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A Conservative Primer for Conceptualizing Political Economy on the Humane Scale
by Ryan Setliff

"To live within a just order is to live within a pattern that has beauty. The individual finds purpose within an order, and security—whether it is the order of the soul or the order of the community. Without order, indeed the life of man is poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
—Russell Kirk

America's rich and vibrant history, and her legacy of liberty, exists in continuity with her European past. Historian Clarence Carson made this astute observation,

Americans did not cast themselves off from their past experience, from ideas and practices of long standing, or from older traditions and institutions. In their building they relied extensively upon ancient and modern history and that which had come to them through the ages. What separates this as an epic from abortive revolutions is that these men brought to a fertile junction their heritage—which contained several great streams, namely, the Classical, the Christian, and the English—their experience, and contemporary ideas. The Founders stood on the shoulders of giants, thought it sometimes requires giants also to attain such heights. 1

Therefore, America's remarkable success as a nation, and an experiment in ordered liberty owes to the fertile ground and soil her roots were planted in. In the establishment of the nation, and securing her independence from Great Britain, America did not make a clean break with the past—but stood in continuity with the Anglo-American common law tradition and a broader cultural inheritance from Europe.

In his perennial classic, the Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk elucidated on the roots of order in the United States:

Although the tree of American order has grown in height and breadth during the past two hundred years, it could not have flourished so if those roots had been unhealthy. Those roots go deep, but they require watering from time to time. Whatever the failings of America [presently], the American order has been conspicious success in the perspective of human history. Under God, a large measure of justice has been achieved; the state is strong and energetic; and a sense of community endures... [T]he history of most societies is a record of painful striving, brief success (if success at all), and then decay and ruin. No man can know the future, but most Americans believe that their order will continue to 'bring out in this life the dialectic union of authority and liberty.' That will be true so long as the roots of order have proliferating life in the them. 2

1. 1. Carson, Clarence, The Rebirth of Liberty: The Founding of the American Republic 1760-1800, (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973), p. 21.
2. 2. Kirk, Russell, The Roots of American Order, (Bryn Mawr, PA: ISI Books, 1974)

The Essentials of an America First Foreign Policy
by Ryan Setliff

America First!—should be the rallying cry behind an American foreign policy tailored to serve our vital national interests through strategic independence and armed neutrality. Speaking on the Old Right position on foreign affairs, Joseph Scotchie notes, "A post-Cold War foreign policy that combines a strong national defense and a nation free of such globalist organizations as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization has been a good enough model for the Old Right." The Paleoconservatives. Joseph Scotchie, ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999. p. 2. In relations with other nations, the Old Right is apt to question the logic of globalism and globalization, and affirms skepticism of interventionism abroad. Though, the Old Right's principled position is sometimes denigrated as isolationism by detractors, the Old Right readily concedes that "isolationism" is not the historic foreign policy of the United States. Nonetheless, a foreign policy geniunely tailored to serve the national interest eschews foreign entanglements, alliances and security commitments and reckless intervention abroad.

Patrick Buchanan warned in 1999 in his book Republic, Not An Empire that perilous consequences could follow the course of United States' interventionist foreign policy, which aggravated and kindled the flames of resentment at our nation:

The United States has unthinkingly embarked upon a neo-imperial policy that must involve us in virtually every great war of the coming century—and wars the death of republics... if we continue on this course of reflexive interventions, enemies will one day answer our power with the weapon of the weak—terror, and eventually cataclysmic terrorism on U.S. soil... then liberty, the cause of the republic, will itself be in peril.

This statement proved prescient in light of the tragic terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and while no one amongst the Old Right finds any legitimacy to the claims of those heinous terrorists; it should go without saying that their grievances point to opposition to an interventionist U.S. foreign policy, such as the U.S. stationing troops in Saudi Arabia.

Foreign Policy Challenges Face the Next President

The biggest thing in the news and on people’s minds lately, and understandably, has been the credit crunch and implicitly the extent to which it threatens financial institutions and poses a threat to economic wellbeing in the country and indeed around the world. Boys and girls on Wall Street screwed up, and their mistakes trickle down a lot quicker than the obscene profits do. Effects could be stagflation, unemployment, not to mention declining value of stock, which affects so many savings and investment vehicles like mutual funds or retirement accounts.

From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition by Clyde Wilson. Hardcover: 304 pages. (Columbia, SC: Foundation for American Education, 2003), Amazon.com $24.95.

Review by Ryan Setliff

The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao Tzu to Milton Friedman is a fascinating primer on libertarian thinking throughout the ages. I being of a classical conservative mind, hope to offer a fair critique of both this book and libertarianism in general. I acquired it during my pre-law days while studying political theory. Anyway, David Boaz has assembled an anthology of political and philosophical writings gleaned throughout history of what he deems to be libertarian thought. The introductory section entitled "Skepticism About Power" puts forward the crux of libertarian thought, namely skepticism of concentrated power and an affinity for the principle of subsidiarity and the widespread dispersal of power. Such skepticism is rooted in recognition of a fatal tendency in human nature for men to conspire to domineer one another — and many do so under the auspices of government itself. In sum, libertarians affirm Lord Acton's axiom that "power tends to corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Boaz tosses in a selection from the Scriptures, in 1 Samuel 8, which shows the consequences of the ancient Israelites insisting on a monarchy. Here, the prophet Samuel warned of the consequences of absolutism that would ensue, but they the people would not relent and God through his permissive will relented and gave them their monarchy. James Madison's poignant Federalist #10 is included and correlates the founder's reverence of liberty with libertarian thought.

Down With the Presidency by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

This speech was delivered at a meeting of the John Randolph Club in Arlington, Virginia, on October 6, 1996.

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat.

The presidency — by which I mean the executive State — is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power unto itself, and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, business, charity, and the community. I’ll go further. The US presidency is the world’s leading evil. It is the chief mischief-maker in every part of the globe, the leading wrecker of nations, the usurer behind Third-World debt, the bailer-out of corrupt governments, the hand in many dictatorial gloves, the sponsor and sustainer of the New World Order, of wars, interstate and civil, of famine and disease. To see the evils caused by the presidency, look no further than Iraq or Serbia, where the lives of innocents were snuffed out in pointless wars, where bombing was designed to destroy civilian infrastructure and cause disease, and where women, children, and the aged have been denied essential food and medicine because of a cruel embargo. Look at the human toll taken by the presidency, from Dresden and Hiroshima to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and you see a prime practitioner of murder by government.

That the South was the first section of the United States to sense an enemy in fascism was indicated not only by polls of opinions, but also by its ardor in preparing for the fight. On the surface it is an anomaly of the first order that this most conservative of sections should have discerned a foe in the regimes gathering strength in Europe, for in open debate the South would have been hard put to it to distinguish between some of the slogans of the New Order and the tenets of its own faith, sealed with Confederate blood and affirmed in many a post-bellum oration. That the Southern whites considered themselves Herrenvolk in relation to the Negro is one of the obvious features of the sociological landscape, and belief in the influence of blood and soil is powerful with them, as with any agrarian people. The glorification of the martial spirit, the distrust of urban liberalism, the hatred of money economy are pages that might be found in the book of any unreconstructed Southerner. The restoration of medieval concepts in Europe might almost have seemed the Confederate's dream or reversing history and regaining the way of life which he lost in 1865. Why then the deep, instinctive hostility of the SOuth to Hitler and his allies?

Wolf of the Deep: Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama by Stephen Fox. Hardcover: 336 pages. (New York, NY: Knopf, 2007.) Amazon Price: $17.13.

Wolf of the Deep: Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama is a fluid and captivating tale of the Confederate Raider helmed by the Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes. This book, in particular, focuses on his almost two-year stint as captain of the infamous Confederate privateer, the Alabama.

In 1860, the Union strategist Winfield Scott devised a shrewd plan to strangle southern commerce with a naval blockade. The Confederates answered by building up their tiny Navy, though they never really could effectively counter the formidable power of New England shipbuilders. The South lacked the shipyards and iron foundries to build great ships, and had to turn to England for naval implements of war. One such ship was the CSS Alabama that set sail from Birkenhead, England in 1862 after being built by John Laird Sons and Company.

Diseconomies of Scale: Dismembering Leviathan by Donald W. Livingston

“Free trade,” like “free love,” is a beguiling abstraction that hides more than it reveals. Absolute free trade would be an exchange of commodities between two people without the coercive intervention of a third party. But economic exchange is always embedded in a cultural landscape of noneconomic values, which impose restraints. Blue laws prevent trade on Sundays, medieval Christendom prohibited charging interest on money, and some think no decent society could legalize the sale of or firearms. If someone disagrees with these restraints, it is because he rejects the moral ideals they express, not because he favors “free trade.” Within the restrictions imposed by usury laws, trade flourished in medieval Europe; indeed, it gave rise to the practices we call “capitalism” today. Those who value liberty may seek to minimize these constraints, but economic relations cannot exist outside of noneconomic restraints.