 I would like to start my talk with a quotation from Murray Rothbard. Quote, there has been a radical change in the social and political landscape in this country. And any person who desires the victory of liberty and the defeat of Leviathan must adjust his strategy accordingly. New times require a rethinking of old and possibly obsolete strategies, unquote. Murray Rothbard wrote these words in the early 1990s. They expressed the main theme of a series of brilliant articles he wrote calling for a radical readjustment of libertarian strategy to the new political realities that had emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In these articles, Rothbard identified both the abstract social philosophy and the concrete political movement that had then emerged as the greatest menace to liberty and society. He also proposed a radical reformulation of the political spectrum and a revised political vocabulary to express the new strategy called for by the altered circumstances of ideology and politics. Before proceeding further, I want to point out that Rothbard's articles, despite their deep insight and radical implications for libertarian strategy, have been largely overlooked by both friend and foe for a couple of reasons. First, when he wrote the articles, Rothbard was hard at work on his monumental two-volume treatise on economic thought. Understandably, he wrote the articles quickly as one-off responses to particular events, ideas, and political developments during a period of rapid change from 1991 to 1994. Rothbard's views were therefore presented as fragments in different articles containing inevitable repetition and overlapping. This obscured the fact that, taken together, these articles presented a systematic and comprehensive strategy for radical social and political change. Second, the articles appeared in the Rothbard Rockwell Report, a journal of social, political, and cultural commentary. Unfortunately, triple R is scintillating polemics and its coverage of a wide range of topics, sometimes diverted the reader from the deep theorizing that informed many of its articles. I confess that I did not appreciate the significance of Rothbard's articles, their unity and their breadth of vision, until very recently. With the fall of communism, Rothbard set out to identify the main political threat to freedom. With Nazism and fascism, quote, long, dead, and buried, unquote, Rothbard argued that social democracy in the American political lexicon that's left liberalism represented the only remaining status program and its advocates were hell-bent on making the most of their ideological monopoly. In the new post-communist world, Rothbard wrote, the enemy of liberty and tradition is now revealed full-blown, social democracy. For social democracy in all of its guises is not only still with us, but now that Stalin and his heirs are out of the way, social Democrats are trying to reach for total power. Rothbard saw this back in the early 90s. Not only is social democracy still with us in its many variations, but it has managed to define what Rothbard called the entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left to neoconservatism on the right, unquote. Make no mistake about it, Rothbard warned. On all crucial issues, social Democrats, however they label themselves, stand against liberty and tradition and in favor of statism and big government. Furthermore, the social democracy is far more insidious than those other forms of statism, because it claims to combine socialism with the appealing virtues of democracy and free inquiry, unquote. As shrewd observers of the political scene for over a century and a half, social Democrats are indeed seriously committed to democracy. They really do believe in democracy. As Rothbard explained, the maintenance of some form of democratic choice, however illusory, is vital for all varieties of social Democrats. And again, just think left liberals. They have long realized that a one-party dictatorship can and probably will become cordially hated and will eventually be overthrown, possibly along with its entire power structure, unquote. Picking up on the inside of Paul Gottfried, I think who's here with us, Rothbard noted that the social Democrats' devotion to democracy also serves as a pretext for an attack on those who assert absolute inviability of the right to free speech and free press. This assault on free speech, Rothbard recently pointed out in 1991, quote, constitutes an agenda for eventually using the power of the state to restrict or prohibit speech or expression that neocons we can consider social Democrats. And social Democrats hold to be undemocratic. This category could and would be indefinitely expanded to include real or alleged communists, leftists, fascists, neo-Nazis, secessionists, hate thought criminals, and eventually conservatives and libertarians, unquote. So Rothbard saw all this. I mean, saw the whole woke movement and its consequences back in the early 90s. Rothbard probed deeper to expose the peculiar social philosophy that is at the root of not only the old variants of social democracy, but also of communism. Rothbard identified the philosophy as progressivism, which is far more than a social and economic program for the here and now. It is the utopian social philosophy that looks towards the establishment of the future heaven on earth. The core belief of progressives is based on the Enlightenment myth that history is an inexorable and ever upward march toward the perfection of mankind. In the case of social Democrats, perfection is defined as a society ruled and engineered by a righteous, efficient, egalitarian socialist state. Moreover, unlike traditional Marxists, social democratic progressives believe that history unfolds not through class struggle and bloody revolution, but through the relentless forward march of democracy. In Rothbard's words, quote, the left are in their bones progressives. That is, they believe in wig or marxoid fashion that history consists of an inevitable march upward into the light toward and into the socialist utopia. They believe in the myth of inevitable progress that history is on their side, unquote. The final goal of this progressive and inevitable transformation of society is not, as it is with traditional Marxists, the eradication of all class distinctions and the collective ownership of the means of production under the dictatorship of the working class or the proletariat. Rather, for the social Democrats, it is, in Rothbard's words, quote, a socialist, egalitarian state run by bureaucrats, intellectuals, technocrats, therapists, and the new class in general, in collaboration with accredited victim pressure groups driving for equality, unquote. The capitalist and entrepreneur class will not be liquidated in the social democratic utopia, nor will their means of production be expropriated. Instead, the market economy will be kept but heavily taxed, regulated, and restricted. According to Rothbard, I'm quoting him here, the social Democrats realize that it is far better for the socialist state to retain the capitalist and a truncated market economy to be regulated, confined, controlled, and subject to the commands of the state. The social Democrat goal is not class war, but a weird kind of class harmony in which capitalists and the market work for the good of society and of the parasitic state apparatus, unquote. With neo-conservative progressives having hijacked conservative movements and the so-called new Democrat, Bill Clinton, revealing his hard-left progressive inclinations, Rothbard realized that the urgent first step in combating progressivism was to completely ramp the prevailing conception of the US political spectrum and its vocabulary. On the left of his reconstructed spectrum, Rothbard placed all political factions that are inspired by the progressive Marxist vision of social change and who are also devoted to democracy as the highest political value. These social Democrats range from neo-conservatives to left liberals and included their allied intellectual and media elites and official victim groups. On the right, Rothbard grouped all those who cherished traditional American liberties and social institutions and who aimed to stop, rollback, and undo progressive encroachments on them. Rothbard initially puzzled over the label that best suited his proposed grand coalition of right-wing opposition groups, which included many but not all libertarians. He summarily rejected the name conservative, tentatively proposing terms, radical reactionaries, radical rightists, or the hard right. He finally settled on the name political economic reactionaries or simply reactionaries. The term reactionary, now everybody winces at that term, but the term reactionary is particularly fitting for opponents of the progressive vision. It is true that Marx used the term as a pejorative to describe many of his predecessors and opponents in the 19th century socialist movement whose crazed utopian economic schemes involved turning back the clock to pre-capitalist and pre-industrial era of feudalism and medieval gills. However, Marx's later followers, both social Democrats and communists use the word reactionary to smear the defenders of capitalism who oppose the allegedly inevitable march of history towards socialism. As Rothbard points out, quote, they, meaning the social Democrats and progressives, become hysterical at setbacks, at regressions in that march. The regressions which have of course been dubbed reactions. In both the communist and the social democratic worldview, the highest if not the only morality is to be progressive, to be on the side of the inevitable next phase of history. In the same way, the deepest if not the only form of immorality is to be reactionary, to be devoted to opposing inevitable progress or even working to roll the tide back the tide and restore the past, to turn back the clock, unquote. Now the negative connotation that attaches to the term reaction or reactionary is therefore strictly due to its political use by Marxists. Outside of politics, the term has a positive connotation in many uses. In particular, the antigen antibody reaction is a fundamental reaction in the body by which the body is protected from the complex foreign molecules such as pathogens and their chemical toxins. In other words, the human immune system is reactionary. It reacts against and annihilates invaders and restores the human body to its healthy status quo, Ante. To be a political economic reactionary then is to seek to undo the ravages of our economic, social, and cultural institutions caused by progressive policies, to turn back the clock by ousting the invaders from their positions of power and restoring the social body back to health. Rothbard perceptively applied his analysis of progressivism, and this is brilliant, to explain the mystery of the bitter and hysterical leftist hatred of Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet of Spain and Chile, respectively. The left liberal loathing for these men is even greater than it is for Hitler. For Franco and Pinochet had forwarded the march of history, had actually turned back the clock by leading successful counter revolutions against democratically elected leftist governments. Today, we witness the same frenzied and unhinged, the tupperation by progressives that is heaped upon Donald Trump, Victor Orban of Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, and Georgia Maloney of Italy, because these men and this woman have committed an even graver sin against the progressive creed than did Franco and Pinochet. They have actually taken power in democratic elections while using explicitly anti-progressive reactionary rhetoric, thereby exposing the myth that democracy guarantees inevitable social progress toward an egalitarian socialist state. How deeply these elections shook up and disoriented progressives is demonstrated in the crazed tweet by a CNN pundit that a vote for Orban is a vote against democracy. Voting. Okay. Slightly less idiotic but more revealing is the resolution passed recently by the European Parliament just a few weeks ago asserting that Hungary is no longer a full democracy but a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy. What the hell does that mean? What the hell does that mean? Rothbard was right on the money in his evaluation of the progressive response to the successful political reaction of Franco and Pinochet. He wrote, let reaction occur. Let the phases be rolled back, the phases of history. And these people flip out, go into orbit for then maybe their religion is the false one after all. Maybe indeed. After reconstructing the political spectrum to reflect the realities of the dawning post-communist era and social democratic era, Rothbard laid out the political strategy that reactionaries need to employ to roll back progressivism. He pointed out that reactionaries and progressives are both minorities and in polar opposition to one another. Between the majority of Americans who are confused and torn between conflicting worldviews, they constitute what Rothbard called, following Vladimir Lenin, the communist, what Rothbard used his term calls the swamp, the terrain over which ideological battles would be fought. To sort of sway the middle one way or the other. Rothbard pithily sums up the problem facing the rightist opposition to the progressive power grab, quoting Rothbard. The problem is that the bad guys, the ruling classes, have gathered unto themselves the intellectual and media elites who are able to bamboozle the masses into consenting to their rule to indoctrinate them as a Marxist would say with a false consciousness unquote. This state of affairs exists because since the beginning of the 20th century, progressive and corporate liberal politicians and their business and financial cronies have induced increasing numbers of intellectuals to justify and legitimize their rule in exchange for government subsidies or lucrative jobs in its ever expanding regulatory welfare and warfare agencies and bureaus. What Rothbard calls a monopoly of the opinion-molding function in society has thus been granted to a privileged and coddled class that today consists of quote, a swarm of intellectuals, academics, social scientists, technocrats, policy scientists, social workers, journalists and the media generally unquote. So what is to be done to break this formidable monopoly and overthrow the unholy alliance of the political establishment and its privileged intellectual apologists? Rothbard recommends quote, a strategy of boldness and confrontation, of dynamism and excitement, a strategy in short of rousing the masses from their slumber and exposing the arrogant elites that are ruling them, controlling them, taxing them and ripping them off unquote. For arousing right-wing populism of this sort is precisely what the ruling elites fear. They prefer a judicious, bipartisan discussion of the issues in measured and solemn tones and without any acrimony. Progressives especially fear and warn against the so-called politics of resentment. Well, why shouldn't we resent them? They fear because it's aimed at them, by the people who they exploit. In contrast, Rothbard counsels writers to turn to the bitter, fiercely ideological and highly partisan politics of 19th century America. Not only must the strategy of the right be confrontational according to Rothbard, it also must quote, fuse the abstract and be concrete. Must not only attack the elites in the abstract but must focus on the existing status system, on those who right now constitute the ruling classes, unquote. This means above all that the rightist strategy must be personal, must be aimed at exposing the lies, corruptions and scandals of specific members of the ruling coalition. Bidens. Thus Rothbard wrote of the anti-Clinton movement that rapidly gained ground during Clinton's first term as president and here's what he said. The movement erupted in reaction to all the objectively loathsome attributes of the Clintons and their associates. The stream of lies, evasions, crookery, sex scandals and frantic attempts to run all of our lives. But quickly the hatred of the personal attributes of Clintons spilled over to his program, to his ideology. Thus we had the most powerful nuclear fusion in all of politics. The intense blending of the personal and ideological, the growing realization of social tyranny involved in all of Clinton's programs joined with and greatly multiplied the loathing for Clinton the man. The final part of the Rothbardian strategy is to get those on the right to grasp a very simple insight long ago assimilated by the left. That politics is war. That is in domestic politics as an interstate military conflict in the words of the great German political theorist Carl Schmitt, quote, the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. And this is what we're seeing right now. An attempt to wipe out the American way of life. Schmitt calls this the friend-enemy distinction that war involves a friend-enemy distinction and inevitably does. As Schmitt goes on, war is the existential negation of the enemy, unquote. Even though Schmitt insists that shedding blood and killing is an essential attribute of war and claims that any other use is really metaphorical, I disagree there and I think it's also existential in the case of politics. Because in domestic politics, the ruling elites by virtue of their control of the state apparatus not only threaten physical violence and even death against the ruled, they actually practice violence and killing against the centers or now called insurrectionists among the ruled. Rothbard recognized that any serious political challenge to progressives by united and self-conscious rightist movement would be a war and a religious war at that. I will conclude by quoting at some length a rousing clarion called to arms to the right by Rothbard. He says, we are engaged in the deepest sense in a religious war and not just a cultural one. Religious because left liberalism and social democracy is a passionately held world view. Religion in the deepest sense, held on faith. The view that the inevitable goal of history is a perfect world in a gallantry and socialist world, a kingdom of God on earth, is a religious worldview towards which there must be no quarter. It must be opposed and combated with every fiber of our being and the metaphor is properly military. The looming struggle is far wider and deeper than over taxing capital gains. It is a life and death struggle for our very souls and for the future of America. The warfare reaction will require above all courage, the guts not to buckle at the old two predictable smear response of the media and the pollsters. And above all, we need what the left fears above all, an adherence to the military metaphor to the concept of us versus them, good guys versus bad guys, to taking America back. We must aim not only for rolling it all back, not only for saving us from the leviathan state and nihilist culture, and not only for restoring the old republic, for eventually we must drive the wooden stake through the heart of the enemy to kill once and for all the monstrous dream of the perfect socialist world. The lesson in all this ladies and gentlemen is that there are only two sides to the current political war. You are either a progressive or a reactionary. You either join or acquiesce in the forced march into socialism or you join the reaction, the fight to turn back the clock or better yet to smash the clock to smithereens. Thank you.