While I have, as long as I remember, stood against the leftist cultural agenda, for a long time I never liked the moniker of "conservative."

While Rush Limbaugh and others like him might have some good things to say, I thought, if he's a conservative then I am not.

Then I started reading the literature. Russell Kirk was a major influence. For a few years in my 20s and 30s, I proudly considered myself a "conservative." Then I read more and abandoned the label once again.

Folks like Paul Gottfried and Pat Buchanan, whose ideas I resonate with more than the boilerplate GOP politician or talking head, were ostracized from the Conservative Movement™ because they dare stood against the popular heterodoxy of such right-of-center figures like William F. Buckley, Jr. and the Kristols (père-fils Irving et William).

In Chapter 12 of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, author George Nash brings up a conundrum that vexes me to this day. Writing on the conservatism in the 1990s:

And yet, for many on the Right, there loomed a profoundly disturbing paradox: while the conservative mind in America was more articulate than ever before, and while conservative politicians in Washington were more numerous than they had been in decades, conservative influence on American culture appeared to be diminishing. If ideas have consequences (as conservatives insisted), then it was painfully clear that conservative ideas were not the only ideas in circulation in the post-Cold War age. For an entire generation, significant sectors of America had moved not to the right but to the left, even as the conservative resurgence gained momentum.

Those of us who resonate with the values of the pre-World War II "Old Right" are roundly dismissed as kooks in today's conservative movement. The Old Right primarily concerned itself with domestic issues whereas the New Right has always seen the world through an internationalist lens.

It remains the same today, though nothing remains of the Old Right as a political movement.

The topic is important in light of the world events over the last couple years.

The New Deal regime (right and left) ran roughshod over the Old Right in the World War II era and in the early Cold War era. Ironically, it was the libertarians—historically no friends of the conservatives—who allied with the remnant of the Old Right toward the reclamation of our culture.

It made for odd bedfellows—and still does—but the "paleolibertarians" and the "paleoconservatives" have been the only intellectuals with their heads screwed on straight over the last four score or so years.

These are my people.

The libertarians, though I don't consider myself one, are strong on economics and foreign policy. The only full-throated endorsements for president I have ever even considered were Ron Paul, a libertarian, and Pat Buchanan, a conservative.

Certainly Paul and Buchanan differed, particularly on some economic theory, but America would not have been in the jackpot like it is now if either of these men or their philosophies had guided the country through the maelstrom of the last three decades.

But. of course, we are branded with all sorts of epithets if we dare say more than what is on the "3 x 5 card of allowable opinion," as Tom Woods puts it.

I never learned any of this history in school (and I was a history major for crying out loud!) and that's one of the reasons I recommend Tom Woods Liberty Classroom. There you will get the education THEY never gave you.

Liberty Classroom is what they call a "dashboard university" where you attend by sitting in front of a computer, walking the dog, or in the car driving around town. Choose to study your fanny off or not...just like regular uni.

Get the equivalent of a Ph.D. in libertarian thought and free-market economics every month all for less per month than what a couple of craft ales will cost you at the local microbrewery. (Only about 8 bucks a month to join)

As always,

Brian