ABSTRACT
The statism of the 1930s and 1940s was under some popular siege. As in the years after World War I, Americans were tired of war, tired of living in a garrison state. The first Old Right was a victim of Cold War politics. Friederich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig von Mises, and other masters of the "Austrian school" that championed free markets were much admired by Cold War conservatives. The leader for the Old Right was now Robert A. Taft, son of the former president, senior senator from Ohio, and a politician who steadfastly ignored the "conservative" label. Taft's anti-New Deal stand soon translated into opposition to the incipient North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. The end of the Cold War in 1989 proved that Ronald Reagan's mellowing was warranted. The hawks could make their own claims. The Reagan Doctrine of arming anticommunist guerilla insurgencies successfully harassed the Soviet Empire on the margins in the third world.
