Murray N. Rothbard e a Igreja Catolica

No seguimento do debate no Blasfémias lançado por Pedro Arroja com: "noutro lugar"...

Termina assim um seu artigo intitulado "Conservatism and Freedom: A Libertarian Comment".

"And, lastly, having indicated the neglected strengths of the classical liberal tradition, I must indicate some of the weaknesses of that tradition, even in its enormously superior eighteenth century version. The chief defects of Enlightenment liberalism, I believe, are these: an inordinate passion for democracy, and an inordinate hatred for institutional religion, particularly for the Roman Catholic Church. The true liberal should place foremost, in judging government, the policies that that government pursues; who runs the government is of secondary, purely instrumental importance, Of course, all other things being equal, it would be nice to have democratic voting ratify libertarian policies, but this is of minor importance. Democracy is simply a process, and once elevated into an end-in-itself, it becomes a potentially mighty engine for mass tyranny and popular collectivism. Furthermore, democracy, by encouraging the idea of equal voting by all men, grants the vote before it is properly earned and therefore fosters an excessive and dangerous egalitarian tendency in society.

The intense hatred of the Enlightenment for the Catholic Church was a tragic thing; for it severed, on both sides, two traditions which really had a great deal in common, and set these two mighty forces at almost permanent odds. This hatred pushed the Enlightenment liberals into numerous and grave anti-libertarian measures to oppress the Church: confiscation of church property, outlawing of monasteries and the Jesuit order, nationalization of the Church, and, perhaps the gravest of all, the erection of a system of public schools. For the establishment of public schools makes the grand concession, the concession that education of the young, one of the most important functions of society, is properly to be conducted by the coercive State. And if schools, why not other educational media, why not radio and television and newspapers, and why not, indeed, every other social good and service? The very existence of the public school – even if Americanism groups see to it that its textbooks are not tainted with socialism – cries aloud to its little charges the virtue and sanctity of government ownership and operation, and therefore, of socialism.

The libertarian, then, in building upon the older classical liberal tradition, must not only abandon utilitarianism and positivism: he must also abandon that tendency toward a worship of democracy and an unreasoning hatred of Catholicism that led him, among other flaws, to the erection of a vast incubus of statism and tyranny, the public school. And in doing so, he will also take a long step forward toward that very synthesis of the Right-wing Weltanschauung that we all recognize as so important in the present-day world."