I mention this a propos of “tradition.” Because you know we can have rather traditional gender roles in many ways, but still have equality in opportunity, true respect, and recognition as full moral agents. But someone might want to mention this to Helen, since it seems to have escaped her.

As for being “a self-governing individual,” Kerry, I spent some of my childhood in a real honest-to-goodness commune, with LSD, nekkid hippies, and cold fried chicken for breakfast. Somehow I think that would distress my new friend Helen, but I assure her it ensured that I emerged both as “self-governing” and with a doubt, fully “individual!”

Perhaps it seems strange because there is no such thing. The last several years have seen a peculiar appropriation of the the term “libertarian” by those with sharply discordant views. We have seen libertarians for pre-emptive war and occupation. Libertarians for trillion dollar bail outs of investment bankers, and, of course, libertarians for various “social positions.”

Again, there is just no such thing. With respect to this issue, libertarianism is a bare political/economic ideology. It has nothing at all to say about dictating to people how they should be running their personal lives. In fact, nothing could be more antilibertarian than an ideology that attempts to prescribe such things.

It should be added that libertarians have, “traditionally” been very suspicious of Burkean appeals to tradition. Here is what Ludwig von Mises had to say about such views in his treatise entitled Human Action:

“Traditionalism as an Ideology

Traditionalism is an ideology which considers loyalty to valuations, customs, and methods of procedure handed down or allegedly handed down from ancestors both right and expedient. It is not an essential mark of traditionalism that these forefathers were the ancestors in the biological meaning of the term or can be fairly considered such; they were sometimes only the previous inhabitants of the country concerned or supporters of the same religious creed or only precursors in the exercise of some special task. Who is to be considered an ancestor and what is the content of the body of tradition handed down are determined by the concrete teachings of each variety of traditionalism. The ideology brings into prominence some of the ancestors and relegates others to oblivion; it sometimes calls ancestors people who had nothing to do with the alleged posterity. It often constructs a “traditional” doctrine which is of recent origin and is at variance with the ideologies really held by the ancestors.

“Traditionalism tries to justify its tenets by citing the success they secured in the past. Whether this assertion conforms with the facts, is another question. Research could sometimes unmask errors in the historical statements of a traditional belief. However, this did not always explode the traditional doctrine. For the core of traditionalism is not real historical facts, but an opinion about them, however mistaken, and a will to believe things to which the authority of ancient origin is attributed.”