The Future of Freedom Foundation
August 13, 2025
With his education and healthcare policies, President Trump is highlighting a major divide between conservatives and libertarians on both education and healthcare.
As everyone knows, Trump is doing his best to induce universities to abandon leftist concepts involving what is known as DEI - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He is doing this by threatening a cut-off of federal funds to such universities until they comply with his wishes, at which point he will restore the funding.
Trump's strategy is working brilliantly. Most of the universities he has targeted have quickly abandoned their leftist principles in order to maintain themselves on the federal dole. In other words, they place a higher value on the dole than they do on their principles.
Conservatives love it. They have always hated DEI and so Trump continues to be their hero. They especially love his threat to cut off federal aid as a way to induce universities to change their policies.
Libertarians take a different position. We believe that there should be a total separation of education and the state, in the same way that our ancestors separated religion and state. We hold that the federal government (and the state governments) have no more business funding universities or telling universities how to run their affairs than it does funding churches or telling churches how to run their affairs.
Thus, under the libertarian philosophy, there would be no government funding of universities at all. Therefore, Trump could not threaten a cutoff of federal funds as a way to induce a university to change its policies because there would be no federal funds to cut off.
By the same token, universities would be free to run their affairs the way they want, which is how things work in a genuinely free society. If a university wishes to adopt DEI, that is its right. If consumers (i.e., students or faculty) don't like it, they can go elsewhere.
Thus, the big difference between conservatives and libertarians is that conservatives believe in a system where the federal government is taxing people in order to deliver the money to universities. They also favor a system in which the president can use that dole as a way to have universities run their school the way the president wants. Libertarians, on the other hand, favor a complete separation of education and the state, one in which there is no taxpayer dole paid to universities and in which universities are free to run their school the way they want.
It's the same with healthcare. Conservatives love that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is running the department in an anti-vaccine direction.
Libertarians, on the other hand, favor a complete separation of healthcare and the state, just like with education and religion. Therefore, under libertarianism, there would be no Department of Health and Human Services or any other federal healthcare agency. The federal government would have no more to do with healthcare than it does with religion.
Thus, the federal government would not be pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine. For that matter, unlike conservatism, which is anti-vaccine, libertarianism is neither pro-vaccine nor anti-vaccine. Libertarianism is pro-freedom, which means that a free society is one in which people are free to be pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine.
The bottom line, of course, is that in favoring government control over education and healthcare, conservatives favor a system that is, at its core, anti-freedom. Moreover, they inevitably lament and cry when leftists gain control over their system and use it to move things in a leftist direction. By separating education and the state and healthcare and the state, libertarians favor freedom and also don't have to concern themselves about the wrong people gaining the levers of power.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.