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In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays Paperback – June 30, 1996

by Frank S. Meyer (Author)

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When it first appeared in 1962, In Defense of Freedom was hailed by Richard M. Weaver as “a brilliant defense of the primacy of the person” and an effective “indictment of statism and bureaucratism.” Meyer examines the tension between the freedom of the person and the power of social institutions. In his view, both the dominant Liberalism and the “New Conservatism” of the American tradition place undue emphasis on the claims of social order at the expense of the individual person and liberty.

Frank S. Meyer (1909–1972) was a senior editor of National Review.

William C. Dennis is a Senior Fellow, Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and a consultant in philanthropy.

Print length

261 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Liberty Fund
Publication date

June 30, 1996
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

5.75 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0865971404
ISBN-13

978-0865971400
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Liberty Fund (June 30, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 261 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0865971404
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0865971400
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #651,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,764 in Political Philosophy (Books)
- #7,950 in Law (Books)
- #22,244 in Politics & Government (Books)

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Sentinel

A "must read" for lovers of liberty

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2015

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This is another "must read" book for every American. In an effort to understand what is western civilization in general and the American experiment in particular you have to understand what conservatism, and by extension Americanism, is and how it conflicts with leftism. This book describes the two lines of conservatism (libertarian and traditionalist) and how they are not at odds with each other but in fact are two halves of the same whole and how only together will we be able to restore original American liberty and honest government.

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Matthew J. Summers

Liberty is a Prerequisite for Morality

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2009

Without the freedom to choose what is moral, morality cannot exist.

Meyer calls for a fusion between social conservatives and libertarians, arguing that the morality praised by the social conservative may only be exercised when one is free to choose it.

In this sense, the libertarian and the conservative are only emphasizing two aspects of one greater morality: freedom and responsibility. He shows how, although emphasizing different priorities, they ultimately fight for the same thing against a common enemy: the collectivist liberal. The collectivist liberal presents a threat to the foundations of both morality and freedom.

This is one of my favorite books. It was my favorite book of 2007 and only got bumped to second place by one of Murray Rothbard's works. I highly recommend it.

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Joel D. Hirst

But then who will protect us?

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2019

“Freedom”. Hollywood movies have made it melodramatic; politicians, a punchline at the end of a bad speech; and the cognitive dissonance whereby the word falls so easily from the lips of those who would enslave us has made it almost meaningless. “Liberty” – for what does it mean? That is debated ad infinitum and ad nausea in the ivory towers of our ‘betters’ and on the street corners where young men rage against a system which has left them behind. Left them behind, for when they talk of freedom they are not speaking of the three fundamental rights by which we are made free – those of life, liberty and property – but instead of a job and a dowry for which to marry their betrothed and a savings account they can contribute to for the coming days when old age starts to gnaw and bite. But is that liberty? “Freedom from…” juxtaposed against “freedom to…” and then again maybe it’s found in that perfect balance between liberty and equality, as Edmund Fawcett writes. Is it utilitarian, like John Stuart Mill says – the greatest good for the most? Or is it absolute, as Meyer contends in this his greatest treatise “In Defense of Freedom”.

One of the things that makes this challenging is that conservatism itself is torn between two ideas, balanced or not, which are at war against each other. Libertarianism – to stand naked, valueless and community-less and truly alone and still to survive, somehow; juxtaposed against culture and community and that embroidered quilt knitted over time upon which successive generations preserve what is the best of themselves to pass it on to those who follow. Libertarianism which quickly becomes libertinism as the empty vessel of the human soul is filled with licentious possibilities and the ever-present tyranny of now; or the stifling jacket of conservatism tailored in days of yore when things were meant to be uncomfortable and restraining, and still worn for decorum in defiance of a world that has invented new ways of dress. This tension, while appropriately balanced in times of peace, is strained in times of war.

And these are times of war. For freedom is under attack, as assuredly as are the conservative values imbued with libertarianism by which we protect ourselves. That is really my main challenge with Meyer in days when our ideologies must be weaponized. To be sure though, Meyer’s liberty is beautiful:

“There is this much truth to John Stuart Mill’s doctrine that truth will always prevail in the free marketplace of ideas, and this much only: given a society free of the power of a totalizing state, truth will survive alongside all the errors and will outlive each of them. Nor, given the human condition, can we expect more. Freedom, which is of the human essence, implies the possibility of producing error as well as finding truth. To achieve a good society requires men unremittingly devoted to the pursuit of good and truth, but it requires also that no one have he power to impose beliefs by force upon other men – and this is whether those beliefs be false or true.”

I even believe it. But how will it protect us from them? Yes, truth will outlive the lies – but how many people will die while we wait?… if waiting is the only answer the classical liberals will allow us. 100,000,000 is the number of people the communists (class socialists) took from us, mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and children; more if you count those starving in Venezuela today. 20,000,000 the Nazis (national socialists).

Russell Kirk or Frank Meyer; Patrick Deneen or Gary Johnson – because John Maynard Keynes will not go down without a fight; his wares are peddled too effectively and while, yes, they will eventually be proved wanting, when they are at last expunged in the fires of truth they will take our great republic with them. Alas, a fight is what we must have. Because who will protect us from them? Sacrificed as we will be like Robert the Bruce screaming ‘freedom’ as our entrails are put on display for the collective hordes who bay for the blood of sacrifices to feed their collectivist project; and who know well the answer to their own question “Who will protect them from us?”

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Kevin Currie-Knight

Does Libertarian Belief in Individual Liberty Conflict with Conservative Belief in Transcendent Moral Order?

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2012

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This book is a collection of essays from conservative social theorist Frank Meyer, including the entirety of his most famous book "In Defense of Freedom." Unlike other conservatives of the time (Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet are the two primary targets), Meyer is both a believer in a transcendent moral order AND a defender of individual liberty. Where thinkers like Kirk defend the former (and see the dangers of totalitarianism in its socialistic variants), they are skeptical of individual liberty and small government, preferring that the state be invoked to defend virtue among the citizenry.

Meyer believes that true conservatism demands both a belief in a transcendant moral order AND individual liberty and, further, that these two are complimentary, not contradictory, beliefs. Meyer's argument runs roughly as follows: the moral end of each individual should be to live a virtuous life. To live a virtuous life, of course, first demands that one recognize objective moral criteria for what virtue is and how people should behave. But it also demands that people be free to choose how to behave, as a key part of being virtuous is being the type of person who chooses to be virtuous even when they could choose otherwise. To believe in individual liberty without belief in a transcendent moral order, says Meyer, leads to hedonsistic chaos (the Hobbesian state of nature?) where the people become vulnerable to a Leviathan government who, alone, provide order to the chaos. But believing in a moral order without accompanying it with individual liberty means that it becomes too tempting to coerce people into being 'virtuous' (the scare-quotes indicating that, for Meyer, one cannot be coerced into being virtuous any more than one can be coerced into sincerely liking jazz). Either way, the road becomes open for tyranny. The only way to have a virtuous citizenry, then, is - maybe paradoxically, but Meyer thinks not - allow the citizens freedom NOT to be virtuous if they so choose.

As one who falls on the libertarian side of things, I find Meyer's libertarian conservatism a really refreshing antidote to Nisbet's communitarianism ( The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom (Background: Essential Texts for the Conservative Mind) ). Like Meyer, I recognize common ground with Nisbet when arguing against government expansions of power, but see an equal danger when he seemingly would allow for quite coercive community relations (illiberal communities, as it were).

But I depart a little bit from Meyer in thinking that there is not an inherent contradiciton or tension in the ideas of a transcendent moral order and individual liberty; after all, while Meyer says these are both aspects of conservatism, he was writing at a time where neither libertarians nor conservatives believed him. the question I hoped Meyer would answer - he didn't - was "If one really believes that there are objective standards for right behavior, then won't it be a bit uncaring to NOT interfere with individuals choices when they decide to choose wrongly?" Meyer rightly notes that part of being virtuous is one's freely choosing to be virtuous, but another part of why we should behave virtuously is, frankly, to bring about the good consequences that come from acting with honesty, trust, courage, etc. And if consequences are also important, then isn't there something to be said - for those who believe there IS a right and wrong way to be virtuous - to compel folks to be virtuous, if only to bring about those good effects? (I also suspect that most Kirkian conservatives would be more pessimistic than Meyer about the likelihood of people acting virtuous voluntarily, and hence, might argue that if people en masse decide to tell easy lies rather than hard truths, that at some point, government needs to step in.)

In short, I think Meyer's essays to a good job telling us that liberty and belief in a transcendent moral order are not contradictory, and only a halfway good job arguing why. He doesn't speak to the critics by answering the really hard objections that I am sure libertarian and conservative critics would have for him. And while, as a colleciton of essays, this book has a good amount of repitition, I still come away thinking that Meyer just could have done a better job speaking to the skeptic, not by explaining his position again, but by actually getting into defenses against the really hard objections.

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