Reagan was a politician who had no qualms about turning his back on the neocons when it was politically prudent to do so. Remember how the neocons screamed when he started signing arms control treaties. Of course, Reagan abandoned sound economics with a greater frequency than he ever abandoned global democratic imperialism, even though Reagan is the only modern President who really understood free-market economics. This arguably makes him worse than a Clinton or Bush, who probably don’t grasp the destructiveness of their policies.

Throughout the eighties, Murray Rothbard exposed how, behind the libertarian rhetoric, Reagan was actually presiding over a major increase in state power.As Rothbard often pointed out, Reagan defused the growing libertarian sentiment among the American public in the late seventies by resorting people’s trust in government. Today, guided by Rothbard’s insights, we can see how Reagan paved the way for Bush. I still prefer Reagan, for all his faults, to what we have today, but, unlike some other libertarians, we don’t grade on a curve here at LRC.