The Rebellious Old Right

In The Betrayal of the American Right, Rothbard asks “how many Americans realize that, not so long ago, the American right wing was almost the exact opposite of what we know today?” Describing the American Old Right, Tom Woods explains that:

…the Old Right drew inspiration from the likes of H.L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock, and featured such writers, thinkers, and journalists as Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, John T. Flynn, Garet Garrett, Felix Morley, and the Chicago Tribune’s Colonel Robert McCormick. They did not describe or think of themselves as conservatives: they wanted to repeal and overthrow, not conserve.

The Old Right was steeped in the ideals of liberty including free speech, freedom of association, and self-determination, which inspired their desire to overthrow tyranny. But, although they were strong defenders of what could be described as liberal values in the classical sense, it would not be accurate to describe the Old Right as liberal. Albert Jay Nock is quoted as saying in 1920, when complimented on his fine “liberal” magazine, “I hate to seem ungrateful, but we haint liberal. We loathes liberalism and loathes it hard.” Then, as now, the term “liberal” had come to denote values to which he was utterly opposed. Rothbard explains:

Nock declared that he was not a liberal but a radical. “We can not help remembering,” wrote Nock bitterly, “that this [WWI] was a liberal’s war, a liberal’s peace, and that the present state of things is the consummation of a fairly long, fairly extensive, and extremely costly experiment with liberalism in political power.” To Nock, radicalism meant that the State was to be considered as an antisocial institution rather than as the typically liberal instrument of social reform.

In specific circumstances, opinions will of course vary on whether or not it is wise to rebel against the established order. Taking the example of the American Revolution, the key issue was whether the rebels had a moral duty to obey the laws of England in circumstances which they considered to be unjust or whether they were justified in pledging allegiance to a higher law—the natural law invoked by the rebels. As Lord Acton explained:

James Otis spoke, and lifted the question to a different level, in one of the memorable speeches in political history. Assuming, but not admitting, that the Boston custom house officers were acting legally, and within the statute, then, he said, the statute was wrong. Their action might be authorized by parliament; but if so, parliament had exceeded its authority... There are principles which override precedents. The laws of England may be a very good thing, but there is such a thing as a higher law.

Lord Acton addressed the issue at the heart of that debate by observing that, “By the rules of right, which had been obeyed till then, England had the better cause. By the principle which was then inaugurated, England was in the wrong, and the future belonged to the colonies.”

The rule of law

Although it is understood that “I was only following the law” is no moral justification in cases where the law itself is unjust, the rule of law requires that the law should generally be upheld and not treated as a mere suggestion that citizens may choose to comply with or not. Society should not be in a state of constant rioting and endless rebellion, and socialists are rightly disdained for endlessly fomenting social unrest, revolution, class wars, race wars, and mounting the barricades in vain hope of achieving their pipe dreams. 

By contrast, the rule of law, social peace and stability, and respect for law enforcement are widely associated with conservatism. For example, many Tories in the UK—who see themselves as the party of law and order—were aghast at the recent anti-immigration riots. Even though they are opposed to mass immigration and were therefore sympathetic to the rioters’ cause, they called for a strong response from the police. Based on their law-and-order convictions, they supported the decision of the current Trotskyite Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, to have over 1000 people arrested and charged with public order offenses connected to the riots. The conservative journalist Nick Timothy wrote in The Telegraph:

It should not be difficult to condemn, without equivocation, the violence we have seen on our streets in the past week. The perpetrators belong behind bars. For the line between civilisation and chaos is thin, and public order is a public good too often taken for granted. Once lost, it can be difficult for the police to regain control, which is why the response to disorder must always be unequivocal and uncompromising, swift and tough.

The policing of anti-immigration riots in the UK strikingly illustrates how, in debates about public order, it is sometimes forgotten that the cause of liberty has historically been promoted not by law-and-order defenders of the establishment but by rebels. Here lies the paradox—supporters of “the establishment” often defend the prevailing system regardless of whether that system is just. Conversely, there are some rebels who will revolt against any establishment without regard to whether that establishment is just—they simply join any revolutionary cause.

They could be seen marching against apartheid, against climate change, against the war in Ukraine and the Middle East, and generally lending their voice to “the current thing.” One of the rioters arrested by the British police told the judge he did not know what the riot was about as he had no interest in politics. He explained that he “had only popped into the city centre to collect a takeaway” when he saw a riot in progress and decided to join in. Keen to do his bit to aid the exertions of the mob, he threw his beer can at the police. For that he was jailed for two years.

Rebelling against tyranny

Rothbard depicts the Old Right as anti-authoritarian and rebellious, not in a random or opportunistic sense but in opposition to tyranny: “The Old Right, which constituted the American right wing from approximately the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, was, if nothing else, an Opposition movement. Hostility to the Establishment was its hallmark, its very lifeblood.” Woods also highlights Rothbard’s remarks in The Irrepressible Rothbard: “The minimum demand which almost all Old Rightists agreed on, which virtually defined the Old Right, was total abolition of the New Deal, the whole kit and kaboodle of the welfare state, the Wagner Act, the Social Security Act, going off gold in 1933, and all the rest.” The Old Right was characterized by “total opposition to what it conceived to be the ruling trends of American life.”

Drawing inspiration from the Old Right, the goal today should not simply be to conserve established institutions, which are, after all, woke-captured and designed to erode rather than defend private property. The anti-interventionist spirit of the Old Right, what Rothbard calls “the old feisty, antigovernment spirit of conservatives” would also abhor the destructive schemes concocted under the civil rights framework enforced by government agencies like the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. From the perspective of the Old Right, the goal of those who desire to promote liberty should be to abolish or repeal the institutions which are fundamentally incompatible with liberty.

To that Rothbard adds that “extremists such as myself, would not stop until we repealed the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789, and maybe even think the unthinkable and restore the good old Articles of Confederation.” “Extremist,” in the sense used by Rothbard, does not have the meaning now associated with it by governments. Describing his admiration for Frank Chodorov, Rothbard writes:

I was an ardent “extreme right-wing Republican,” in the days of course when this term meant isolationist and at least partial devotion to the liberty of the individual, and not a racist or enthusiast for the obliteration of any peasant whose ideology might differ from ours.

Nor does extremism, in this context, entail the mindless civil disorder which many conservative commentators are determined to prevent. It refers instead to an absolutist defense of private property and the rights with which private property is associated, including free speech, freedom of association, and the right to self-defense. Rothbard quotes H.L. Mencken:

I believe in complete freedom of thought and speech—alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.

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