Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West

by R.R. Reno

Since the basic principle of individualism is individual liberty, we must resist anything that compels our choices, even holding at arm’s length the compelling character of solid and significant moral truths. “There is nothing in the basic principles of liberalism to make it a stationary creed,” Hayek writes.27 The essence of individualism is the freedom of every individual to be “the ultimate judge of his ends.”28 I must have the liberty to decide what is good or bad for me. By “good or bad,” the economist Hayek undoubtedly means increasing or reducing my utility rather than congruent with morality or not. Nevertheless, in a number of passages, Hayek, like Popper, treats metaphysical realities—the social bond, moral truth—as threats to the individual. He, too, advocates a severe intellectual asceticism. Only the individual is real; notions such as the general interest and common good are, at best, placeholder terms for aggregations of individual interests and welfare. At their worse they are bewitching idols that become sources of tyranny.