Here is a very cheeky piece from William F. Buckley from the Old Freedom, August 1954, in which is presents a choice that “conservatives” face. On the one side are those who don’t want the Cold War because they value liberty at home and because socialism ultimately eats itself without outside help. On the other side are those who believe that power should be used to liberate communist countries. WFB at this point doesn’t actually say which he favors but look at what he realizes about the position he came to endorse:
As to the effect that a program of militant action, aimed at the destruction of the Soviets, would have on freedom in this country, the liberation conservative has no smooth words to disguise
the fact that only the State can direct a war, or execute a foreign policy. To some extent, then, any totalitarian and imperialistic power which grows to the point where it must be reckoned with by free countries, wins at least a partial victory. For to beat the Soviet Union we must, to an extent, imitate the Soviet Union. We must, for example, conscript an army of sorts, and conscription entails the supreme denial of individual freedom. We must tax the people to support that army, and to support the bureaucracy without which, alas, a nation cannot
mobilize….Two generations of conscription would almost surely lead to universal and perpetual military training. And two generations of steeply progressive and exhaustive taxation, and of a mammoth bureaucracy, would mean that readjustment to private property and limited government would be nothing short of revolutionary.
It is a pity that yet one more difference will divide the waning conservative movement in the United States. But the issue is there, and ultimately it will separate us.
He was right about that. He converted the “conservative movement” to the revolutionary cause of imitating the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, only a tiny number, led by Rothbard, stuck to their principles. For all the details, see the overlooked but magnificent book by Rothbard, Betrayal of the American Right.
