Turnabout thoughts in and out of season

A weblog "dedicated to the late Murray Rothbard" gives a detailed and very positive review of my book, calling it "provocative and profound," and "a book I recommend to all" that "defends a traditional conservatism one can respect."

The blogger, of course, is a libertarian. The biggest difference he can see between my views and his is that he believes it possible and desirable to do without the state, while I do not. I don't discuss the point in the book, and emphasize the need to reduce the role of the state, but he's right.

I don't think the state can simply be done away with. It's an element of an overall complex and multileveled social order. The attempt to do away with it completely is somewhat like attempts to do away with more basic elements of social order, like religion or institutionalized sex roles and family life. It makes for a neater and more elegant picture based on very simple principles. Simple theories aren't everything, though, however illuminating they may be analytically. You can't always do away with problems by doing away with the thing that gives problems.