Monday, May 02, 2011

What Is Classical Liberalism?

Nigel Ashford answers. A seven minute video.

As you can see/hear, Dr. Ashford tends to think of classical liberals as minarchists, and not anarchists. I agree, but that opinion is by no means universally held.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link. This was interesting!

I don't know classical liberal thought at all, so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I don't really understand how Ashford's 'spontaneous order' principle can be reconciled with arguments in favor of any role for the government at all. Are there any core readings you would recommend to help me understand this?

Thanks for you time!

- Some guy on the internet

Mungowitz said...

Many of Hayek's writings take this up. And in fact the importance of traditional forms of governance were the subject of Edmund Burke, also.

Both are skeptical of the project of "reason," where we simply make up new institutions and expect them to work.