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.
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.
In his book In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo, Frank S. Meyer acknowledges that many such conservatives, whom he refers to as "New Conservatives," appeal to communitarian values because they see individualism as a threat to social cohesion, but he insists that it is only through defending individual liberty that free societies can prosper.
The New Conservatives forget that society only has meaning as a basis for interaction between individuals, and it is through these individual interactions that free societies flourish.
Friedrich von Hayek observed in "Individualism: True and False" that there is a right and wrong way to understand the meaning of "Individualism" and that because rights vest in individuals, the defense of human liberty is always a defense of individual liberty and individual rights.
It is important to defend individualism, correctly understood, because without a concept of individualism, it is all but impossible to express the importance of individual liberty.
Meyer is right to warn conservatives that if the individual is subordinated to society, the individual becomes "a secondary being, whose dignity and rights become dependent upon the gift and grace of society or the state." Attempting to subordinate individual rights to defend society ends up promoting statism, which in turn is a threat to liberty itself.
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