# Is the history of 20th Century American conservatism outlined in this article correct? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 31, 2011, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924 "2011-12-31T07:45:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/1 "2011-12-31T07:45:02Z")
The article is a very interesting read. Before I take what it says at face value I was wondering if it was historically correct? [How the Interventionists Stole the American Right](http://lewrockwell.com/mcmaken/mcmaken137.html) > [@](#): > > It is the libertarian, however, who carried on the movement that arose as opposition to the New Deal and the social democratic consensus of the thirties, while the Buckley wing of the movement tried to take the movement in an entirely new, different and far less radical direction. > > It is no surprise then that today, some of the candidates that command the largest following among Conservatives, such as Newt Gingrich, openly defend the New Deal while denouncing the likes of Ron Paul for wanting to drastically cut back the American government, its abuses and its wars. > > The remnants of the Buckley movement, far less dominant today than in decades past, nevertheless still tries to define who is and who is not entitled to be part of the movement, making proclamations without any regard to the historical fact that the Buckley wing of conservatism came to the opposition movement 25 years behind the old individualists, and is based on an unconvincing theory of conservatism that ignores the central role of classical liberalism and laissez faire individualism in American intellectual history. > > Modern conservatism of the Buckley strain remains true to its roots of endless foreign intervention, combined with a disregard to civil liberties at home and a half-hearted nod toward free markets. > > Thanks to Paul, many Americans, even if they have yet to understand Paul’s ideological roots in the pre-Buckley Conservative movement, seek a return to the Old Right and the early libertarian movement that formed the only opposition to the rapid destruction of American during the New Deal and during the multiple wars that followed. > > The “mainstream” Conservatives are perplexed by any consistent demand for small government among Conservatives. For them, advocating for constant war, while perhaps throwing in a few smears about homosexuals or Ted Kennedy, is what defines any movement that claims to uphold the freedom tradition in America. > > The real tradition of the American right is the laissez faire individualist tradition. That tradition is no longer being ignored. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/2 "2011-12-31T13:50:39Z")
Well, there are some things accurate in there… but take with a very large grain of salt. Pretty much anything that has Lew Rockwell attached to it in any way, shape or form must not be taken as a scholarly article, but as a means of promoting one particular brand of libertarianism that principally revolves around Ron Paul. For the record, Lew Rockwell is a former staffer of Ron Paul and is suspected, but not proven, of having a hand in writing the racist articles that appeared in Ron Paul’s newsletter in the 1990s. He also has strange connections to groups that seem to fetishize the Confederacy. It’s weird stuff that he an his ilk advocate, and any facts that end up on his website are usually easily outshone by the axes that are being ground in the same article. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2012, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/3 "2012-01-01T01:20:38Z")
Defending _laissez-faire_ is a sucker’s game. “Hey, remember the unstable, deflation-prone Gilded Age economy that fell apart in 1929; & how we never recovered until the adoption of massive military spending? Let’s do that again!” ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2012, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/4 "2012-01-01T01:37:16Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Defending _laissez-faire_ is a sucker’s game. “Hey, remember the unstable, deflation-prone Gilded Age economy that fell apart in 1929; & how we never recovered until the adoption of massive military spending? Let’s do that again!” The Gilded Age was dead by 1929, there were some economic regulations even then (largely anti-trust legislation). I agree with some of the facts presented but disagree with the message. Conservatives are not reactionaries, and we can’t go back all the way to days when the world essentially was quiet, peaceful, and before we were a superpower. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/5 "2012-01-01T02:51:49Z")
Are we sure Ron Paul didn’t write this? I’m having trouble keeping track of whose signing whose name to what now… ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2012, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/6 "2012-01-01T04:47:29Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Well, there are some things accurate in there… but take with a very large grain of salt. Pretty much anything that has Lew Rockwell attached to it in any way, shape or form must not be taken as a scholarly article, but as a means of promoting one particular brand of libertarianism that principally revolves around Ron Paul. > > For the record, Lew Rockwell is a former staffer of Ron Paul and is suspected, but not proven, of having a hand in writing the racist articles that appeared in Ron Paul’s newsletter in the 1990s. He also has strange connections to groups that seem to fetishize the Confederacy. It’s weird stuff that he an his ilk advocate, and any facts that end up on his website are usually easily outshone by the axes that are being ground in the same article. Thanks for the heads up. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/7 "2012-01-01T23:43:51Z")
The history in the article is mostly right, Meyer and Buckley advocated for fusionism, which sought to combine libertarians and conservatives. One of the ways they did this was to focus on the evils of communism which both groups hated. This opposition to communism meant that conservatives advocated for increasing the military budget while shrinking the rest of the government. This strategy successfully defeated communism but with the end of the Cold War some people starting to question the interventionism of American foreign policy. Some combined this new isolationism with an economic populism to create Paleo-Conservatism. Rockwell is affiliated more with the paleoconservatives and he is trying to affiliate Paul with that movement and the paleo-conservative movement with original conservatism. That is where he goes off track. We can see with the benefit of hindsight that Naziism and communism were real threats and that American intervention was a key to neutralizing those threats. A better argument for isolationism is that things are different now and the threats we face no are no longer as dangerous so we need a new foreign policy, not that we need to go back to the discredited isolationism of Taft. ---
**Author:** ![Condescending\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a183cd/32.png) [@Condescending\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Condescending_Robot)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/8 "2012-01-02T00:30:07Z")
In summary, the new conservatives who want to kill Arabs are wrong and ahistorical, and we should all vote for Ron Paul so we can go back to true conservative principles of killing black people and gays. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/9 "2012-01-02T04:28:16Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > In summary, the new conservatives who want to kill Arabs are wrong and ahistorical, and we should all vote for Ron Paul so we can go back to true conservative principles of killing black people and gays. :rolleyes: Ron Paul is a Libertarian not Theodore Bilbo. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/10 "2012-01-02T06:59:45Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > For the record, Lew Rockwell is a former staffer of Ron Paul and is suspected, but not proven, of having a hand in writing the racist articles that appeared in Ron Paul’s newsletter in the 1990s. He also has strange connections to groups that seem to fetishize the Confederacy. Yeah… it always seemed very odd to me that articles promoting the benefits of absolute freedom would sometimes appear side-by-side with articles attempting to minimize the horrors of chattel slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Condescending\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a183cd/32.png) [@Condescending\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Condescending_Robot)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/11 "2012-01-02T18:00:16Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > :rolleyes: Ron Paul is a Libertarian not Theodore Bilbo. If the things that Lew Rockwell wrote and Ron Paul signed his name too are what “libertarianism” (small-l, I guess, since neither is a member of the Libertarian Party) is then count me out, since it’s obviously racist and homophobic to an absurd extreme where genocide or the reinstitution of slavery is not off the table. The Paulite defense that “he couldn’t have actually believed all the racist things he said, because he’s not a racist” is the sort of illogical “I am whatever I say I am” nonsense that infects too much discourse in America today. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-history-of-20th-century-american-conservatism-outlined-in-this-article-correct/607924/12 "2012-01-02T19:27:40Z")
> [@cckerberos](#): > > Yeah… it always seemed very odd to me that articles promoting the benefits of absolute freedom would sometimes appear side-by-side with articles attempting to minimize the horrors of chattel slavery. Rothbardism!