For the majority of U.S. history, the political right was the side that favored a non-interventionist foreign policy. “The Old Right” is a term that has been used to describe the movement made up mostly of political Republicans that favored a realistic, non-aggressive policy abroad. This was a longstanding tradition.
Rightists like Rep. Alexander Stephens of Georgia opposed the Mexican War of President Polk. William Graham Sumner founded the Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the U.S. government’s first foray into foreign empire-building, the war in the Philippines. Henry Ford was a famous critic of the government’s WWI policy. Right-wing intellectuals H.L. Mencken, Rose Wilder Lane, Garrett Garet and Albert Jay Nock were very vocal about their opposition to the U.S. government’s entry into WWII.
To question needless foreign intervention was the modus operandi of the right for a number of reasons. As I will explain below, it simply is the more ideologically consistent position. To oppose big government means to oppose it at home and abroad. Furthermore, it is more fiscally responsible to oppose expensive foreign entanglements. The old right understood this.
The Cold War changed everything. This era saw the emergence of the “new right” of Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan. In 1952, a young Buckley summed up what would become the new conservative credo. He said, in response to the supposed threat from the Soviet Union, “we [new conservatives] have to accept Big Government for the duration—for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged . . . except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores."
Buckley continued, with startling frankness, that conservatives were duty-bound to promote "the extensive and productive tax laws that are needed to support a vigorous anti-Communist foreign policy," as well as the "large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington."
And so the political right became synonymous with big militarism. This is not to say that the voices of the old right were completely silenced. One such voice was that of Herbert Hoover, who criticized President Truman for violating the Constitution by invading Korea. Other anti-war Republicans of that era included Senator Robert Taft and Congressman Howard Buffett. But slowly, these voices of reason and ideological consistency became the minority, as the country became swept up in communist alarmism.
Now there is a growing movement afoot, especially among young voters, to return the conservative movement to its anti-interventionist roots. This effort is arguably being led by Rep. Ron Paul, who is a staunch fiscal conservative, and an opponent of war. He has been criticized by establishment conservatives as advocating a “liberal” foreign policy. However, this ideology is not a left-wing ideology at all, but rather, the only consistent one. It is high time the right abandon the idea that not supporting foreign meddling is and idea of the left. This is the case for a number of reasons.
First, conservatives must realize that their foreign policy is not based on an ideology, but rather, simply upon a misguided tradition. It is not more conservative to support foreign wars. In fact, it is simply the opposite. As the ardent libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard asked, “How can the rightist trumpet his devotion to private property and free enterprise while at the same time favoring war [and] conscription?” It simply does not stand to reason that someone could oppose statism at home, in the markets and in their personal lives, and support statism abroad, with military actions and the propping up of foreign regimes. This conservative “ideology” is simply not based on reason. It is not consistent. It is based on a tradition that started with a few misguided pseudo-intellectuals in the Cold War era, and has continued to this day.
Second, the conservative, who opposes “big government” in other areas, must realize that their pet wars are the biggest contributing factor to the development of big government. As Buckley himself admitted in the quote above, an interventionist foreign policy requires totalitarian bureaucracy, extensive tax laws and the centralization of power in Washington. The problem lies in the fact that not all conservatives are willing to admit this as openly as Buckley did. As 19th century intellectual Randolph Bourne famously said, “War is the health of the state.”
War has always been the favorite means of those in power to increase their power. The largest and most troubling expansions of government in America were mostly not the result of social programs. The Progressive Era and even the New Deal did not do as much as war to move America away from its heritage of limited, checked and balanced government, free markets and individual liberty. The Civil War brought with it censorship, a draft, inflation, the suspension of habeas corpus and a consolidated national government that signaled the end of true federalism. World War I introduced even wider censorship, conscription, deportations and spying. World War II gave us food rationing, conscription, citizen surveillance, censorship, and Japanese internment. With the "War on Terror," we have practically lost the Fourth Amendment and seen habeas corpus once again suspended.
Third, fiscal conservatives must come to grips with the fact that the majority of the U.S. government’s budget is spent on war. The government spends more than a trillion dollars a year on its empire abroad. That is more than all the other countries in the world spend combined. So-called “defense” spending, which is entirely a misnomer, has become a sacred cow of the right. While they favor cutting government spending in other areas, they will throw a fit when anyone seeks to cut their bloated “defense” budget. Again, anyone with basic reason skills should be able to see that it is not consistent to call oneself a fiscal conservative and support the enormous expenditures of the government on empire.
Being against war and foreign meddling is not an idea of the left, but rather, it should be an idea of the right. It is time the right abandons blindly clinging to a prevailing paradigm, and actually examines whether its worldview is consistent.
For more reading see the following pieces:
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