Loss of freedom: Even in the pandemic, the conservatives cannot be relied on

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It was, wrote Friedrich von Hayek in the epilogue to his book “The Constitution of Freedom”, “always the fate of conservatism to be dragged along on a path that was not chosen by itself”.

The conservatives have always made concessions to socialism or have anticipated it.

Nor would they object to coercion or arbitrariness as long as they were used for purposes that seemed right.

Their tendency towards nationalism often creates a bridge from conservatism to collectivism.

This assessment of conservatism, originally made in 1960, appears particularly clairvoyant if you look at the development of the CDU and AfD in the Merkel era.

Chancellor Angela Merkel challenged the incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as an economically liberal candidate in 2005 and almost failed.

In the years of the grand coalitions under her leadership, she not only gave in to the social policy of the SPD, which had moved to the left without Schröder, but also repeatedly beat it.

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In the only black-yellow coalition of her term in office, she and her then finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, pushed the rather liberal FDP so far that it missed entry into the Bundestag in the 2013 election.

During the pandemic, the Union parties were and are in the first row of those who willingly subordinate restrictions on civil liberties to protection against infection.

And Chancellery Minister Helge Braun questioned the debt brake, the trademark of conservative financial policy, even though it enabled the German state - in contrast to many other euro countries - to reduce the mountain of debt accumulated during the financial crisis.

Perhaps Braun wanted to remove an annoying obstacle for the targeted coalition with the Greens on behalf of his boss.

The tendency of the conservatives to nationalism was the undoing of the AfD, which started out as a liberal-conservative party.

Founded in protest against the communitisation of national debts in the euro area, which is forbidden in the EU treaties, the party was dragged into the ethnic corner by nationalist circles against the background of the more socialist government policy of open borders in 2015.

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The bridge from conservatism to folk collectivism made it possible.

Under these circumstances, the advocates of freedom do not have an easy time of day-to-day politics.

They run the risk of being taken over by the Volkish collectivists if they resist the conservatives that are open to the socialist side.

And they exhaust their strength when they have to constantly contradict both sides.

Principle as a way out

Ultimately, the only way out for liberals is to be principled to a social order in which the freedom of one ends where that of the other begins and the rejection of any kind of collectivism.

Throughout history, the liberal order has proven its superiority in creating economic prosperity and personal well-being over both the socialist and the völkisch varieties of collectivism.

But it is developing in cycles and is currently in a downturn.

Unfortunately, liberals cannot hope that conservatives will help them fuel a new recovery.

Instead, they have to fight it against these and the green socialists.