Well, that didn’t take long.
The Trump administration, which won the 2024 election promising libertarians smaller government and an end to endless wars, has summarily dumped its libertarian promises. Elon Musk has split from the administration after spending several months identifying myriad opportunities to cut federal spending under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The “Big, Beautiful Bill” has replaced those cuts with spending increases that will outpace those under the previous Democratic administration, as every Republican administration of my lifetime has done. Funding the Ukraine War is also back online.
History isn’t just rhyming here; it’s repeating. It is the mirror image of the post-Revolutionary War split between Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian libertarians after their common enemy, the British, was defeated. Today, the MAGA Republicans embody classic Hobbesian/Burkean conservatism, while modern libertarians carry the torch of Jeffersonian principles rooted in John Locke’s property based inalienable rights. The defeat of the modern “British”—the progressive left—has exposed this divide, revealing that the MAGA movement’s heart beats closer to Hobbesian control than Lockean liberty.
Many conservatives may object to my identification together of Hobbes and Burke, given the quite different visions they had for the form of government. But they both agreed on the purpose of government: to hold back man’s savage instincts at any cost, including liberty.
In my book, Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From?, I argue that conservatives, at their core, believe that the “inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection,” as Burke said in Reflections on the Revolution in France. Men are entitled only to what liberty the government allows after fulfilling this primary purpose. Burke agreed with Hobbes on this essential point, quoting Hobbes directly in explaining the problem with natural rights: that they give men “a right to everything.”
Burke’s only departure from Hobbes was the means for this thwarting. Hobbes argued that only a unitary, all powerful central government could achieve it. Burke argued that what he called “prescription” – the power of long-established traditions to restrain the savage impulses – could also play a part.
MAGA Republicans are a striking combination of both visions. Their rhetoric often champions “law and order,” a Hobbesian call to maintain societal stability against perceived threats. They have no problem with a massive military establishment, although they reject wars of choice for the purposes of benefiting the peoples of foreign nations rather than purely for domestic security.
The culture wars, on the other hand, are rooted in Burkean prescription. The overturning of long-established norms and traditions – standard ops for the revolutionary left – are a direct threat to civilization that must be reversed. Here there is some overlap with libertarianism. If those traditions are the non-involvement of government in certain areas of human activity, libertarians are all for it. But even if the particular tradition is inconsistent with libertarian principles, those traditions must be maintained, similar to the conservative insistence on maintaining primogeniture in Jefferson’s day.
The natural economic system of conservativism is mercantilism. Since the natural state of man is a state of war, economic activity must have winners and losers. Recall Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. His constant complaint was “we don’t win anymore” when speaking of international trade. He promised instead that Americans would “get tired of winning.” Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists saw the economy precisely the same way and made the same promises.
Read the rest on Tom’s Substack…
Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?
