The Betrayal of the American Right

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Contrary to popular belief, the betrayal of the American right and the Republican Party did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, his father George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, or Barry Goldwater. It began much earlier as this new book by the late Murray N. Rothbard details.

This is a fabulous book I have eagerly awaited almost thirty years. It meets my every expectation and confirmation of the brilliance of its author. Murray Rothbard remains unsurpassed in analytical insight and clarity of perception.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul often describes himself as belonging to the non-interventionist tradition of the “Old Right” in American politics, and that his hero or mentor in this regard is Ohio Republican Senator Robert A. Taft, son of President and Chief Justice of the United States William H. Taft.

To the mouthpieces of the mainstream news media with their shallow view of American political history, this is very perplexing. Their superficial knowledge of events rarely stretches beyond the Reagan years, if indeed that far back.

The “Old Right” arose in opposition to the warfare/welfare state of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Harry Truman’s Fair Deal policies of domestic corporate statism and foreign imperial interventionism.

The “Old Right” Republicans in Congress, such as Senator Taft, Congressman Howard Buffett (father of the billionaire investor Warren Buffett), Congressman George Bender, and Congressman H. R. Gross, were pro-peace opponents of war, militarism, imperialism, and conscription. Reminiscent of Ron Paul, they fought against tyrannical centralization of power in the executive branch, and the undeclared, no-win Korean War as Paul has done with the Iraq War.

There were lies and intelligence duplicity involved in the Korean conflict as there has been with the war in Iraq. Howard Buffett was convinced the disastrous war in Korea was aggressively launched by the U. S. as described in secret Senate Armed Services Committee classified testimony by CIA Director Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoeter, much like the role played by George Tenent and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans concerning Iraq.

But after WWII this glorious tradition suffered crucial setbacks (such as the well-documented theft of the 1952 Republican nomination of Taft by the Eisenhower forces) and eventually in the early 1950s the “Old Right” was being replaced by a “New Right” of aggressive militarists committed to a global imperial role for the United States.

I have long believed that the secret role of the intelligence community (in particular that of CIA operative William F. Buckley’s National Review magazine) in precipitating this decisive shift in opinion was crucial and Rothbard confirms these suspicions. This terrific new book details how this betrayal all came about. Originally written in the early 1970s and updated in the 1990s prior to his death, it has finally been published and is more timely than ever.

For a terrific description of the 1952 Republican Convention story and much more, see Phyllis Schlafly’s A Choice Not An Echo, one of the true American classics of modern political publishing. While Schlafly’s 1964 pamphlet was designed to advocate the presidential candidacy of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, it nevertheless remains an on-target expos of how the “secret kingmakers,” the northeastern seaboard anglophile Establishment of the Morgan/Rockefeller international bankers, relentlessly tried to destroy and sabotage the popular “Old Right” Republican forces in presidential elections from 1936 onward.

Another related book is Thomas E. Mahl’s Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939–44, which details the vast secret intelligence campaign of British intelligence, the Roosevelt administration, and the anglophile Establishment to push the United States into World War II and destroy the “Old Right” in the process. As pointed out above, these efforts were continued under the CIA, the successor to the WWII Office of Strategic Services.

This process continues today by the CIA’s demonic spawn, the neocons. Neoconservatism: A CIA Front?

These guys hated Robert Taft and the “Old Right” and did everything possible to destroy their influence and impact on American policy. Their Establishment descendants hate Ron Paul and will try to do everything to destroy him and his presidential candidacy.

These three books are must-reading for all Ron Paul supporters to know your history and what we are up against.

Our greatest saving grace today is that the Internet has destroyed the formerly all-powerful impact of the Establishment’s mainstream news media’s gatekeepers in setting the parameters of the presidential policy debate.

Knowledge is power.

Act upon this knowledge.

Buy The Book

September 17, 2007