Derb – I’m afraid your “good crisp answer” to your reader’s question is too heavy on the crisp and not nearly sufficient on the goodness or answer fronts. More annoying, your response is being cited by the usual suspect as authoritative.

Would the young WFB and Ron Paul see eye-to-eye? On some things, to be sure. You write:

Was young WFB a gold bug? I don’t know. In any case, it was anti-communism that energized and united the conservatives of the 1950s-60s (to the degree that they were united). As you will gather from the nostalgic moaning at any gathering of today’s conservative’s, anti-communism isn’t a factor any more, and that jiggles the whole kaleidoscope.

This leaves a bit murky a key point. As far as I can tell, Ron Paul wasn’t part of the anti-Communism forged unity of the 1950s and 1960s, or at least his branch of libertarians weren’t (Paul didn’t become political until late in life and so one needs to make some assumptions based upon his intellectual circle and role models). The Rothbardians — which I think is a good label for Paul’s camp — were keen dissenters from the Right’s Cold War consensus. For example, as I understand it, Paul’s animosity to NATO predates the fall of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, Buckley’s fights with Rothbard and other “paleo-libertarians” (for want of a much better label) were hardly superficial or narrow. For those who haven’t read it, Buckley’s essay “Notes Toward an Empirical Definition of Conservatism” demonstrates this fact quite stunningly.

(I could go on a great length about the hilarity of Andrew Sullivan pining for the old NR, what with it’s lamentable ambivalence over the civil rights movement (now that’s an area where many of the “paleo-libertarians” of today and the old NR do share some kindred ideas), but that’s would be a waste of everyone’s time.)

My point is simply that I agree that anti-Communism fostered a powerful consensus on the right, that included many, perhaps most, libertarians. Thus it is all the more significant to point out that Paul comes from a tradition that was not part of that consensus. My guess is that Paul and Buckley would agree on a great many issues (as I would with Paul on a great many issues). But I would also guess that Buckley wouldn’t think much of Paul’s political instincts regarding what to prioritize in the realm of the possible, nor of Paul’s willingness (eagerness?) to characterize America as the villain in various chapters and contests around the world (Buckley was, if anything anti-anti-American). Buckley’s realism about what could and could not be achieved forced him into compromises that Ron Paul today would never countenance, and compromises that forced Paul’s intellectual forebears to stand athwart National Review yelling “Stop.” Who that speaks better of depends entirely on where you stand, or stood, in the political arena then, and now.