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Authoritarin conservatism, that of the high Tory or Ultramontagne Continental Conservative. Whether it glorifies the state in monarchal or religious terms, it still views the individual as subordinate to the state. It lacks being totalitarian only because of its traditionalism grounding in morality (in most places) and the sense of reciprocal obligation of all in society in the Great Chain of Being whereby each had is place.

Please forgive me for repeating myself, but this paragraph of yours is simply delicious.

Now--why would someone with this view of the individual invoke Rothbardian libertarianism? That is the question.

BOSWELL: Is it necessary to believe all the Thirty-nine articles[of the Church of England]
JOHNSON: "Why, sir, that is a question which has been much agitated. Some have held it necessary that all be believed. Others have considered them to be only articles of peace, that is to say, you are not to preach against them.
-Boswell's Life of Johnson

It is quite possible for a man to agitate for certain principles, yet not be a True Believer in them. Not because he is a two-faced liar, but because he knows that far worse principles are running about, and the common good of the nation requires a modicum of peace between competing systems, lest we perish in an ideological civil war. I do not know if this method is at work within paleoconservative thought.

I'm replying to both of your posts here. I don't think the two strands (libertarian and authoritarian) have merged at all, rather the libertarian strain is far healthier and certainly has more intllectual following.

Bozell was the exception that proves the rule in his open Carlism and rejection of the entire Enlightenment apparatus.

I think the reason most American authoritarian conservatives, especially the ultramontagne Roman Catholics, pose as friends of liberty is that they know that if they were to show their true views, they would have neither audience nor influence. It's a simple matter of practicality: the underlying philosophical assumptions of the unconsciously held political philosophy of the US -- what's "in the air we breathe" if you will -- begins with and requires an acceptance of the Enlightenment principles of individual liberty upon which the Republic is founded. That's the same reason the Marxists have so little traction here when they're honest.

Remember, in the 19th century and even into the 20th, Catholics in the US were objects of strong suspicion of disloyalty, or rather of having a higher loyalty to the Rome of the Inquisition, the Popish Plot and Bloody Mary that looms so large in the Anglo-Saxon imagination. Catholic political and philosophical dialogue with the Anglo-Saxon majority in the US had to find ways of speaking that did not rouse the Protestant hue and cry. Most of our ultramontagne authoritarian conservatives in the US are Roman Catholics who were educated before Vatican II, and so grew up in the tradition that it was necessary to wrap oneself in the flag. In conservative political terms in the modern era, that has meant "original intent", lots of Adams and Jefferson and talk of liberty.