In January, 1990 Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. published "The Case for Paleo-libertarianism" in Liberty magazine. Citing drug use by libertarians and the nomination of a pros ute as the California Libertarian Party candidate for lieutenant governor, Rockwell asserted that "the only way to sever libertarianism's link with libertinism is with a cleansing debate." Assailing alleged "hatred of western culture," he asserted that "pornographic photography, 'free'-thinking, chaotic painting, atonal music, deconstructionist literature, Bauhaus architecture, and modernist films have nothing in common with the libertarian political agenda - no matter how much individual libertarians may revel in them" and stated "we obey, and we ought to obey, traditions of manners and taste." After explaining why cultural conservatives could make a better argument for liberty to the middle classes, Rockwell predicted "in the new movement, libertarians who personify the present corruption will sink to their natural level, as will the Libertarian Party, which has been their diabolic pulpit."[1]
In 2003 Karen DeCoster quoted Lew Rockwell as having written:
Paleolibertarianism holds with Lord Acton that liberty is the highest political end of man, and that all forms of government intervention – economic, cultural, social, international – amount to an attack on prosperity, morals, and bourgeois civilization itself, and thus must be opposed at all levels and without compromise. It is 'paleo' because of its genesis in the work of Murray N. Rothbard and his predecessors, including Ludwig von Mises, Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett, and the entire interwar Old Right that opposed the New Deal and favored the Old Republic of property rights, freedom of association, and radical political decentralization. Just as important, paleolibertarianism predates the politicization of libertarianism that began in the 1980s, when large ins utions moved to Washington and began to use the language of liberty as part of a grab bag of 'policy options.' Instead of principle, the neo-libertarians give us political alliances; instead of intellectually robust ideas, they give us marketable pla udes." [2]
In a 2007 interview Rockwell revealed he no longer considered himself a "paleolibertarian" and was "happy with the term libertarian." Regarding "paleolibertarian" he asserted:
This term was designed to address a very serious problem that libertarians in Washington had come to see themselves as a pleading pressure group hoping to find "market-based" solutions to public policy problems but within public policy, and thus do they support school vouchers, limited wars, managed trade, forced savings as an alternative to social security, and the like. Unfortunately, the term paleolibertarian became confused because of its association with paleoconservative, so it came to mean some sort of socially conservative libertarian, which wasn't the point at all – though the attempted definition of libertarian as necessarily socially leftist is a problem too.[3]
Paleolibertarianism is commonly distinguished by appreciation for American limited government cons utionalism and even anti-federalism, sometimes criticizing Abraham Lincoln for leading America toward a centralized, managerial state.[4]
Paleolibertarians agree with Hans-Hermann Hoppe who writes that in a world where all property was private, immigration policy would be decided by individual property owners and not the state.[5][6]
Justin Raimondo's 1993 book Reclaiming the American Right links paleolibertarianism with the American Old Right.[7] In Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Hoppe writes that "conservatives today must be antistatist libertarians and, equally important, libertarians must be conservatives". [8]
In 1996 during Ron Paul's run for United States congress, the issue of bigoted language in Ron Paul newsletters circa 1989-1994 arose. Paul had long been a close associate of Rothbard and Rockwell. In 2008, the libertarian publication Reason asserted that "a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul" had identified Rockwell as the "chief ghostwriter" of the newsletters. According to Reason, Rockwell has denied responsibility for the disputed material and has called the accusations "hysterical smears aimed at political enemies."[9] The connection of these writings to "paleolibertarianism" continues to be made.[10]
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That's hilarious. He'd have to change 90% of his rhetoric.
