John Stossel on the uneasy alliance between conservatives and libertarians

A very much worth reading essay from a libertarian perspective on the not-quite comfortable relationship between the two camps:  Libertarians and Conservatives Are Still Awkward Bedfellows. Stossel's essay demonstrates perfectly why libertarianism is at its core hostile to conservatism, and it comes to to the last sentence in the essay.  To libertarians, things like traditional marriage, the sanctity of human life, living in a public square that is open to faith, a public order that isn't baked out on drugs, all of those things are fundamentally unimportant.

The "important things," as Stossel puts it, involve budgets and spending and the like.  And make no mistake, those things are important.  But without virtue, without a legal order that reinforces basic, fundamental rights like the right to life, without a public policy that reinforces personal responsibility and the central institution of social life -- the family -- then the "important things" of economy and finance will collapse.  A free market is impossible without a free people, and a free people is only possible in a balanced polity of ordered liberty that promotes both individual choice and public virtue. Libertarianism's refusal to both understand and embrace that fact is what makes libertarianism a threat to liberty, as Russell Kirk well knew.