Authentic conservatives and their libertarian allies have long been a small minority in a larger movement that, for the most part, rejected their radical critique of the managerial state. The “paleos” were singled out for attack by the neoconservatives, that exotic sect of ex-leftists prophetically described by Russell Kirk as “this little Sacred Band—which had made itself exclusive, and now finds itself excluded.”
Today, the neoconservative stranglehold on the American right has been broken. As the role of George W. Bush, their dauphin and dupe, in bringing us to our present predicament has been revealed, right-wing activists involved in the grassroots Tea Party movement have learned their lesson from those years of betrayal and “big-government conservatism.” Speaking to CNN at the Utah GOP convention, where incumbent four-term Republican senator Bob Bennett was rejected as the party nominee, Tea Party leader David Kirkham averred,
The Tea Partiers are not a monolithic organization but a diffuse antigovernment populist movement, sparked by the bank bailouts. Here is a perfect opportunity for libertarians to educate the inchoate right-wing populist masses. And Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty are certainly driving the lesson home: The Republican Party of Maine has recently adopted a platform that stipulates the party’s adherence to Austrian economics! Can a movement like that be all that bad, even by Bovard’s exacting libertarian standards?
Libertarian economic theory, particularly the variant of it promulgated by Ludwig von Mises and his American followers, frames the current crisis in terms ordinary Americans can understand. By making the Federal Reserve a hot political issue, Representative Paul has shown the way forward for libertarians.
