Betrayal of the American Right - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Introduction xiii
full-length books might be gleaned from the issues Rothbard raises
here.
It is safe to say that very few Americans, conservatives
included—indeed, especially conservatives—know that some of the
most consistent and outspoken opponents of Harry Truman’s early
Cold War measures were budget-conscious Republicans, ideologically
averse to international crusades. Senator Robert A. Taft, for
instance, was the most prominent if perhaps the least consistent of
the Republican noninterventionists who greeted Harry Truman’s
early Cold War policies with skepticism. Taft was critical of the
Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO, each of which
he viewed as either unnecessarily provocative or ruinously expensive.
Taft, along with lesser-known figures from the House and
Senate like George Bender, Howard Buffett, and Kenneth
Wherry, constituted the political arm of the Old Right.
Contrary to the erroneous impression of left-liberalism as antiwar
and peace-loving, voices of mainstream liberalism adopted the
standard interventionist line against the “isolationist” heretic: Taft,
wrote the prominent liberal columnist Richard Rovere, was an
unsuitable presidential candidate in 1948 since the next president
“should be an executive of the human race . . . who will boldly
champion freedom before the world and for the world . . . [which]
Taft simply could not do.” Likewise, The Nation called Taft and his
allies in Congress “super-appeasers” whose policies “should set the
bells ringing in the Kremlin.” 2
Naturally, for his efforts Rothbard was himself red-baited from
time to time by people on the Right. That his anti-Communist credentials
were as bulletproof as one could ask for hardly seemed to
matter: he opposed the global anti-Communist crusade, and that
was what counted. Ironically, it was precisely Rothbard’s contempt
for Communism that persuaded him that an ongoing military campaign
against it, one that would surely have terrible short- and
long-term consequences for American society and government (not
2 John Moser, “Principles Without Program: Senator Robert A. Taft
and American Foreign Policy,” Ohio History 108 (1999): 177–92.