This article was originally published by Wanjiru Njoya at The Mises Institute.
The ideal of individual liberty is perennially under attack not only from socialists, as one might logically expect, but also from conservatives who regard individualism as a form of selfishness. The ordinary meaning of selfishness is “caring only about what you want or need without any thought for the needs or wishes of other people,” and many conservatives see this as a major contributing factor in social decline. The conservative British journalist Nick Timothy attributes many social ills to selfishness, arguing that “our society has become more about ‘me’ than ‘we’,” leading to higher rates of crime, antisocial behavior, and a ballooning welfare state as selfish people try to take as much as possible from the public purse while contributing little or nothing to it.
This school of conservative thought regards “excessive individualism” or “hyperindividualism” as a cause of social decay. Its proponents fear that the me-me-me society is partly to blame for the decline of Western civilization and therefore argue that defending individual liberty will only fuel further societal breakdown. As the family continues to be undermined by public policy, books like #MeFirst! A Manifesto for Female Selfishness, which promotes “self-worship” and advises women not to have children, is seen as the logical result of individualism. Individualism is often referred to in this context as “rampant individualism” or “atomistic individualism,” which is associated with unhappy outcomes such as increasing loneliness and depression.
Attributing social dysfunction to individualism explains much of the hostility with which many conservatives regard Ayn Rand’s attempt to extol the virtues of what she called selfishness. A review of Nick Timothy’s Rebuilding One Nation offers an example: “Eighties libertarianism has been left sulking on the margins of conservative policymaking for important reasons, and Timothy is ruthless in pointing out its deficiencies: its reputation for
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