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 be
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