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.
Of possible interest.
Someone define “neoconservative” for me.
Libertarians arguments all resolve to “I want to smoke dope”
Give me a break!
They won’t do that...the RonPaul nuts can’t incriminate themselves.
1. Jooooos
2. Anybody who believes in a strong defense, peace through strength etc.
It’s all a cabal to them.
A] Did you forget a sarcasm tag?
B] Are you trying to start a fight?
C] Are you just that ignorant of facts and truth?
“Neoconservative” is such an over-used term that it has no meaning ...
- Conservatives usually use the term to refer to tax-cut-and-spend Republicans ... in this case I am not a NeoCon.
- Liberals use it to refer to foriegn-policy-hawks and war-on-terror-proponents ... in this case, I am a NeoCon.
- Libertarians and Ron-Paul-cult-members would have you believe the two groups (spenders and hawks) are one-and-the-same ... they’re just wrong.
So who is this schmuck talking about?
SnakeDoc
Pro-war statists/liberals. See John McCain and Joe Lieberman and the Weekly Standard.
A neoconservative is, by definition, someone who was a liberal, but is now conservative.
Liberal and conservative are just labels. Libertarian is a name that has some actual meaning. A libertarian values the same things regardless of the country they are in. “Conservative” and “liberal” derive their meaning from the context of the country and government in which they exist. A conservative in the current Russia has much different values than a conservative in the US.
Huh??? What the heck is "tax-cut-and spend-Republican?" Are you refering to supply siders? If so, you don't have a case. The neocons were primarily attracted to the GOP in the 1970s and 1980s because of foreign policy (and to a lesser extent because of social and welfare policy) not because of "tax cuts."
First, there is a difference between Libertarianism and being libertarian.
Do you paint the entire republican party the same way because of the beliefs and actions of a few?
Are all cops bad because some are? Are all soldiers and Marines bad because some are.
Your argument would work better with a smaller brush. I am a conservative with libertarian leanings. I want child molesters executed. I want warring and supporting factions of islamist wiped from the face of the earth. But I really do not give a damn what someone puts into their body. That’s not my business and their problem is not mine either — in a free society. I should not be forced to pick up for them but neither should my liberty be infringed upon by some worthless, ineffective (but very expensive) phony war on drugs.
Those who would drag the US into an endless series of Middle-Eastern wars, against its long-term strategic interests (and continue to try and do so).
“Not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.”
- Russell Kirk
Your beef is with the late Norman Podhoritz, among others, who coined and proudly embraced the term throughout his life. Podhoritz was quite clear by what he meant by the term. It included a warmed over Wilsonianism on foreign policy and a sense that the left had "gone too far" by expanding welfare programs.
I apologize for my lack of clarity ... I was referring to individuals like George W. Bush who tax-cut like conservatives and spend like liberals. RINOS.
SnakeDoc
“against its long-term strategic interests”
Which wars? And what are the long-term strategic interests?
“Libertarians arguments all resolve to “I want to smoke dope””
the usual slander of so-called conservatives to discredit real conservatives, ie libertarians.
If you are not for smaller, Constitutional, government, you have no right to call yourself a conservative. The war on drugs is only one of a multitude of activities that the government needs to cease and desist to be Constitutional.
Thanks for posting that.
“Big Government Republicans.”
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