A few days ago I downloaded The Betrayal of the American Right by Murray Rothbard from the Online Library of Liberty, which contains this paragraph from the 1991 preface:
At the present time, many conservatives have come to realize that the old feisty, antigovernment spirit of conservatives has been abraded and somehow been transformed into its statist opposite. It is tempting, and, so far as it goes, certainly correct, to put the blame on the Right's embrace of the 1970's of Truman-Humphrey Cold War liberals calling themselves "neoconservatives," and to allow these ex-Trotskyites and ex-Menscheviks not only into the tent but also to take over the show.Now, Rothbard was a hard-core libertarian, but I think this observation has the ring of truth. Rothbard places the ultimate cause of the takeover of conservativism by the neocons to the founding of National Review, a position which I think is guaranteed to start an argument around here.
But it's also true, if not a truism that in order to understand where we are it's important to understand where we've come from.
As a former YAFer I remember the anti-war anti-Reagan draftcard burning Rothbard-led semi-riot at the 1969 YAF convention.
The problem is that cafeteria conservatism, just like cafeteria christianity, is a fallacy. You can’t just pick and choose the aspects of conservatism that fit your liefestyle and reject the rest. You either go the whole ten yards or the other side gets the ball.
A conservative belives in:
1. national security
2. fiscal restraint
3. smaller government
4. traditional values
Anyone who refuses to accept all four of those principles isn’t a conservative in my book.
- JP
A witness to history, Rothbard watched National Review take the old guard out back and shoot them, one by one, for various offenses against 'respectability' and other PC hobgoblins. Being good semi-detached Marxists, at least they gave their victims show trials in the pages of NR.