The timely LRC posting today of Murray N. Rothbard’s long forgotten and previously anonymous 1979 Inquiry magazine obituary, “Nelson Rockefeller, RIP,” is very important for younger readers of this website.  It is crucial that these discerning students of what Murray called “power elite analysis” or “libertarian class theory” understand the true significance of what he described as “the Rockefeller World Empire,” and its central role in fostering and enhancing the welfare-warfare state.

The Establishment within the Republican party is The Enemy, and always has been. The Eastern Establishment has been the key force in ruling the country for decades, and has guided the Republican party into aiding and abetting the Democrats in their continuing drive toward socialism; in the case of the Establishment, a corporate-statist socialism. It was in rebellion against this elite that the Old, pre-Goldwater right, essentially middle class and businessmen from the Midwestern heartland, waged its determined though losing struggle. And it was against the kindred Democrat elite that the American people waged their glorious populist revolution last year.

The composition of the Republican Eastern Establishment, however, has changed over the decades. From World War II until the 1970s, they consisted of the Rockefeller World Empire; since the late 1970s, however, the RWE has been joined by the neocon-Wall Street forces. In fact, the neocons have successfully achieved primacy over their Rockefeller allies in dominating the Republican party. One crucial reason is that the Rockefellers were always openly leftists (or “moderates” in the whitewash term of the liberal media), so that Nelson Rockefeller and the phrase “Rockefeller Republican” became a stench in the nostrils of every conservative, grassroots American. But the neocons were sneakier; they moved rightward from being Truman-Humphrey Democrats in the late 1970s; they claimed to be “conservative” and in short order managed to take control of the entire conservative movement.

Here is a listing of key books which further describe and analyze this Rockefeller World Empire.

The Best of Charles Burris