Betrayal of the American Right - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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TWO RIGHTS, OLD AND NEW
In the spring of 1970, a new political term—“the hard hats”—
burst upon the American consciousness. As the hard-hatted
construction workers barreled their way around the Wall
Street area, beating up college kids and peace demonstrators, earning
the admiration of the right wing and a citation from President
Nixon, one of the banners they raised summed up in a single
phrase how remarkably the right wing has changed over the past
two decades. For the banner said simply: “God Bless the Establishment.”
In that single phrase, so typical of the current right
wing, the hard-hats were expressing the age-old political philosophy
of Conservatism, that philosophy which formed the central
core of the originally labeled “Conservatism” of early nineteenthcentury
Europe. In fact, it is the philosophy that has marked genuinely
conservative thought, regardless of label, since the ancient
days of Oriental despotism: an all-encompassing reverence for
“Throne-and-Altar,” for whatever divinely sanctioned State apparatus
happened to be in existence. In one form or another, “God
Bless the Establishment” has always been the cry on behalf of State
power.
But how many Americans realize that, not so long ago, the
American right wing was almost the exact opposite of what we
know today? In fact, how many know that the term “Establishment”
itself, now used almost solely as a term of opprobrium by
the Left, was first applied to America not by C. Wright Mills or
other Left sociologists, but by National Review theoretician Frank
S. Meyer, in the early days of that central organ of the American
Right? In the mid-1950s, Meyer took a term which had previously
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