Hayek Day Turns into a Week

Last week I wrote about “Hayek Day,” when Russ Roberts and John Papola released their second rap video about Hayek and Keynes, and Bruce Caldwell, Richard Epstein, and George Soros came to Cato to talk about the new edition of The Constitution of Liberty. Now, it’s looking like Hayek Week. Yesterday, on the 112th anniversary of Hayek’s birth, The Constitution of Liberty was reviewed in the New York Times. I write about the new review by Francis Fukuyama, and the original 1960 review by Sidney Hook, at the Britannica today. Since Fukuyama managed to mention Glenn Beck three times in 1100 words, I noted Hayek’s view of conservatism, which can be found in the very book under review:

Reagan and Thatcher may have admired Hayek, but he always insisted that he was a liberal, not a conservative. He titled the postscript to The Constitution of Liberty “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” He pointed out that the conservative “has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike.” He wanted to be part of “the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution.” And I recall an interview in a French magazine in the 1980s, which I can’t find online, in which he was asked if he was part of the “new right,” and he quipped, “Je suis agnostique et divorcé.”