THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

The Mises Caucus was incensed by the Johnson/Weld candidacy because it regarded the duo, particularly Bill Weld, as too mainstream. So it embarked on a campaign to capture state chapters. Yet, at the time, few party leaders were willing to openly, honestly and forcefully condemn what was happening (with some notable exceptions). Criticism that was offered tended to be subtle, restrained, and often combined with a myopic both-sides-ism that tried to frame itself as above the fray of "infighting." Many state and national party officers went so far as to insist everyone should just get along. They walked on eggshells, afraid that the notoriously abusive Mises Caucus Twitter mob would come after them (even as the same caucus railed endlessly against leftist cancel culture mobs).

The motives and pattern of behavior--fear, cowardice, cynical political calculation and appeasement to chase votes in internal party elections--that caused the LP to succumb to a reactionary faction replicated in miniature the Trumpist takeover of the GOP. LP incumbents who tried to present themselves as fair and neutral and those who were openly against the Mises Caucus were all swept aside--just like anti-Trump Republicans such as Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois in the GOP. The former has been censured and primaried by the GOP, and the latter has been censured and pushed into early retirement. The current favorite for the next LP presidential candidate is stand-up comic Dave Smith, who, despite his Jewish background, is notorious for praising and defending anti-Semites and white nationalists like Nick Fuentes.

But besides the party's structure, the second reason behind the pusillanimity of the LP in taking on the Mises Caucus is the broader "paleolibertarian" ideology that has haunted the libertarian movement for decades. This worldview has long advocated a strategic alliance with the populist right to fight their mutual enemy: The Establishment. The person who made the most ardent case for such an alliance was anarcho-capitalist polemicist Murray Rothbard, originally a more liberal thinker who took a dark turn in his later years and started inveighing against immigration, anti-discrimination laws and the welfare state. In a sense, Rothbard was the original Flight 93 strategist who believed that there was no more urgent task than to tear down The Establishment by any means necessary, even allying with far-right racists and bigots. He was a precursor of the modern right's obsession with the leftist enemy.

Former Republican congressman Ron Paul has been paleolibertarianism's most visible promoter. His 2008 and 2012 bids for the Republican presidential nomination initially ignited considerable grassroots enthusiasm, even among non-libertarians, thanks to his staunch opposition to war, among other things. But eventually Paul's candidacy went down in flames in no small part due to the emergence of racist newsletters penned under his name some 20 years prior by a Rothbard acolyte. The author, Lew Rockwell, founded the Mises Institute, from which the Mises Caucus gets its name. (It can't be emphasized enough that Ludwig von Mises, the Austrian economist after whom the institute is named, was a liberal champion of toleration and cosmopolitanism who would have roundly condemned his namesake's twisted agenda.)

The newsletters peddled vile steretoypes about African Americans, gay people and other minorities with the aim of courting white, grassroots support. Though the paleo strain has never been dominant in the libertarian movement, it always had its boosters. However, the core party members at the time failed to forcefully challenge and ostracize the paleo faction in the name of avoiding "infighting." This was a missed opportunity. It meant the classical liberal old guard did not have a fully worked out moral argument when the paleos, incensed by the Johnson/Weld candidacy, decided that the party was headed in the wrong direction--that the bigger threat to libertarian principles was wokeism and the cultural left, not the populist and illiberal right. And thus the paleos took control of the steering wheel to course correct.

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