CBS News: Mike Wallace- Interviewing Ronald Reagan (1975) 'Opinion On Libertarian-Conservatism'

Source:CBS News- Governor Ronald W. Reagan (Republican, California) being interviewed by CBS News's Mike Wallace, for 60 Minutes, in 1975. 

Source:The FreeState

"If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." -Ronald Reagan" 

From Constitutional War

Definition of fascism: "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition" 

From Merriam Webster

Definition of liberalism: "A political ideology centred upon the individual (see individualism), thought of as possessing rights against the government, including rights of due process under the law, equality of respect, freedom of expression and action, and freedom from religious and ideological constraint. Liberalism is attacked from the left as the ideology of free markets, with no defence against the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few, and as lacking any analysis of the social and political nature of persons. It is attacked from the right as insufficiently sensitive to the value of settled institutions and customs, or to the need for social structure and constraint in providing the matrix for individual freedoms." 

From Oxford

I only show you these definitions of fascism and liberalism, because Ronald Reagan in this interview said that fascism is private enterprise and property that's controlled  by the state. And then he said that's what liberalism is today. And he's just dead wrong about that. 

Ronald Reagan described his own politics as libertarian as late as 1975.  If you look at his career from 1975 to 81 when he wasn’t a politician in office and spent that time running for and then getting elected President in 1980, that’s where he was politically. Not just on economic policy, but social policy and did not believe it was the job of government to interfere with how Americans should live their own lives.

And even though President Reagan escalated the War on Drugs in the 1980s, he didn’t really have much to and want to give the Religious-Right. Or what I call the New-Right in America. Much if anything officially and even though he talked to those groups he was never really with them. And was more about using them to help him politically so they would vote for him. And keep the Far-Right off is back when he ran for reelection in 1984. Something that his Vice President George H.W. Bush wasn’t able to do when he ran for reelection for President in 1992.

I agree with most of what Reagan said in this short clip. Except for when it came it liberalism, where he is dead wrong about liberalism being another word for fascism, which is a different subject. But what Reagan got right was that libertarianism is conservatism. At least in the sense that government shouldn’t be involved in people’s personal or economic lives, as far as trying to direct people in how they should live their own lives. 

That the real difference between what I at least would call classical (not religious conservatism conservatism) and libertarianism has to do with foreign affairs and national security. Not when it comes to government’s involvement in culture and people live their own lives.