Maybe I’m a Re-fusion-nick. Excellent articles, but I think one larger point in both articles are the semantic confusion.

But it reminds me of Chesteron’s observation that Tradition is the democracy of the dead:

http://home.uchicago.edu/~sclancy/cognling/OrthodoxyChap4Elfland.html

There can be bad or good traditions, but I see the problem as one of people who try to use reason alone and try to establish everything from first principles.

I’m also unsure where history and tradition separate. Ancap writings point to Iceland, or the Quakers in the late 1600, or other places, yet I think they would call their sets of laws and practices their “traditions”.

We can theorize, but the only way we can test the theories without waiting until after something like armageddon is to look at history. How is liberty established? How is it maintained? How is it lost? If there are a set of practices – a set of traditions – which preserved liberty, ought they not be considered?

There can be a reason why they aren’t considered – because they produce unwanted results. It might imply you can’t achieve 100% liberty and you might have to struggle to maintain 95%.

I think one problem is that most successful free societies have strong families. This might bother the libertines who would like to live in a completely free society where children and their care and raising were entirely optional, but it might not be possible. I rarely hear children mentioned in discussions, yet we don’t live forever and the next generation will have either more or less liberty than we will. The traditions which preserve liberty might entail some duty to defend liberty, yet a duty is the opposite of liberty.

Also remember tradition also goes forward – what will we pass on to the next generation. They will end up benefiting from our wisdom or paying for our folly.

I forgot who said good artists copy, great artists steal. This might be true in liberty or even minimalist statecraft.