In an interview on KNPR on Tuesday, Bob Brown, the new publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reportedly said, “I’m a conservative, but I’m not a libertarian.” Interesting, because in a Reason magazine interview way back in 1975, Ronald Reagan said:
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
Since the two are so closely aligned ideologically, it’d be interesting to know how Mr. Brown differentiates the two.