Recently we have heard a lot about economic conservatives versus social conservatives, but, for once, I am not delving into that topic. I have written more than enough on that subject, and I doubt I can add much more to what I have already said. No, what I want to look at today is something we take for granted, so much so that we often fail to notice how little sense it makes. That is the fact that almost all "civil libertarians" are also liberals.

I recall back in the late eighties when I was first developing my libertarian beliefs, I, like many people I knew, described myself as "conservative on economic issues, liberal on social issues." Of course, in modern times, this line has become less common, somewhat because conservatives have started to accept more big government solutions, but mostly because in the 1990's the liberals stopped supporting free speech in favor of PC speech codes and hate crime laws, making the left more authoritarian than the right on matters of censorship.

However, back in the eighties, this line made perfect sense, or at least it seemed to. The eighties was the heyday of social conservatives, at least the period of their greatest federal influence. While the Republicans were becoming ever more libertarian economically, the eighties saw the birth of the groups I call "authoritarian social conservatives"*, groups which would use the power of the state to enforce their vision of proper behavior on the entertainment industry, some going so far as hoping to use law enforcement to prevent various immoral acts. Admittedly, even in the 1980's they were counterbalanced by a number of libertarian conservatives, but the balance favored the social conservatives in the 1980's more than it had in decades, and more than it would since then.

On the other hand, the liberals had yet to discover the doctrines of political correctness and multiculturalism that would turn them into the thought police in the 1990's. Gay rights had yet to become a mainstream issue, while race issues were relatively quiet, leaving the issues of affirmative action and equal opportunity on the back burner. So, in the 1980's, outside of the sphere of economics, the liberals were largely concerned with painting Reagan as a warmongering senile dolt, and fighting the encroachment of the social conservatives.

All of which makes it easy to understand my 1980's statement. By being "socially liberal and economically conservative", I was basically trying to say I was a thorough going libertarian, and as such had a home in neither party. When pressed to choose a party, most often I would opt for the Republicans. The reasoning was simple. The Supreme Court was always eager to strike down legislation against speech, and other "civil liberty" issues. However, the court had little interest in restoring economic liberties. So, when given the choice between bad social restraints, such as the Republicans proposed, and bad economic restraints, such as the Democrats supported, bad restrictions on civil rights would likely be overturned much more rapidly, so, assuming bad laws were inevitable, the bad laws of the Republicans were safer than those of the Democrats.

So, why this trip through the past? The answer to that is a bit more involved.You see, recently I have heard some people, mostly young Obama supporters, arguing that they are enamored of neither party, but they would rather have the economic controls of the Democrats than the social controls of the Republicans. It was familiar enough that it struck a chord with me.

However, unlike my pragmatic youthful views, this nominally pragmatic view gets things wrong, and much more wrong than those making the decision are likely to understand. And, to return to my original point, these youths are making the precise mistake that civil libertarians are, assuming that one can embrace economic authoritarianism and still have freedom in "social" matters. But there simply can be no "civil liberties" when one is deprived of economic freedom.

The decision I made as a youth is perfectly consistent. By and large, a system with economic freedoms but no social freedoms is possible, even viable. One can have no freedom of speech, freedom of movement, with enforced morality and government control of all media, yet have a strong economic system. Granted, restrictions on speech and media will place some parts of the economy outside of private control, but there is nothing in the restriction of civil liberties which would invalidate economic liberty. Granted, I would not want to live under such a system, but it is a valid political construct, it could exist in the real world.

On the other hand, a government with civil liberties, but with no economic protections, is not a viable system.

Why not? Because everything is economic. There is simply no way to cut off personal freedom from economics. What doe sit mean to have freedom of the press if the government controls access to printing presses, newspaper, even ink? How can we then determine if the government is cutting off supplies because of valid economic reasons or because it does not want to hear what I have to say? Or if it moves me to a remote cabin in the woods, is that because it was the only house available, or because it dislikes what I have to say? Or, at the extreme end, who is to say whether it cut off food rations for dissidents because it opposed what they said, or because their time consuming protesting made them less useful citizens deserving of fewer rations?

That is why it is absurd to try to say liberalism is still a free system because it "only" restricts economic activities. Economic activities includes all human action. There is nothing that cannot be described in some way as economic, and there is not one action which cannot be controlled through some economic restriction. For instance, the non-economic question of abortion rights could be settled by a government which controlled "only" economic matters by the simple expedient of choosing whether or not to pay for the procedure, or, should that prove insufficient, by choosing whether to provide office space and equipment for doctors depending on their position on the practice.

Nor is abortion unique. There is no practice which cannot be controlled economically. Those who hold the wrong religious or political beliefs, who act in ways deemed inappropriate, have the wrong sexual orientation, or otherwise upset the state, can find themselves assigned to undesirable housing, sent to unappealing locations in substandard housing, denied medical care, even denied food and clothing, until they relent and accept the proper beliefs (or else simply give up and die).As the former Soviet Union should have taught us, totalitarianism requires nothing but control of the economy. True the USSR had the KGB, gulags, show trials and the rest, but the damage they did pales in comparison to the mass starvation caused by the simple expedient of collectivizing farms in the Ukraine.

All of which brings me back to my original point. Civil liberties activists, like journalists, are like those who think they will ":save the world", and due to our culture's fear of "big" anything (except government), probably think big business is a threat to freedom. Thus they end up fighting for government regulation of economic matters, while fighting against government meddling in speech, movement, press and other "civil rights". The only problem is their theory is completely inconsistent. As soon as you allow government control over the economy, there is no means to keep it form seizing total control. Economic control is total control, but we have become so used to "civil liberties" being a battle cry of the left that we no longer recognize how absurd it is to fight for freedom while giving the state total economic control.

It is an absurdity we need to start pointing out once more. Not just to point out the folly of liberalism, but to stop conservatives from continuing their long slide into big government "compassionate" conservatism**.

------------------------------------------------------

* As I believe conservatism requires one to believe in small government and personal liberty, I exclude a lot of social "conservatives" from the category of conservative. however, I don't feel like arguing that point today. I had more than enough of that debate with the Huckabee supporters during the primaries, and there is no need to rehash it. So, for purposes of this essay, I will call social conservatives conservatives, though I do so only to recognize that conservatives of the time accepted that they were part of the fold, not to indicate that I believe them to be conservatives.

** While this term is associated with Bush, he is hardly the only, or even the worst, offender. Some of what Huckabee did in Arkansas definitely had a big government bent to it, as did most of the solutions proposed to address the subprime collapse. McCain, both in his campaign finance laws and his response to the bailout was guilty of this as anyone, and even the nominally "conservative" candidate, Romney, was prone to big government proposals during his years as governor. Now, I recognize that compromise is required in politics, and many conservative shave to concede some big government proposals to get more important measures passed. But we need to make it clear, though we will accept compromise, we won't accept a party which endorses big government as a principle.