As the force of the New Offer reached its heights, both foreign and domestic, during The second world war, a beleaguered and tiny libertarian opposition began to emerge and to formulate its total critique of prevailing trends in America. Sadly, the Left, nearly absolutely devoted to the cause of The second world war along with to extensions of the domestic New Deal, saw in the opposition not a principled and reasoned represent liberty, however a mere blind “isolationism” at best, and, at worst, a conscious or unconscious “parroting of the Goebbels line.”
It must not be forgotten that the Left, not so long earlier, was not above engaging in its own type of plot searching and guilt by association. If the Right had its McCarthys and Dillings, the Left had its John Roy Carlsons.
Now it is certainly true that much of this nascent and emerging libertarian Right was polluted with blind chauvinism, with reject of “foreigners,” and so on, which even then an unfortunate bent for plot searching was ending up being evident. But still the dominating pattern, certainly among the intellectuals of the Right, was a principled and trenchant opposition to war and to its concomitant destruction of life and liberty, and of human values.
The Beardian perfect of abstention from European wars was basically not a chauvinist reject of the stranger, however a require America to harken to its ancient aim of serving the world as a beacon light of peace and liberty, instead of as master of a house of correction to set everybody on the planet aright by force of bayonet. If the “isolationists” were not themselves libertarian, they were at least moving in that direction, and their concepts required only refinement and system to get to that objective.
In the dedication to peace, in the anxiety to restrict and confine state military interventions and ensuing wars, there was little distinction in between the right-wing principle of neutrality a generation back, and the left-wing concept of neutralism today. When we recognize this, the important obsolescence of the old classifications of “Right” and “Left” starts to become clear.
The intellectual leaders of this Old Right of World War II and the instant aftermath were then and stay today practically unknown amongst the larger body of American intellectuals: Albert Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, Frank Chodorov, Garet Garrett. It practically takes an excellent effort of the will to remember the principles and objectives of the Old Right, so various is the current extreme right today.
The stress, as we have actually kept in mind, was on individual liberty in all its aspects as versus state power: on flexibility of speech and action, on financial liberty, on voluntary relations rather than browbeating, on a serene diplomacy. The excellent danger to that liberty was state power, in its intrusion of personal liberty and private property and in its growing military despotism.
Philosophically, the major focus was on the natural rights of man, arrived at by an investigation through factor of the laws of man’s nature. Historically, the intellectual heroes of the Old Right were such libertarians as John Locke, the Levellers, Jefferson, Paine, Thoreau, Cobden, Spencer, and Bastiat.
In short, this libertarian Right based itself on 18th- and 19th-century liberalism, and started systematically to extend that teaching even further. The modern canon of the Right consisted of Nock’s Our Enemy the Stateand Memoirs of a Superfluous Guy,Paterson’s The God of the Machine(the chapter, “Our Japanized Educational System,” practically introduced the postwar reaction versus progressive education), and H. L. Mencken’s A Mencken Chrestomathy.Its organ of viewpoint was the now-forgotten monthly broadsheet analysis,modified by Nock’s leading disciple, Frank Chodorov. The political thought of this group was well summed up by Chodorov:
The state is an antisocial company, originating in conquest and concerned only with confiscating production … There are 2 methods of making a living, Nock discussed. One is the financial means,the other the political ways.The first consists of the application of human effort to raw materials so regarding bring into being things that people desire; the second is the confiscation of the rightful residential or commercial property of others … The state is that group of people, who having got hold of the equipment of compulsion, legally or otherwise, use it to much better their scenarios; that is the political methods.
Nock would speed up to discuss that the state consists not only of political leaders, however likewise those who utilize the political leaders for their own ends; that would consist of those we call pressure groups, lobbyists, and all who wrangle unique benefits out of the political leaders. All the oppressions that plague “sophisticated” societies, he kept, are traceable to the workings of the state organizations that connect themselves to these societies.
When the Cold War so swiftly prospered World War II, the Old Right was not bemused– not to mention did it lead the war cry. It is difficult to develop now that the primary political opposition to the Cold War was led, not by the Left, then being brought into the war camp by the ADA, however by the “extreme-right-wing Republicans” of that period: by the Howard Buffetts and the Frederick C. Smiths.
It was this group that opposed the Truman Teaching, NATO, conscription and American entry into the Korean War– with little grateful acknowledgement by left-wing peace groups then or now. In attacking the Truman Doctrine on the flooring of Congress, Rep. Buffett, who was to be Taft’s Midwestern project supervisor in 1952, declared:
Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that effort is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by browbeating and tyranny at home. Our Christian suitables can not be exported to other lands by dollars and guns. Persuasion and example are the methods taught by the Carpenter of Nazareth, and if our company believe in Christianity we must attempt to advance our perfects by his approaches. We can not practice might and require abroad and maintain flexibility at home. We can not talk world cooperation and practice power politics.
Amongst the intellectual management of the Old Right, Frank Chodorov strongly set forth the libertarian position on both the Cold War and the suppression of communists in the house. The latter was summed up in the aphorism, “The method to eliminate communists in government tasks is to eliminate the tasks.” Or, more extensively:
And now we concern the spy hunt– which is, in reality, a heresy trial. What is it that irritates the inquisitors? They do not ask the suspects: Do you believe in Power? Do you abide by the concept that the specific exists for the splendor of the state? … Are you against taxes, or would you raise them until they absorbed the whole output of the nation? … Are you opposed to the concept of conscription? Do you prefer more “social gains” under the aegis of an enlarged administration? …
Such concerns might show awkward to the private investigators. The answers might draw out a resemblance in between their ideas and functions and those of the thought. They too praise Power.
Under the scenarios, they limit themselves to one concern: Are you a member of the Communist Party? And this ends up to mean, have you lined up yourselves with the Moscow branch of the church?
Power praise is presently sectarianized along nationalistic lines … each country secures its orthodoxy … Where Power is obtainable, the contest between competing sects is unavoidable. If, as seems likely, the American and Russian cults come into violent dispute, apostasy will disappear … War is the apotheosis of Power, the ultimate expression of the faith and solidification of its accomplishment … The case versus the communists includes a concept of flexibility that is of going beyond value. It is the right to be incorrect. Heterodoxy is a necessary condition of a complimentary society … The right to decide … is very important to me, for the liberty of choice is necessary to my sense of character; it is essential to society, because only from the juxtaposition of ideas can we want to approach the perfect of reality.
Whenever I select a concept or label it “right,” I imply the authority of another to turn down that idea and label it “incorrect.” To invalidate his right is to invalidate mine … If men are punished for embracing communism, shall we stop there? As soon as we deny the right to be incorrect we put a vise on the human mind and put the temptation to turn the manage into the hands of ruthlessness.
And, in May 1949, Chodorov, praising a pamphlet on The Militarization of Americareleased by The National Council Against Conscription, wrote that “The state can not intervene in the financial affairs of society without building up its coercive equipment, which, after all, is militarism. Power is the correlative of politics.”
The Old Right reached its full flower in dedication to peace throughout the Korean War, which provoked several trenchant efforts throughout the early 1950s. The Structure for Economic Education (FEE), normally worried about free-market economics, dedicated several studies to the problem. Therefore, Leonard E. Read composed in Conscience on the Battleground( 1951 ),
It is unusual that war, the most harsh of man’s activities, requires the utmost delicacy in conversation … War is liberty’s biggest opponent, and the lethal opponent of economic development … To combat wicked with evil is just to make wicked basic.
In the very same year, Dr. F. A. Harper released a CHARGE pamphlet, Looking For Peace,in which he composed,
Charges of pacifism are likely to be hurled at anyone who in struggling times raises any concern about the race into war. If pacifism indicates accepting the objective of peace, I am willing to accept the charge. If it indicates opposing all hostility against others, I want to accept the charge also. It is now immediate in the interest of liberty that many individuals become “peacemongers.”
So the nation goes to war, and while war is going on, the genuine enemy [the concept of slavery]– long back forgotten and camouflaged by the procedures of war– trips on to triumph in both camps … Additional proof that in war the attack is not leveled at the genuine enemy is the fact that we appear never ever to understand what to do with “victory.”
Are the “freed” individuals to be shot, or all put in jail camps, or what? Is the national boundary to be moved? Exists to be additional damage of the residential or commercial property of the beat? Or what? …
Incorrect concepts can be assaulted only with counter-ideas, truths, and logic … Nor can the ideas of [Karl Marx] be damaged today by murder or suicide of their leading exponent, or of any thousands or millions of the followers … Least of all can the concepts of Karl Marx be ruined by murdering innocent victims of the kind of slavery he promoted, whether they be conscripts in armies or victims caught in the path of fight.
Concepts should be met by concepts, on the battleground of belief. And, as late as May 1955, Dean Russell composed, in CHARGE’s The Conscription Concept,
Those who advocate the “momentary loss” of our freedom in order to protect it permanently are advocating just one thing: the abolition of liberty … However good their intentions may be, those individuals are opponents of your liberty and my liberty; and I fear them even more than I fear any potential Russian threat to my liberty. These sincere but highly psychological patriots are clear and present hazards to freedom; the Russians are still countless miles away … The Russians would only attack us for either of 2 factors: worry of our objectives or retaliation to our acts … As long as we keep troops in nations on Russia’s borders, the Russians can be expected to act somewhat as we would act if Russia were to station troops in Guatemala or Mexico … I can see no more logic in combating Russia over Korea or Outer Mongolia, than in combating England over Cyprus, or France over Morocco … The historic realities of imperialism … are not enough reasons to justify the damage of liberty within the United States by turning ourselves into a permanent garrison state … We are rapidly becoming a caricature of the important things we proclaim to hate.
There is no need to increase examples. Frank Chodorov regularly worked versus the war drive in analysisand later, in 1954, as editor of the Freeman.The right-wing libertarian journal Faith and Freedomincluded, in April, 1954, an all-peace issue, with contributions by Garet Garrett, Robert LeFevre, the industrialist Ernest T. Weir, and today writer.
We may elaborate here on two disregarded contributions because period. One was an essay by Garrett (“The Rise of Empire,” 1952, reprinted in The People’s Pottage,1953) which pinpointed the primary problem of our time as the increase of an awful American imperialism: “We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire.”
The other was a relatively undetected book by Louis Bromfield, A New Pattern for a Tired World( 1954 ), which decried statism, war, conscription, and imperialism. Bromfield composed with conviction of imperialism and of the revolution of the undeveloped countries:
One of the fantastic failures of our foreign policy throughout the world emerges from the fact that we have actually allowed ourselves to be determined everywhere with the old, doomed, and rotting colonial-imperialist little European nations which when enforced upon so much of the world the pattern of exploitation and financial and political domination … None of these defiant, awakening peoples will … trust us or cooperate in any way so long as we stay identified with the economic colonial system of Europe, which represents, even in its capitalistic pattern, the last remnants of feudalism … We leave these awakening individuals without any choice but to turn to Russian and communist convenience and guarantee of Utopia.
And on American Cold War policy, Bromfield charged,
Our warmongers and the military apparently believe … that all other nations are unimportant and can be run over under foot the moment either Russia or the U.S. chooses to speed up a war … To this faction [the warmongers and the military] it appears of little concern that the countries lying between us and Russia would be the most horrible patients … The growing “neutralism” of the European nations is simply a reasonable, sensible, and civilized reaction, legitimate in every regard when all the factors from Russia’s fundamental weaknesses to our own meddling and aggressiveness are taken into account … The Korean circumstance … will not be settled up until we withdraw entirely from a location in which we have no right to be and leave the peoples of that area to exercise their own problems.
These quotations offer the taste of a period that is so remote regarding make it appear incredible that such views must have dominated the American right wing. To the present extreme right, which has virtually eliminated its own former position from its memory, such views today would be branded, at least, as “soft on communism.”
This post is a choice from “Improvement of the American Right,” first published in Continuum, Summer season 1964.