How painful it is that Rothbard didn’t live to see this day! I hope this hasn’t been posted before, but I was so struck reading the final paragraphs of Rothbard’s Betrayal of the American Right. With just a little Higgs-style modifications (the square brackets), he might as well have been writing this about the Ron Paul Revolution:

Just as conservatives and liberals have effectively blended into a consensus to uphold the Establishment, so what America needs now – and can have – is a counter-coalition in opposition to the Welfare-Warfare State. A coalition that would favor the short-term libertarian goals of militant opposition to the [Iraq] War and the [Empire] generally, and to conscription, the military-industrial complex, and the high taxes and accelerated inflation that the state has needed to finance these statist measures. It would be a coalition to advance the cause of both civil liberty and economic freedom from government dictation. It would be, in many ways, a renaissance of a coalition between the best of the Old Right and the old New Left, a return to the glorious days when elements of Left and Right stood shoulder to shoulder to oppose the conquest of the Philippines and America’s entry into World Wars I and II. Here would be a coalition that could appeal to all groups throughout America, to the middle class, workers, students, liberals, and conservatives alike. But Middle America, for the sake of gaining freedom from high taxes, inflation, and monopoly, would have to accept the idea of personal liberty and a loss of national face abroad. And liberals and leftists, for the sake of dismantling the war machine and the American Empire, would have to give up the cherished Old Left-liberal dream of high taxes and Federal expenditures for every goody on the face of the earth.

The Best of Stephen W. Carson