"The Next Generation of Conservatives" article starts with:
"They are young and bright and ardently right. They tack Ronald Reagan calendars on their cubicle walls and devote brown bag lunches to the free market theories of Friedrich von Hayek."
I would refer you to Hayek's essay entitled "Why I am Not a Conservative."
http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?article=177 Do you notice any inconsistency in describing self-professed conservatives as those who are ardent readers of Hayek, yet do not seem to understand what the man had to say about conservatism and "free market theories?"
These passages come from his book "The Constitution of Liberty "(University of Chicago Press, 1960), from pages 221 through 231:
"To Adam Smith and his immediate successors the enforcement of the ordinary rules of common law would certainly not have appeared as government interference; nor would they ordinarily have applied this term to an alteration of these rules or the passing of a new rule by the legislature so long as it was intended to apply equally to all people for an indefinite period of time. Though they perhaps never explicitly said so, interference meant to them the exercise of the coercive power of government which was not regular enforcement of the general law and which was designed to achieve some specific purpose."
"The important criterion was not the aim pursued, however, but the method employed. There is perhaps no aim which they would not have regarded as legitimate if it was clear that the people wanted it; but they excluded as generally inadmissible in a free society the method of specific orders and prohibitions. Only indirectly, by depriving government of some means by which alone it might be able to attain certain ends, may this principle deprive government of the power to pursue those ends."
"The habitual appeal to the principle of non-interference in the fight against all ill-considered or harmful measures has had the effect of blurring the fundamental distinction between the kinds of measures which are and those which are not compatible with a free system."
"A functioning market economy presupposes certain activities by which its functioning will be assisted; and it can tolerate many more, provided that they are of the kind which are compatible with a functioning market. ... a government that is comparatively inactive but does the wrong things may do much more to cripple the forces of a market economy than one that is more concerned with economic affairs but confines itself to actions which assist the spontaneous forces of the economy."
"In so far as the government merely undertakes to supply services which otherwise would not be supplied at all (usually because it is not possible to confine the benefits to those prepared to pay for them), the only question which arises is whether the benefits are worth the cost. A great many of the activities which governments have universally undertaken in this field and which fall within the limits described are those which facilitate the acquisition of reliable knowledge about facts of general significance. So do most sanitary and health services, often the construction and maintenance of roads, and many of the amenities provided by municipalities for the inhabitants of cities."
"The range and variety of government action that is, at least in principle, reconcilable with a free system is thus considerable. The old formulae of laissez faire or non-intervention do not provide us with an adequate criterion for distinguishing between what is and what is not admissible in a free system. There is ample scope for experimentation and improvement within that permanent legal framework which makes it possible for a free society to operate most efficiently. We can probably at no point be certain that we have already found the best arrangements or institutions that will make the market economy work as beneficially as it could. It is true that after the essential conditions of a free system have been established, all further institutional improvements are bound to be slow and gradual. But the continuous growth of wealth and technological knowledge which such a system makes possible will constantly suggest new ways in which government might render services to its citizens and bring such possibilities within the range of the practicable."The claim by many conservatives of interpreting all state action as mere “interference,” as if a popularly elected government was merely a protections racket, is intellectually fraudulent. I see from such people little rational discussion on the where to draw the lines between government and everything else that arises from a society and its fundamental belief systems.
Their Holy Grail of “limited government” is a baseless canard, as if anyone defends “unlimited government,” and just as repugnant is the use of the term “government” that does not recognize differences between the popular will of the people via democracy and other less legitimate forms of government.
Refusing to see the distinction renders democracy unthinkable and void and legitimizes a mindset that rejects social contracts between people for the common benefit. What surely follows is not anarchy, in its true political sense, but the law of the jungle. And I can only assume that is the plan of most of the more virulent so-called conservatives, who believe that they are the strong and will rule the jungle. It is not in any sense a political philosophy, rather one of a method of achieving power.