Posted on 04/08/2010 9:27:19 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
During a question-and-answer session at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., one man opined, "One thing I've learned here at CPAC is that the 'C' actually doesn't stand for 'libertarianism.' It's not 'L'PAC." When Congressman Ron Paul won the annual straw poll at CPAC, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh made a point to tell his listeners that CPAC wasn't conservative this year because a libertarian had won.
Both men are worse than just wrong. They're out of their minds.
Arguably the most popular history of American conservatism, George H. Nash's book The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America begins with libertarianism. In the first chapter titled "The Revolt of the Libertarians," Nash states: "For those who believed in the creed of old-fashioned, classical, 19th-century liberal individualism, 1945 was especially lonely, unpromising, and bleak. Free markets, private property, limited government, self reliance, laissez-faire — it had been a long time since principles like these guided government and persuaded peoples."
Chronicling the intellectuals who tried to rectify this bleakness, Nash begins his history with two men: economists F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Then he explains how these libertarian heroes kick-started the American conservative movement. Few actually used the word "conservatism" in 1945, a term that began to gain popularity when Russell Kirk's book The Conservative Mind was published in 1953 and with the founding of William F. Buckley's National Review in 1955. Nash notes that even Kirk was inspired by both Hayek and Mises, writing to a friend that these men represented a "great school of economists of a much sounder and different mind."
After Hayek and Mises, Nash then cites Albert Jay Nock, publisher of the unabashedly libertarian magazine The Freeman in the 1920s. Writes Nash: "Nock came to exert a significant amount of influence on the postwar Right," yet was so libertarian that "Nock verged on anarchism in his denunciations of the inherently aggrandizing State." Noting the impression Nock made on a young Buckley, Nash explained that "it was Nockian libertarianism, in fact, which exercised the first conservative influence on the future editor of National Review."
Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., president of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, says, "Nash's work is one of the very few books that must be read for a full understanding of the conservative movement in America." However, Feulner's Heritage Foundation advertises on Limbaugh's show, where the host is seemingly oblivious to the fact that the American conservative movement could not have existed without libertarianism. Furthermore, pundits like Rush often claim to be "Reagan conservatives." However, they seem to forget that in 1976 said Reagan, "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." As you can see, advocating for "limited government" without employing some degree of libertarianism would be logistically impossible.
Which is exactly why so many of today's so-called conservatives are so quick to dismiss it. If there is an interloping ideology on the Right today, it is not libertarianism but neoconservatism, an ideology born not of limited government philosophy but of ex-socialists who migrated Right in reaction to the counterculture of the 1960s. Today, neoncons are devoted to promoting the maintenance and expansion of America's global empire.
Whereas traditional conservatives considered war — and the massive bureaucracy necessary to wage it — an occasional, necessary evil, neoconservatives consider perpetual war a good precisely because they believe it is America's mission to export democracy to the rest of the world.
Questioning the cost or wisdom of waging perpetual war is considered unconscionable or even "unpatriotic" to neoconservatives, which is why they are so dismissive of libertarians and others who question foreign policy. Most neoconservatives instinctively realize that their ideology is incompatible with the libertarian's pesky obsession with limited government, giving neocons reason to marginalize, or expel, any libertarian influence that threatens to expose the statist nature of today's mainstream conservative movement.
Considering their new, radical definition, it's easy to see why Rush and other mainstream conservatives don't consider libertarians part of their movement —because they're not. And while it remains to be seen how the irreconcilable differences will play out between limited government libertarians (whose numbers are growing) and big government neoconservatives (whose ideology still dominates), let there be no more ignorance about which philosophy is truly more alien to the historical American conservative movement. And let there be no further delusions about which philosophy was most responsible for creating it.
Catch Southern Avenger commentaries every Tuesday and Friday at 7:50 a.m. on the "Morning Buzz with Richard Todd" on 1250 AM WTMA.
Bennett is incredibly bright albeit way too statist. Horowitz really gets what we are up against being a red diaper doper baby himself. And Reagan was the closest thing we've had to a conservative president since Calvin Coolidge.
It's an endless game of whack a mole, where we never look under the table to stop the moles from breeding.
I contend that they are pseudo-conservatives, rather than neo-conservatives.
By way of clarification: Rather than “new” conservatives, which implies that they are simply the next generation of conservatives, I contend that they are “false” conservatives; that is, not really conservative at all.
How’s that for semantics?
You can find the definition in this book, which was written by the godfather of Neoconservatism:
It has the same relationship to true conservatism that Black Liberation Theology does to the Gospel of Christ.
What business is it of yours if I do?
Your ignorant, yet oh-so-common insult shows that you have the same intellect that the liberals & progressives who trash Sarah Palin do.
As it is, I can only assume you are just another idiotic troll with nothing better to do.
If you are FOR bigger and expanded government, you are no Conservative. Period.
Right on.
Like real RKBA? Like real laissez-faire capitalism? Like real limited government? Like real personal responsibility? Like real property Rights?
You still don't have a clue. You don't win an argument against rabid individualists by invoking collectivist/socialist imagery. You just make yourself look retarded.
Too many libertarians are ideologues who spout abstract dogma and ignore the lessons of history.
http://www.constitution.org/law/bastiat.htm
Please pay special attention to the Preface, because I think it is very impoertant these days.
Notice also how Mr. Bastiat, who was a member of the French legislature, praises the United States. My only disagreement w/ him is that he didn't think that women should have the right to vote, but other than that I think his words are spot-on. It sends "a thrill up my leg" every time I read it!
Dope is against the law for good reason.
I’ll will report any dope smokers, injectors or snorters in my neighborhood.
I love how breaking the law for illegals is bad, yet Libertarians think they are special.
Libertarians are not libertarian by definition by the way, and far from conservative.
“I would use the term “neo con” to refer to someone who supports undeclared wars, with undefined enemies, and rules of engagement which guarantee our troops will be pinned down for decades.”
Like Vietnam, Korea, Grenada, Panama, Iraq,
...also like Al Qeada...
Libertarians can play that game but they are nothing but liberals to me.
Because it helps prop up the Nanny State and keeps the money flowing for ever more government.
Nice going jackass.
That's only because you like bigger government as long as it's YOUR type of bigger government.
So is the use &/or addiction to nicotine & alcohol.
Drugs are for liberal losers and conservative losers.
A loser is a loser lol.
I’M SORRY...I misread your post (I thought it said “OF reason”, not “for a reason”. My bad!!!!!!!!!!
I’m legally blind, so I tend to misread things. Sorry about that.
“That’s only because you like bigger government as long as it’s YOUR type of bigger government.”
I find it amusing when dopeheads attempt to hide behind the ruse of limited government.
I’m for limited government, “no government” doesn’t work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.