27 posts tagged “old right”

John T. Flynn

“The test of fascism is not one's rage against the Italian and German war lords. The test is – how many of the essential principles of fascism do you accept and to what extent are you prepared to apply those fascist ideas to American social and economic life? When you can put your finger on the men or the groups that urge for America the debt-supported state, the autarchial corporative state, the state bent on the socialization of investment and the bureaucratic government of industry and society, the establishment of the institution of militarism as the great glamorous public-works project of the nation and the institution of imperialism under which it proposes to regulate and rule the world and, along with this, proposes to alter the forms of our government to approach as closely as possible the unrestrained, absolute government – then you will know you have located the authentic fascist.

“But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that we are dealing by this means with the problem of fascism. Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans, as violently against Hitler and Mussolini as the next one, but who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up and that the present political system in America has outlived its usefulness and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing millions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fascist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy.”

~ John T. Flynn (1882 - 1964), As We Go Marching (1944).
[See excerpt of book: "What Is Fascism?"]

Charles Burris in his LRC essay "Obamascam" gives the above quote and asks: "Will no one in the mainstream media call Obama and his emerging regime by its rightful name?"

A Few Essays on Flynn:

• "John T. Flynn: Exemplar of the Old Right" by Justin Raimondo.
• "A Tribute to John T. Flynn" by Adam Young.
• "John T. Flynn: Enemy of Militarism" by Dan Spielberg.
• "Hating 'That Man in the White House' All Over Again" Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
• "John T. Flynn and the Myth of FDR" by Ralph Raico.
• A David Gordon Review of The Roosevelt Myth.

See Online Flynn Literature: Here.

Available Flynn Books: Here.

Some of the finest writing can be found in the books and essays of the Old Right. Few people can write as good as, say, Frank Chodorov or H.L. Mencken. For that reason alone it is worth reading their material. Another example would be Garet Garrett (1878 – 1954). In my modest Liberty library, I have his book Ex America: The 50th Anniversary of the People's Pottage. It contains three monographs: "The Revolution Was," "Ex-America," and "The Rise of Empire." This book is a frightening look into the fascist New Deal and the rise of Empire.

Joseph Sobran, the great conservative anarchist, one day came across this book, and made him reexamine his ties with National Review. Bruce Ramsey, in the introduction to Ex America, writes:

Sobran discovered these Garet Garrett essays "one night, long ago, at the office of National Review, where I then worked." As the flagship of modern conservatism, National Review supported the Cold War and the hot war then raging in Vietnam.

"Two questions occurred to me," Sobran writes. "One: 'Why haven't I heard of this man before?' Two: 'If he's right, what am I doing here?'"

I should note parenthetically, that Mr. Ramsey has just completed a biography of Garrett called Unsanctioned Voice. It's probably a fascinating read. For a general overview of the Old Right, you can get The Betrayal of the American Right by Murray Rothbard and Reclaiming the American Right by Justin Raimondo.

But what I really want to bring your attention to is "The Capitalist Fiction of Garet Garrett" by Bruce Ramsey. You can read the article here. The second main article, by the same gentleman, I would like to bring your attention to is "More Ways to Burst a Bubble." Read that here. (Via CharlesGoyette.com.)

See Also:

• Garrett's Available Online Literature.
• Purchase Garrett's Books.
• "Who Is Garet Garrett?" by Jeffrey A. Tucker.
• "Garet Garrett (1878-1954) On Empire" by Joseph R. Stromberg.
• "Garet Garrett: Exemplar of the Old Right" by Justin Raimondo.
• "The Great Garet Garrett" by Bill Steigerwald.
  
• Review of Ex America by Ryan McMaken.
• "Quotes From Garet Garrett" edited by Bruce Ramsey.

Felix Morley (1894 – 1981) was a gentleman of what the late Murray Rothbard referred to as the Old Right. Morley was one of the founding editors of Human Events. He wrote for the Baltimore Sun and was an editor of the Washington Post. For his writings he won the Pulitzer Prize. Morley for a few years was the President of Haverford College. His books include The Power in the People (1949) and Freedom and Federalism (1959). He was also part of the anti-interventionist League of Nations.

Morley, not being a part of the Buckley takeover, saw the incompatibility between a Republic, on the one hand, and an Empire, on the other. He wrote about how the government and the military-industrial complex have created an interest in maintaining an empire and having some enemy; that this has created a "self-perpetuating managerial elite." And that empire brings about illusions of grandeur. He was a Cold War skeptic. Morley, in addition, was anti-egalitarian and socially conservative.

Read His Seminal Essay: "American Republic or American Empire" (Modern Age: Summer, 1957)

Morley at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

His Wikipedia Entry.

Intellectual Bio Essays:

• "Felix Morley and the Commonwealthman Tradition: The Country-Party, Centralization and the American Empire"  by Leonard P. Liggio.
• "Felix Morley: An Old Fashioned Republican Critic of Statism and Interventionism" by Joseph R. Stromberg.
• "Felix Morley: An Old-fashioned Republican" by Joseph R. Stromberg.
• "Felix Morley, RIP" by Murray N. Rothbard (page 5 of pdf)
  

Other Essays:

• "The Anti-Imperialist League and the Battle Against Empire" by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
• "It Didn't Start with Bush" by Ira Katz.
• "What Has Happened to Human Events?" by Christopher Manion. (It was neoconized.)
• "War, Peace, and the State" by Joseph R. Stromberg.
• "Libertarianism, Conservatism, and All That" by Jude Blanchette.
  

Not an election season goes by without the usual political rhetoric about "fixing" the education system. News from the boob tube incessantly recounts on how the system is broken. Politicians promise more and more money (and we are all stuck with the bill, if we have children going to a public school or not). They recommend one change and tinkering with the system after another. The masses crescendo cries and complaining rarely takes a holiday. All of this money spent, with the pot seemingly growing every year, and with one tinkering and another to the system the complaining and problems persist.

Just perhaps, as Albert Jay Nock (1870 - 1945) argued, there is a more fundamental problem in which no amount of readjustment, realignment, or other mechanical reconfiguration will produce anything but a vacuous effect. After all the effort in the world a machine that is based on an erroneous theory will only produce a defective machine.

This is what The Theory of Education in the United States by Albert Jay Nock is about. It is a very short book which can be read quickly. The book is based on a series of lectures he gave in 1931 at the University of Virginia.

Who was Nock? He was a man, and one of the most striking and interesting figures, of what Murray Rothbard called the Old Right; the Old Right of forgotten memory with men like Nock, Chodorov, Flynn, Garrett, Morley, and even (strangely enough) Republican politicians like Buffett and Taft.

Nock's Our Enemy, the State, his magnum opus, overturns any notion that the Constitution did anything but crush liberty. It was nothing but a coup d’état of power grabs away from the superior Articles of Confederation. Real liberty never had anything to do with the Constitution. Real liberty is the antithesis of the political state. Nock's Memoirs of a Superfluous Man is filled with insights, from a master of the pen. The great Robert Nisbet said that he "practically memorized" this work.

(Some of his other books include, but not limited to, On Doing the Right Thing, Jefferson, The State of the Union, and Snoring as a Fine Art.)

And how can any man carrying on the tradition of the Old Right not love Nock's mind and personality after reading his "Anarchist's Progress" article? He was a master of parable.

As for Nock's views of education, his views will sadly not get anywhere in an era of leftism and egalitarianism. His views would no doubt be shocking to the prosaic masses of a statist culture. And to say that he would have seen right through President George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" would be an understatement.

What is the theory behind education today? There are three basic principles, accepted without much question. The first is based on egalitarianism. It is said that everyone is educable. Who knows, maybe with just the right training or education we can turn the average streetwalker into a Sir Isaac Newton or a Ludwig von Mises. The second one works hand-in-hand with the first. It is based on the notion of democratic rights. The third is based on the idea that a literate population produces a "good" government.

Individuals who wish to become teachers today are not given education but instruction, says Nock. After a certain period, and tests based on this instructional knowledge, they then receive a certificate. However the only thing that a certificate like this really says is that they are instructed persons, not necessarily educated persons.

An educated man is one who sees things as they really are, as Plato said. Such a man is able to learn "formative" knowledge and digest it without any bias or emotional reaction. This is quite different from an instructed man. Virtually all men can be instructed, but not educated. "The ineducable are among us as the sands of the sea for multitude." (p 116) The educated man is assimilated in the classics, in what Nock calls the "Great Tradition."

The Great Tradition is a fixed and invariable education. It is not composed of any electives or vocational training. Nor is it suited to the person. The educable person must become suited to it. It takes man back to the literature and thought of Greece and Rome, "the longest and fullest continuous record available to us, of what the human mind has been busy about in practically every department of spiritual and social activity." (p 52) It is what makes a mind an experienced mind. It gives him a record that "covers twenty-five hundred consecutive years of the human mind's operations in poetry, drama, law, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, . . ., everything."

How did this work in the old days?

After the three Rs, or rather for a time in company with them, his staples were Latin, Greek and mathematics. He took up the elements of these two languages very early, and continued at them, with arithmetic and algebra, nearly all the way through primary, and all the way through secondary schools. Whatever else he did, if anything, was inconsiderable except as related to these major subjects; usually some reading in classical history, geography and mythology. When he reached the undergraduate college at the age of sixteen or so, all his language difficulties with Greek and Latin were forever behind him; he could read anything in either tongue, and write in either, and he was thus prepared to deal with both literatures purely as literature, to bestow on them a purely literary interest. He had also in hand arithmetic, and algebra as far as quadratics. Then in four years in college he covered practically the whole range of Greek and Latin literature; mathematics as far as the differential calculus, and including the mathematics of elementary physics and astronomy; a brief course, covering about six weeks, in formal logic; and one as brief in the bare history of the formation and growth of the English language.

Those that could not do it were dropped out or were kicked out. There was no stigma about that because there was no illusion of the nature revolting ideology of equality.

Other subjects were considered vocational, for other institutions. Nock said that there was no teaching, for example, of political economy. It was expected that topics like this, educable and inquisitive minds would learn on their own, and that, no doubt, Nock did.

"The educable person, in contrast to the ineducable, (p 124)

is one who gives promise of some day being able to think; and the object of educating him, of subjecting him to the Great Tradition's discipline, is to put him in the way of right thinking, clear thinking, mature and profound thinking.

Thomas Jefferson, despite being so well known for his support of popular education, seemed to have basically the right general idea when it came to issues of equality. His idea was that all children should be given the "three Rs." And then, from primary school, only the brightest would be sent into grammar school for one to two years. Those students would then be sent away except, said Jefferson, "the best genius of the whole." (p 32) His education would go on for another six years. "By this means," wrote Jefferson, "twenty of the best geniuses shall be ranked from the rubbish annually." And at the end of these six years the ten out of twenty would be sent to William and Mary College.

As you can see, there appears no conspicuous egalitarian sentiment with Jefferson here. (Moreover, Jefferson himself was against compulsory school laws.) On the other hand, Jefferson did believe that a literate mass was needed to produce "good" government. It was this that Nock vividly disagreed.

One only has to look at what the masses do read. The things, as Nock put it, which makes up the "furniture" of their minds. He also paraphrases Joseph Butler in saying that "the majority of men are much more apt at passing things through their minds than they are at thinking about them." (p 43)

For Nock, the masses can be literate (or be instructed to be so), and all for the good, but they were not literate in the true sense of the word.

Unlike many traditional conservatives, Nock did not criticize vocational instruction. He criticized the idea that many traditional conservatives have about the possibility of educating the masses in the Great Tradition. Once you start doing that, it will only be natural that education will have to be dumb downed to the lowest common denominator, and that the Great Tradition will be increasingly replaced with vocational instruction.

All for the good that Bob, who is ineducable, can get vocational training and work in the market place. Indeed, writes Nock, "society is better off for having its ineducables as well trained as they are capable of becoming." (p 112) It is when the State tries to educate everyone that you have problems.

Our system is based upon the assumption popularly regarded as implicit in the doctrine of equality, that everybody is educable. This has been taken without question from the beginning; it is taken without question now. The whole structure of our system, the entire arrangement of its mechanics, testifies to this. Even our truant laws testify to it, for they are constructed with exclusive reference to school-age, not to school-ability. . . . The philosophical doctrine of equality gives no more ground for the assumption that all men are educable than it does for the assumption that all men are six feet tall. (p 30)

It is then that "Gresham's Law" (p 140) kicks in. In political economy it relates to how government drives out good money and subsidizes bad money. Here it relates to how equality pushes down development to the "dreadful average"----the bad wins over the good.

Democratic values have only compounded this (p 38):

The popular idea of democracy is animated by a strong resentment of superiority. It resents the thought of an elite; the thought that there are practicable ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience, achievement and enjoyment, which by nature are open to some and not to all. It deprecates and disallows this thought, and discourages it by every available means. As the popular idea of equality postulates that in the realm of spirit everybody is able to enjoy everything that anybody can enjoy, so the popular idea of democracy postulates that there shall be nothing worth enjoying for anybody to enjoy that everybody may not enjoy; and a contrary view is at once exposed to all the evils of a dogged, unintelligent, invincibly suspicious resentment.

The whole institutional life organized under the popular idea of democracy, then, must reflect this resentment. It must aim at no ideas above those of the average man; that is to say, it must regulate itself by the lowest common denominator of intelligence, taste and character in the society which it represents.

The democratic and egalitarian age in schooling took off by the politicians feeding off of and manipulating a noble idea. Parents want what is best for their children and want them to have more than they have. They want them to have the best chance in life as they can possibly get. Politicians fed on this, says Nock. There was an ethos of urgency. And it was felt that vocational education was the answer to all the ills.

This developed the idea that schooling was "common property" to all and that all children had a "right" to it. Education became nationalistic and collectivistic. And the educable elite are lost to it.

The university today, according to Nock, is not a university at all in the traditional sense. They are primarily institutes of instruction. Even all the way back to 1931 did Nock think that there were too many in number of students and tenured professors. Bigger is not better. A large university will have to be an institution that was not of the Great Tradition for two reasons: Firstly, the many are not educable. Secondly, the law of diminishing returns.

Such talk is taboo, no question. But, really, how many average men need to go to college, even as presently configured? Certainly not everyone should, as we are told today. Even the most basic and simple of jobs require college degrees in the present age! This idea has been engrained in us.

As "Mr. Libertarian," Murray Rothbard, wrote,

America was built by citizens and leaders many of whom received little or no formal schooling, and the idea that one must have a high-school diploma----or nowadays, an A.B. degree----before he can begin to work and to live in the world is an absurdity of the current age.

Concluding----and Politically Incorrect----Thoughts. It goes without saying that the chance the Great Tradition will be upheld in the future is zero. But for you and me, we can try to educate ourselves. I am an instructed man----not an educated one. And I do not presume (as a reader might think) to say that I am an educable man and not an ineducable one, according to Nock's high standards. [One of my goals is to learn Latin so I can attempt to give myself a classical education, care to join me?]

"[T]here is no possible compromise," Nock wrote, "with an unsound theory; nature always steps in and exacts her penalty." (p 142)

This is why we all should heed Albert Jay Nock's---the Tory Anarchist's---words. Once man realizes that, if he ever does, we can leave behind the nonstop tinkering with the "educational" system which is based on false ideas.

***

And we see these false ideas everywhere in education. It is not only displayed in the attempt to try to make everyone more or less bright (or, shall we say, dull), but it is also displayed in the attempt to fight against achievement gaps between groups of people. That is, between females and males, blacks and whites, and so on. Larry Summers tells some politically incorrect truths concerning the fact that men on average fill the high-end sciences whereas women do not, and for that he got the ax. James Watson, while not directly relating to the education system nonetheless overlaps in implications, tells some politically incorrect truths about (average) racial differences in intelligence, and he gets the ax.

Fred Reed in the April 7th edition of TAC wrote about how Harvard's most difficult mathematics course, Math 55, is made up of "45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, 100 percent male." I doubt it is "evil" discrimination or a random anomaly.

Why, yes, we should all judge individual persons qua unique individuals and treat them as such. This should go without saying. Obviously I am all for judging people by individual merit. But then to make some kind of jump into group egalitarianism is something quite different.

***

Addendum ~ A Few Random PI (politically incorrect) Thoughts:

Above and beyond the politically incorrect thoughts above, here are a few others that I have...

• Girls and boys should be separated in schools. Why? Because girls and boys learn differently; have different strong and weak points; have different aptitudes; have different personalities and require different kinds of environments and emotional support; and, obviously, for reasons of sexual distraction.
• Bring back a more stick and conservative dress code in schools. Aren't we all tired to seeing boys' underwear because of, for whatever reason it makes it "cool," unnecessarily baggy pants? (Where are the parents in this?) And have girls dress with some decency. Make them women; not sluts. The male mind, being what it is, is easy to indulge in imagination. Just dress decently and modestly. Women (and men) are not mere objects, but dressing as such invites such an image.
• As explained above in this blog entry, we must all accept the fact that not everyone is equally educable. Mankind is not made up of equal drones, ready to be programmed into robots waiting commands from the collective. So give the truly gifted elite, who are a rare and valuable group, all the encouragement possible with no constraints. To this end, as Nock and Frank Chodorov said, because the masses cannot stand differences, we must de-democratize education.
• Beyond bringing back the classics to the educable, mathematics must be learned correctly. Real learning and education is not memorizing idealized steps to solve idealized textbook problems. A parrot can parrot information but that does not necessarily mean it understands what it is parroting. Today mathematics, echoing the terms used by Nock, is instruction. One can insert a function into their graphing calculator, and that is all well and good, but that does not mean they know what they are doing. They are not learning or becoming educated in today's math.
  
• Most importantly, end government schools and compulsory attendance laws. Short of that: decentralize as far as possible.
  

Ah, well. I can dream, can't I? Were I to be somehow zapped into the distant future for a while, and wanted to find out if this future society were a free one or not, I would go find out if there were government schools in place. If it so happened that none were to be found after such a trek, I would then know that I discovered that a future free society exists.

Expanding on the theme of the Old Right, the following are some essays written by Murray N. Rothbard on the subject. As to be expected with such, there is substantial overlap in these essays. The content in these essays is found, to a greater degree and with a delightful personal angle, in Rothbard's The Betrayal of the American Right.

Here they are:

A few more essays are worth adding. One is his April 1959 "For A New Isolationism." Rothbard wrote this for the National Review, in the "New Right's" own terms, to attempt to steer the Right-wing to an "isolationist" or non-interventionist stance. Unsurprisingly it was rejected by William Buckley.

"Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" (Spring 1965) was his first article in the journal Left and Right. It explains the corruption of classical liberalism and how liberalism was transformed to pursue liberal goals (i.e., individual freedom) through "conservative" or establishment means via statism, an impossibility.

---------
Also worthy to add in here is an interview with Mr. Rockwell.  It is on "Libertarianism and the Old Right." Another one is Mr. Stromberg's "Rothbard versus Rothbard: A False Dilemma," which briefly addresses criticisms of Rothbard's shifting alliance with the left & right and explains why he was always a cultural conservative.

Someone might ask me, and it is a good question: What do you think about the New Right takeover as it relates to Russell Kirk or Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn?

Well, please allow me a detour.

I believe that in many ways it is a waste of time to rationally debate the spectrum between Left and Right. They flip and flop, dance, and spin and all the rest. Gentlemen like the great Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken were once considered on the "Left." Then World War II came and they were considered on the "Extreme Right." Next, after they departed from the scene, those on this "Right" were later considered more allied with the "New Left." Then libertarianism went back to the "Right" or, for a time, a "Paleo Right." All of this without libertarianism changing its spots.

Today's spectrum has the "far left" meeting the "far right" with their different forms of collectivisms. A journey to the far left brings you to socialism and communism. A journey to the far right brings you to fascism. Both are forms of collectivism, however. They make little sense as a result.

What's more, to add to the confusion, Benito Mussolini, the founder of fascism, defined his philosophy on the far left. According to Mr. John V. Denson in A Century of War, "It was not until the 'Red Decade' of the 30s, and the appearance of Hitler, that leftist intellectuals and the media began to swing Fascism on the political spectrum on the Right so that the 'good forms of collectivism,' such as socialism, could oppose the 'extremism on the Right, which they said was fascism."

Take Nock, he had the same views before and after WWII. "Our Enemy, The State" did not change.

The "extreme" end of the Old Right had a consistent view of upholding the liberty of men against the coercive apparatus of the State. A view that demanded, and still demands, support of individual and private property rights, free markets, and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

The problem is that the left-right spectrum has been developed and defined by the establishment. It is wholly owned by it. This makes it hard to define the "true" spot on the spectrum as it relates to libertarianism. It can be a source of confusion to someone newly being introduced to this political philosophy. Libertarianism is just libertarianism. Libertarians in America, for example, are not going to get back the term "liberal" anytime soon, even though libertarians are the true, classical liberals. Libertarians are the most radical, anti-State liberals. As Rothbard said, "if you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place."

But, to play along a bit, I, for instance, have more in common with Chronicles Magazine ("hard-right," but not fascist in any way) than Counter Punch ("hard-left") today. (I think you could say that about most anti-statist libertarians.) The fact of the matter is that you can only get the truth from the hard-right and hard-left. Both of them, in terms of foreign policy views, I have more in common with than either of the "soft," or mainstream, versions of left and right. While I am more hard-right than hard-left, ironically in general terms of the mainstream "soft" left-right spectrum, I have relatively more in common with the soft-left because of our common opposition to the Bush administration and its works. (So I guess: By these standards I am "hard-right, soft-left, libertarian.") As far as my social views completely outside of politics and the use of it to enforce individual "morality" (a contradiction!), it is hard to say I have much relation with the young of the mainstream, "soft" right. Indeed, and oh so happily so, I have virtually nothing in common with them. But, obviously, I cannot relate to the soft-left either. Here I am back to the hard-right: to Patrick Buchanan and, especially, Paul Gottfried. (That is perfectly consistent with "plumb-line" libertarianism. To the horrors of left-libertarianism and the in-the-beltway groups, no doubt, I would say that libertarianism is pro-bourgeois and "traditional" family. That it is amplified by it contra statism and its social managerial engineering via the welfare state, the centralization of authority away from family, church, community, etc., and so forth.)

Now as far as the development of the "New Right" from the Old, it is important to understand that conservatism is not and was not homogeneous or monolithic.

And there is more to life than politics and the political system (Thank, God). When Russell Kirk wrote about the "moral imagination," I find benefit in such writings. Kirk's message, to me, is that life is more than purely political, "ideological," or based on mere utility or utilitarianism. There is a "spiritual struggle" for man and mankind. Kirk also wrote about the importance of religion, community, and tradition. What can be wrong about that? (Strictly speaking libertarianism is focused on the State.) Is there negative to Kirk? Oh, sure. Of course. But don't overlook the good.

Was Kirk a sellout when he was associated with National Review when it came to the war issue? I do not know. There is a good chance. (1946 he was incredible on conscription.) But he was ultimately kicked-out of "acceptable" conservatism in his last years on earth.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a friend of libertarian Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, was a classical liberal in the sense that he wanted the government to be strictly limited to the defense of person and property. (I have no idea of his views on the Cold War, though.) He just thought that was best done through monarchy. Something of which I would agree with him, but only insofar as the question is a choice between monarchy and democracy. He was also against total war. An essay of his on the transformation of monarchical wars to democratic was included in the libertarian book The Myth of National Defense.

The Mises Institute has even brought back to life a couple of Kuehnelt-Leddihn's books: Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Times and The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large. (I do not own them and have not read them---at least not yet.)

Another "New Right" person would be Richard Weaver. I am not sure how he lasted at NR. He was against total war; the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan. And things like this. He was also a supporter of Austrian economics. Weaver wrote against the income tax and the fed. (Was he "perfect"? No, of course not. But that is not the point.)

Weaver, indirectly at least, showed one truth about the relationship between some "traditionalist conservatives" and libertarians: The way some libertarians attack "traditionalists" on the right is just as superficial as how many traditionalists attack libertarians.

For how can we square Weaver's views on tradition with his relatively pro-libertarian view-point?

Next take a look at Robert Nisbet. Nisbet never wrote for NR, which is no surprise at all given his views on militarism and the Cold War.

So the picture is filled with some counter-examples and nuances. If that makes me a "[old style] conservative-libertarian," so be it. I don't see any contradiction.

In the early 1990s Murray N. Rothbard excitingly declared that "the Old Right is suddenly back!" With the Ron Paul Revolution in full gear it seems that proclamation would be even more true today. This is what makes The Betrayal of the American Right, never before published, timely indeed. A tremendous book to add to your collection.

As Justin Raimondo says at Taki's Top Drawer, it is "essential reading for those tens of thousands of Ron Paul fans who probably don’t know they stand at the end of a long and proud tradition."

Reading it did exactly that for me. It made me feel apart of a long-standing tradition and movement, even with its ups and many downs.

Take a Look at Mr. Raimondo's Three-part Series on the Book:

• The Real American Right: Part I
• Part II
• Part III

Another Essay to Check Out is Mr. Doug French's "Understanding the Neocon Takeover."

"Liveblogging" on the Book from Mr. Anthony Gregory.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I loved the adventure of the Old Right. Not only did Rothbard give a tour of the Old Right, its rise and fall, but it is also a semi-biographical work of Rothbard's political and intellectual development and his activism.

You learn about H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, John T. Flynn, Frank Chodorov, Garet Garrett, Colonel Robert McCormick, and several others.

It makes it a great starting point. A point that can then lead you to read the works of these individuals. Some of the quotes of these men that appear in this book were prophetic, especially as it regards war and empire. Thankfully many of these Old Right books-----for example, Flynn's As We Go Marching and Garrett's The People's Pottage-----have been brought back into print by the Mises Institute. Consequently we not only get to read about these books or individuals, but now can dive in source material. Mises.org makes them easily available to download for free. You can even buy the physical books as well.

You also learn of some of the politicians of this Right. They were molded more inline with Ron Paul. They were against Harry Truman's Cold War measures and were generally principled when it came to economic-domestic policies. (Did you know that the right, for a time, opposed the Cold War?) But you also learn of the betrayals and the "New Right" Buckley takeover. (Bet you did not know this: Mr. Buckley at one time called himself an "individualist" and even an "anarchist." He was greatly associated with Frank Chodorov.) Finally, Rothbard talked about the development of the "New Left" which was principled in its opposition to war and had, at the time at least, libertarian tendencies.

H. L. Mencken:

Mencken

“ALL government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see is an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

“There is seldom, if ever, any evidence that the new government proposed would be any better than the old one. On the contrary, all the historical testimony runs the other way. Political revolutions do not often accomplish anything of genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one gang of thieves and put in another. After a revolution, of course, the successful revolutionists always try to convince doubters that they have achieved great things, and usually they hang any man who denies it. But that surely doesn't prove their case. In Russia, for many years, the plain people were taught that getting rid of the Czar would make them all rich and happy, but now that they have got rid of him they are poorer and unhappier than ever before. Even the American colonies gained little by their revolt in 1776. For twenty-five years after the Revolution they were in far worse condition as free states than they would have been as colonies. Their government was more expensive, more inefficient, more dishonest, and more tyrannical. It was only the gradual material progress of the country that saved them from starvation and collapse, and that material progress was due, not to the virtues of their new government, but to the lavishness of nature. Under the British hoof they would have got on just as well, and probably a great deal better.

“The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone ---- one which barely escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed from these scenes and taken up my public duties in Hell.”

Conservative traditionalist Russell Kirk, who no doubt were alive today would be called an "unpatriotic conservative" by the likes of National Review and The Weekly Standard, wrote this good piece in 1946 for The South Atlantic Quarterly on the subject of conscription. Kirk's essay is impressive.

Another gentleman, a man admired by Kirk, was Robert Taft of the Old Right. By the way, he is someone who has a modern day admirer and follower even, his name is Ron Paul----why, maybe you have heard of him. Read Taft's article on conscription here.

The final thing wished to be pointed out in this blog entry is a newly republished book that has come out of the Ludwig von Mises Institute's "Student Series." A book that was co-authored by no less than the founder of Human Events. It is called The Merchants of Death by H.C. Engelbrecht and F.C. Hanighen. But. . ., those two were also probably "unpatriotic conservatives." Next! Old Right? What Old Right?

Here is the description:

Here is the archtype of all post-World War I revisionism of a particular variety: the hunt for the people who made the big bucks off the killing machine. The Merchants of Death was, in many ways, the manifesto of a generation of people who swore there would not be and could not be another.

But here is the kicker: it was co-authored by the founder of Human Events, the conservative weekly. So this is no left-wing screed against profiteering. It is a careful and subtle, but still passionate, attack on those who would use government to profit themselves at the expense of other people's lives and property.

Here is a sample of the ideological orientation: "The arms industry did not create the war system. On the contrary, the war system created the arms industry.... All constitutions in the world vest the war-making power in the government or in the representatives of the people. The root of the trouble, therefore, goes far deeper than the arms industry. It lies in the prevailing temper of peoples toward nationalism, militarism, and war, in the civilization which forms this temper and prevents any drastic and radical change. Only when this underlying basis of the war system is altered, will war and its concomitant, the arms industry, pass out of existence."

Thus is this book a wonderful example of what Rothbard called the "Old Right" in its best form. The book not only makes the case against the war machine. It provides a scintillating history of war profiteering, one authoritative enough for citation and academic study. One can see how this book had such a powerful effect.

Why re-release this book now? The war profiteers are making money as never before. They are benefiting from conflict as never before. Everything in this book has not only come to pass but as been made worse by a million times. So this treatise is more necessary than ever.

Again, this is the real heritage of the American right.

338 pages, paperback, 2007