radical advocate of civil liberties. He will oppose any governmental restrictions on free speech, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, and so on. He will probably support the rights of women, gays, and minorities to equal opportunity, but be strongly against affirmative action on the grounds that it gives individuals things that they haven’t individually earned. He will most likely be pro-choice on abortion, but not believe that the government should pay for abortions. And since he gives priority to the pursuit of self-interest over the rest of the conservative moral system, he will not have the moralism of mainline conservatives; the seven deadly sins may not be sins for him.
A good example would be drug addiction, which, to many libertarians, would not in itself be immoral. Libertarians commonly favor the decriminalization of drug use and sale on the grounds of maximum noninterference by the government and maximum pursuit of self-interest. They frequently argue that government interference in the drug trade has artificially driven up the price of drugs, brought criminals into the drug market, and forced drug addicts to turn to crime to support their habits. Decriminalization, they argue, would allow honest businesses to pursue the drug trade, bring in competition, lower prices enormously, not force users to turn to crime, and not make it profitable enough for major crime syndicates to bother with.
The libertarian’s advocacy of civil liberties will bring him into overlap with liberals on many positions. But the source of that advocacy comes from a different place – from a conservative model with minimally restricted pursuit of self-interest and a moral focus on noninterference. The advocacy of civil liberties in a Nurturant Parent morality comes from the nurturance model, especially the concern with empathy, with fair distribution, with happiness, with development of one’s potential, and so on. Empathy and fair distribution are not libertarian concerns.
The fact that libertarians and political liberals both strongly advocate civil liberties is a superficial similarity. They do so for very different reasons, out of different moral impulses, with a very different spirit. Though two steps away from mainline conservatism, libertarians are conservatives in three very important respects: (1) Their concern with noninterference by the government comes directly out of conservatism, out of the idea that the government is inappropriately paternalistic, that mature citizens should be left to take care of themselves. (2) They preserve primary conservative moral priorities: self-discipline, self-reliance, and individualism, rather than the cultivated interdependence required by the nurturance model. (3) They do not give priority to the values of Nurturant Parent morality: empathy, nurturance, interdependence, fairness, and responsibility for others.
There are, of course, lots of variations possible within the category of libertarians. One would no more expect uniformity there than in any other radial category. But variation within the ranks of libertarians is not random. One source of variation is the degree to which a given libertarian preserves conservative moral positions; for example, some libertarians might echo the conservatives’ aversion to drugs because drugs arise from, and perpetuate, moral weakness. In general, the variation among types of libertarians reflects their conceptual links with conservatism. We don’t tend to find libertarians supporting welfare or the progressive income tax or government protections of various kinds.
Thus, despite the claims of libertarians to be a category unto themselves, they appear to be just two steps – two important steps – from central conservatism, and the variation within their ranks seems to tend toward conservatism. There is, after all, a reason why the scholars at the libertarian Cato Institute seem largely to be writing in support of conservative rather than liberal positions.
Nonetheless, there is no objective answer here. They are far away enough to think of themselves as a separate category and close enough for others to think of them as conservatives.
