Undoubtedly, many Americans would prefer to live according to their own personal judgements of value instead of every aspect of their lives politicized and dictated to by insufferable culture warriors engaged in a Manichean struggle against each other, whether the victors be partisans of tradition or of change. If contemporary conservatives become just as stubbornly committed to cultural domination and just as heedless of the economic destructionism associated with statism as contemporary progressives have been, they too will suffer a stinging repudiation by a large majority of American voters in the next electoral cycle. A bitter quarrel between rival collectivists offers nothing to FreeCons, let alone non-conservatives.

Before we applaud FreeCons too uncritically, we need to recall why invocations of William F. Buckley, Jr. as the patron saint of contemporary conservatism are rather dubious. The Fusionist “first wave” view that individual liberty is necessary for virtue is actually the least problematic part of Buckley’s platform. While liberty does leave impetuous youth free to deviate from the traditions of their forefathers, it also makes them bear the consequences of their folly whenever those traditions happen to be grounded in the facts of human nature or happen to facilitate social cooperation by assimilating one to the common language and norms of one’s community. Free, responsible individuals are incentivized to adhere to genuinely useful cultural norms; politicians can only get in the way of a healthy evolution of the culture when they defend traditions with coercion.