Haidt asks us to imagine two societies, one organised according to John Stuart Mills idea of the social contract, and the other based on mile Durkheims idea of an organic community.

Then:

The Durkheimian society is different. Haidt writes that in this kind of society the basic social unit is not the individual, it is the hierarchically structured family, which serves as a model for other institutions. Individuals in such societies are born into strong and constraining relationships that profoundly limit their autonomy. Durkheimian societies value self-control over self-expression, duty over rights, and loyalty to ones groups over concerns for outgroups.

That is total rubbish.

From: http://durkheim.itgo.com/solidarity.html:
Organic Solidarity – Social cohesion based upon the dependence individuals in more advanced society have on each other. Common among industrial societies as the division of labor increases. Though individuals perform different tasks and often have different values and interests, the order and very survival of society depends on their reliance on each other to perform their specific task.

Of course one paragraph is not the complete Durkheim but it proves the point. Actually, inasmuch as you can classify Durkheim, his organic solidarity is more LIKE the libertarianism (exaggeratedly) attributed to Mill.

The hold over of Gates at the DoD and the Clinton appointment to State is a pretty good indication that the differences are basically cosmetic. There is also talk that a Bush holdover from the intel services will get the role of national security adviser or an aligned position.

Even the potential appointment of Leon Panetta is in that direction. Leon is basically a middle of the road Dem.

The point I’m making is that libertarians aren’t going to get much comfort from the O’man’s foreign policy grouping if they were looking for huge changes from the Bush Administration, as that isn’t looking like it’s going to happen.

“Ultimately what unites radical conservatives”, he writes, “is the power of belief and the pursuit of common objectives, not the conspiratorial activities of shadowy organisations.”

and precisely the same can be said for the so-called radical left, which effectively nullifies this left -v- right dichotomy.

(*) and note by any measure, both Australia and the U.S. already have very high levels of economic freedom, and generally reasonable levels of personal freedom.

I really don’t know why you think there is a huge crisis in the conservative movement in the US as I would think the current problems are cyclical rather than secular. A 71 year old has been senator still received (what was it) 46% of the national vote in the prez elections while Obama’s count was about 52% odd. In other words despite a fairly unpopular war, an intensely disliked administration the GOP did about as well as average for a party that’s been in power for 8 years. In other words it wasn’t a terribly bad result.

When you talk about libertarians in the US you really do have to be careful who you’re referring to. There are countless southern ‘god fearing’ folk that count themselves as libertarians and still go to church on Sunday. Think of the Ron Paul types vs the the Reason brigade. There is as much chance of those people swinging hard for the Dems (Ron Pual’s supporters) as there is Al Gore becoming a Republican. They can vote for the Dems from time to time but it will never be solid. The other grouping, Reason libertarians would amount to no more than 3% of the voters. Although they do swing either way you need to recall that the Daily Kos libertarian marriage lasted all of 5 Los Vegas minutes before it was annulled.

Also don’t think that the GOP hasn’t forgotten that Iraq and foreign adventures got them into this mess. In 8 years time they could easily reappear with policies and a candidate who looks positively isolationist as that seemed to be a pretty decent election gamble in 08 and perhaps a winner in 2012.. Reminding Americans in 8 years time of Bush’s follies could have absolutely zero impact in the electorates memory recall.

The party seems to be heading back towards the small government schtik and already the South Carolina Governor , Mark Sanford is making some pretty important inroads into the GOP’s senior ranks. He’s a small government, libertarian type Governor that could easily reform the party cut out the Bush types and get back enough Reason/ Ron Paul libertarians to reclaim the coalition.

As for social conservatism being a turn off to libertarians… Well yes that’s true to some extent but that also applies to both parties in a sort of way.

As for other issues watch the fireworks display if as seems likely the Dems try to impose the fairness doctrine.

And don’t forget that interesting piece of legislation proposed here where Conroy is trying to turn the web resembling China and Iran’s.

US libertarians and social conservatives could divoce – and where would each go? Social conservatives could wink at the economic non-liberals – the Reagan coalition without the libertarians. Maybe some groups would prefer to live in splendid isolation.

I’m not sure about the possibility of these types of realignments in Australia – but it’s possible that the libertarians and social conservatives could split. There are plenty of conservatives on the “left” with whom social conservatives could become friendly.