Conservatism has no place for absolute liberty. No conservative is totally free to do as he pleases. Conservatives have an individual and corporate obligation to their God, their family and their country. As Edmund Burke commented: "...Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights?"
Libertarians are Burke's escaped madmen, highwaymen and murderers.
Furthermore, Conservatives see an essential role for government in regulating liberty that has to be fettered for the sake of the commonweal. Again Burke: "I should, therefore, suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France until I was informed how it had been combined with government, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue, with morality and religion, with the solidity of property, with peace and order, with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too, and without them liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints."








