Significant commonalities between the conservative and pseudo-liberal camps should be noted:

Epistemology: Human beings cannot know reality objectively. "Knowledge" derives either from irrational faith (conservatives) or from irrational urges (pseudo-liberals).
Ethics: A human being may not live for his or her own sake. Selfish pleasure, whether attained through one's personal life style (conservatives) or through economic success (pseudo-liberals), is denounced as obscene.
Politics: The individual must surrender his or her "rights" where a "greater good" is at stake.

Clearly, conservatives and pseudo-liberals are philosophical fellow travelers. The true alternative to the false dichotomy they offer has its roots, not in Plato or his modern descendant Immanuel Kant, but in Aristotle and Ayn Rand. That alternative asserts that people can know reality objectively, that a human being can and must live for his or her own sake, and that the rights of the individual are the supreme political good.

^Previous