The Marriage of Hayek and Rawls

As friends of mine know, I've been grasping for several years now at how to reconcile my leftist and libertarian tendencies, and in the last several months it's become clear I'm not alone. A great deal has been made of the defection of small "l" libertarians from the Republican to the Democratic camps, especially in the recent mid-term elections, and a whole sub-genre of blog discussions has emerged on this new trend.

Now more thoughtful people than myself have entered the discussion and are offering some suggestions that are both philosophical and pragmatic on how this fusion of classical liberalism and modern progressivism might work in practice. Check out Brink Lindsey's essay from the New Republic on "Liberaltarians." The essence of his argument is that a winning combination can be made of marrying leftist social goals with libertarian political means.

More thoughts on this over at Freedom Democrats.