 Many of you said you were waiting to hear my oration today, and we're looking forward to this with a keen sense of anticipation. About five minutes ago, I was wired up, and I think what happens is if I disappoint your expectations, I may be blown up in the next half hour. Before I begin my written remarks, let me say two things about what I intend to discuss. First of all, although I'm supposed to speak of a fusionism, an attempted fusionism, between paleoconservatives and paleo-thebratorians, I don't think we're really speaking about fusionism. And fusionism assumes a kind of merger of two things. In this case, we are not really speaking about a merger. We're speaking about a period of cooperation and error of good feeling between the paleoconservatives and paleo-thebratorians. I'm also being asked to recall something of which I was a part. And this is different, I suppose, than writing about the medieval and vestiger controversy or the American Revolution, events that happened in the past, which I think I can describe with a certain degree of detachment because I was not there. But it happened to other people. And I can examine it objectively as an object of study. What I'm about to discuss is something that involved me. And therefore, it is not something which can be discussed with the same degree of objectivity as historical subjects related to the past, particularly to the distant past, which at one time, one could discuss with a certain degree of objectivity that is not possible any longer in the American Academy because almost everything is shown to have a woke connection. So you cannot write about women in the Middle Ages who are being told women don't exist and that men are birthing persons and so forth. So it's almost impossible, given the woke parameters of contemporary education and the study of history to move outside them. But generally, when we look at history, we are speaking about something that happened in the past and we're not speaking about things that are just personal reminiscences. In this case, I am speaking about something that I was very much a part of. And although I tried to look at it with a certain kind of stoic or serene detachment, nonetheless, it did involve me at some level. And the picture that I've shown or whoever's arranging to do this, which has been shown on that screen, is a meeting that took place which represented the opening moves in trying to bring together Paleo-Conservatives and Paleo-Diberterians. Now, the only problem I have is dating this picture. I have on the back of it the date 1987. I have been assured by Alan Carlson, who is then president of the Rockford Institute, and David Gordon, who never forgets such things, that this event took place in the winter of 1987, I'm sorry, 1989, toward the end of 1989. I do remember it as being a very cold day and the busskidding as it transported us from O'Hare to Rockford, Illinois, where I had previously lived. And it was one of the coldest days that I remember. And I was on the bus with Sam Francis, who asked me, is it always this cold here? And I said, no, not in the summer. It typically goes up to about 110 degrees. But in the winter, he says, don't you have any trees? Like, this must be such an awful place. I don't think I'd ever been to the Midwest before. Because anyone who's lived in the Midwest knows there aren't any trees, a lot of cornfields. And I think this was his first exposure to Midwestern scenery. So those are the two points that I want to make before beginning my written presentation, which I shall start to read right now. A picture that evokes memories of friends long gone hangs over a bookcase in my cluttered study. This framed photograph came from Rockford, Illinois, where it was taken in 1989. It shows a room full of dignitaries meeting at the Rockford Institute, discussing the matter at hand in a very cold winter's day. Some of the figures in this picture, for example, Murray Rothbard, Mel Bradford, Sam Francis, Joseph O'Bran, Peter Standler, Stanless Bert Blumert, and George Resch are no longer alive. Others like Lou Rockwell, David Gordon, and myself are still sentient in sitting or standing in this room. The reason these participants assembled was to discuss the possibility of closer cooperation between their movements. Although both these groups had roots in older American conservative tradition and shared a nostalgia for the interwar American right, they led separate existences and, in some cases, were not even aware of their shared interests and principles. What may have led to their efforts to establish closer contact than even a working alliance was their encounter with the same enemy. Both the Paleo-Conservatives and the Paleo-Libritarians, if we may use those terms they gave themselves, had been chased out of the mainstream conservative movement at different times. In the 1950s, the Paleo-Libritarians who were previous incarnation of them had run afoul of the national view editorial board when they criticized the Buckleyite belligerent attitude toward the Cold War. Murray Rothbard's call for return to the isolationism of the interwar right rattled the editors of national review and subsequently Rothbard and those who followed in his path were unceremoniously driven out of a reconstructed conservatism. Paleo-Conservatives were given the heave ho in the 1980s for conspicuously protesting the Neo-Conservatives' takeover of what was left of a conservative movement. The Paleo-Conservatives opposed the Neo-Conservatives at least partly for repositioning the movement somewhere to the left of where it had been on social issues and immigration. But they also shared the anger and disgust felt by the Paleo-Libritarians over how the Neo-Conservatives approached international relations. In fact, both sides of what became a dissident right scoffed at the Neo-Conservatives' enthusiasm for a global democratic foreign policy and they ridiculed the ideologically driven form of global interventionism then associated with Neo-Conservative journalists, TV talking heads and foundation officers. Negotiations by the two dissident sides also revealed their agreement on many social issues even if the Paleo-Conservatives were more willing than their new allies to enlist political power to enforce their values. At the gathering that took place in Rockford, issues on which the two sides might have clashed were specifically addressed. Each side chose its own advocate to present the group views about a particular question except for some economic matters on which slight differences of opinion surface there seemed to be ideological unity between the two camps. I should point out, however, that the presence of Murray at the Rockford Institute, someone whom everyone at the meeting liked and admired probably served as an icebreaker. The usually irascible then editor of Chronicles seemed charmed by his new acquaintance and the Rockford Institute eventually bestowed on Professor Rothbard, the great libertarian economist, its lucrative Ingersoll Award for its contributions to Western thought. Arrangements were made at the meeting in Rockford to help the two sides cooperate on joint ventures. They would write for each other's publications and their associates and staff would be invited by both organizations to participate in seminars and conferences. To cement this newly formed friendship, a joint organization was founded, the John Randolph Club, in which representatives of the two groups would alternate as presidents. Programs and panels would be set up for the Randolph Club's yearly meeting that would embrace participants from both camps. The first meeting of this organization took place in July 1992 and not unexpectedly Murray Rothbard was unanimously elected as the club's first president. Although the John Randolph Club fulfilled its purpose of building bridges and featured some dramatic speeches, most memorably Murray's call to break the clock of the 20th century. After we had finished smashing the New Deal, it eventually showed the strains of internecine conflict. This became increasingly obvious after the unexpected death of the club's first president in January 1995, a turning point that allowed latent personal and ideological differences to come to the fore. I suspect that most of the older crowd at this dinner would have some notion of the stormy clashes of personalities that led to the weakening and eventual dissolution of this first fusionist experiment. Although the altercations were both personal and entirely avoidable, I nonetheless believe there were other more ideological reasons that strain the alliance. Critical differences existed between the groups that were blithely brushed aside in the initial euphoria of forging alliances with those who were dealing with the same adversaries. This may have caused us to overlook certain annoying facts. Both camps included hardliners who were not open to compromise on particular questions, whether intransigent anarcho-libertarians on the one side or on the other neo-medieval corporatists and patriarchal communitarians. There were also those in the middle like Lou Rockwell who believed in unity and hoped the hardliners on both sides would compromise. Since I had a foot in both camps, I inclined strongly toward loose position. Mind you, I'm not denying that certain people behaved disruptively, but nonetheless there were ideological fissures that could be and eventually were exploited by those trying to sow dissension. Another point about the failed relationship under consideration is the secondary position to which the Paleo-libertarians were relegated or relegated themselves by the end of the conservative wars that went on for more than a decade on the American right. In those histories of conservatism I've looked at and even in that notorious terror against the anti-patriotic right written by David Froome that appeared in National Review in 2003, Paleo-libertarians are misleadingly assigned to the Paleo-conservative camp. Those associated with the Mises Institute are depicted as participants in an exclusively Paleo-conservative revolt against the neo-conservatives as in the second edition of George Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement since 1945. Furthermore, the Wikipedia entry for the John Randolph Club lists the Rockford Institute as the organization's founders. This does not mean that the Mises people did not take explicit political positions. They just did so more carefully than the Rockford Institute and probably did not object to having certain controversial positions they took during that period attributed to Rockford. Clearly the Rockford and Mises Institute moved in different directions with the onset of their differences. While one threw itself happily into controversies and enjoyed publicized disputes, the other returned to its roots as an institute teaching and defending Austrian economics. By no means parenthetically, while the Rockford Institute spent its energies and resources on a number of causes, not all of which brought it rewards. The Mises staff succeeded financially and institutionally by focusing on academic outreach and economic construction. In general, the Mises Institute eschewed the path of controversy pursued by its one-time allies and turned inward toward what it had done before and would now do again. This may have been a prudent decision considering where the two institutes landed. One is flourishing as a far-reaching and educational enterprise, while the other exists in a less visible role as the board overseeing the magazine that I edit. But if a tight form of cooperation between the two groups was originally the shared goal, then their collaboration did not culminate in success. Perhaps the fusion of the 1990s failed partly because it was tried too early and was not launched in the best of circumstances. The consensus between paleoconservatives and paleoliberterians in the late 1980s may have been more apparent than real. Such a relationship may, however, be more promising at the present hour, but there shouldn't be an honest recognition that the two camps have differences. Although there are those who can easily work with both sides, paleoconservatives and paleoliberterians are not entirely interchangeable. A thoroughgoing libertarian like Walter Block will feel happier being identified with Mises than a purely paleoconservative institute. Listening to our young assistant editor at Chronicles calling for a right-wing welfare state might even drive Walter over the edge or knowing Walter to extreme contentiousness. Another assistant editor of mine, a Catholic neo-Ristitian who despises free trade, would certainly feel more comfortable editing Chronicles than the Austrian Quarterly of Economics or the Quarterly of Austrian Economics. As the old saw goes, different strokes for different folks, shouldn't we be surprised that the paleos on the popular's right reacted to this statement by Hans Hermann Hoppe in Chronicles in 2008 with flamethrowers. A program of economic nationalism must alienate the intellectually and culturally indispensable bourgeoisie while attracting the, for us and our purposes, useless proletariat. What a shameless attack from a paleoconservative standpoint in our beloved deplorables. In short, differences do remain between our sides and even within them and it seems futile to deny their presence. If the unifying figure of Murray Rothbard allowed the earlier forms of fusionism to go forward, his presence also concealed the differences that were even then evident between our groups. Once Murray was gone, the discord became obvious starting with the sulfurous debates at the Randolph Club over free trade versus protectionism and over conflicting conceptions of the state if memory service such debates did not unfold in a spirit of amity. Having made this point, let me assure my listeners that other problems that beset our first riot fusionism or close cooperation are not likely to return. I doubt the personality issues that came up in the 1990s will ever again become as critical or as divisive as they were then. From what I see, there is goodwill on both sides as we try to expand our areas of cooperation. We should not imagine that the situation that doomed in earlier lines has jinxed us a second time. We are also blessed with what Germans characterize as Grenzganger, figures who be stride our borders in camp and who belong in a sense to both our groups. Jeff Diaz, Tom Wood, C.J. Engel, Lou Rockwell, several German correspondents of mine and most of Chronicles editorial board would fall into that category. Such overlapping types were rarer in the 1990s. Despite affirmations of friendship, the two camps were split and after Murray's passing, their relations fell apart. Of course, neither side circa 1990 knew much about the other, say for the fact that they shared the same enemy lists and were desperately eager to make the match work. There should be coordination and deliberation if we take joint action, such as holding conferences together or issuing joint declarations. Although we are certainly free to disagree on points on which we don't concur, we should do everything possible to avoid rankerous debate. On a positive note, I noticed that my gloomy views about past failures is not that of Chronicles' current publisher. In his opinion, our previous collaboration resulted in fascinating polemics and lively conferences, which my colleague still recalls fondly from his youth. I myself form friendships with Petri libertarians that have remained intact and I have been reading with Prophet Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hem and Hoppe, David Gorton, Lou Rockwell, Tom Woods, Tom de Lorenzo, Joe Salerno, Walter Block and other authors with whom I first became familiar decades ago. Although being widely identified with the paleoconservatives, I've obviously formed personal friendships with the Mises crowd. In my case, our first efforts at achieving fusion or close cooperation continue to bring benefit. Finally, I would call attention to the changing situation on the intellectual right, which seems in some respects to be more open to our influence than was the case 30 years ago. A younger generation of right-wing thinkers and publicists no longer groove on Jonah Goldberg. Run to read George Will or subscribe to National Review in its present executable form. The conservative crack-up we were hoping to see in the 1980s and 1990s may be at last upon us. Although what we are witnessing may be more of a paradigm shift than a total collapse. Further, this transformation is operating along chronological lines. Self-identified conservatives under 40 and certainly under 30 are reacting against those ideological commasars we were fighting 30 years ago. This change does not exemplify what my late friend Sam Francis used to refer to as happy talk. Rather, I'm perceiving as an editor and conference speaker significant movement in our direction. A neoconservative foreign policy based on global democracy and global interventionism, what Maury Rothbard famously ridiculed as, and I know it was actually Randolph Bourne who said this first, as endless war for endless peace, does not speak to younger representatives of the right, certainly not with its representatives of whom I've had contact. If anything, neoconservative rhetoric and neoconservative policy disturb profoundly this rising generation. This is equally true for what I have designated as conservatism incorporated or just con ink, which for decades has imposed its belief on both the vulnerable and the easily gold. Among the dubious practices of this misnamed conservatism with its panoply of media outlets and institutes has been canceling and running down to centers, a practice going back to the dawn of post-World War II conservatism. Purges have in fact been a defining characteristic of con ink, which it has either hidden or else justified by declaring everyone expelled to have been a raging Nazi. This flies in the face of historical reality and what Harley described those Jewish libertarians who were among the first to be driven out of the reconstructed conservative movement. Of course, those who sit at top con ink have never been concerned with factual accuracy when going after unwelcome dissent. In response to this difficulty, the Mises Institute has been a pace-setter, building parallel institutions and conferences to those of the conservative establishment. And I think Tom Wood's praise of Lou Rockwell is fully deserved because I think it's his strategy that has worked so brilliantly. This is exactly the path I've urged chronicles and its sponsors to follow, creating their own parallel organizations, the ones from which they continue to be denied full access. But this isolationism may soon end as a new generation on the right aligns itself more and more with paleoconservatives and paleoliberitarians. I would finally call attention to a perspective shared by our two sides, which sets us even more apart from con ink, namely a willingness to view the last 70 years of American history more critically than does the establishment right. We emphatically reject the implausible dishonest view that our political and cultural problems are all or mostly of recent origin. We deny that our political institutions who were moving in a just and humane direction up until the last 20 to 30 years when suddenly the bad guys took over. What is ailing this country in much of the Western world is a long entrenched ruling class that is still expanding its power. There is no quick fix or GOP program from America that is likely to remedy this situation. Let me also note and here I won't hide my hand that it is impossible to understand the origins of the woke totalitarian state that is now oppressing us without focusing on what most Republicans and conning talking heads won't even speak about. A metastasizing welfare state that engages in massive social engineering and a war against discrimination that has long been in progress on all levels of government provides the background for our present ills. This oppression comes from somewhere and the reference point that may be the most relevant for our analysis goes back to at least the 1960s. Although conning may not have been able to reverse this entire course of events, it could have achieved more if it sought to unite the right rather than purge the centers and seek accommodation with the dark side. I also believe in my research that only a small percentage of those whom conning went after would fit the neo-Nazi label that Jonah Goldberg and others of his ilk have attached to the independent right. If only the conservative establishment had been as judgmental in dealing with the entire left as it was in gatekeeping the right, it might have gone much farther in battling leftist totalitarianism. On another note, I'm not glorifying pre-1960s America even if that temporally distant country was far saner and much freer than what has taken its place. Nor am I saying that every American was treated justly in that period or that there was nothing that could have been improved. Unfortunately, all the wrong steps were taken supposedly to create a more just society and the result is a government and secret service that are destroying our freedom and privacy in the name of equity and rooting out nationalists. Let us therefore recognize an obvious turning point in consolidating our victim obsessed regime and the anarcho tyranny into which we have descended. And let us admit that things have not been all right politically and culturally for a very long time and that we're now seeing what we're now seeing is the latest phase in the destruction of a free and virtuous society. For the real right, the work ahead will be necessarily difficult because the threats to freedom and dignity are so deeply rooted. Systemic evils are not likely to be cured by Kevin McCarthy's midterm Republican agenda, although I intend to vote for his party as the better of two abhorrent evils. Our descent into tyranny requires major political surgery of the kind that may cause those in power and those who front for them to screen bloody murder. But the young and dedicated on our side may be open to the challenge. Like Murray addressing the Randolph Club, a younger generation on the right may hope to break the clock of the 20th century or at the very least the clock of the second half of that century, the consequences of which continue to plague us. Those are my remarks. If anyone would like to ask me, I probably have not used up the full half hour allotted to my talk. If anyone would like to ask me any questions, I think we must have at least 10 minutes remaining of the session. So please go ahead and, yes, go ahead. In your opinion, what's the most important to real life? Yeah, I think they can work together on most issues. I think they have the sense of the same dangers that are facing us. I don't think, by the way, paleoconservatives are entirely impervious to the solutions that the Austrian economists come up with. And I think we certainly, our side can benefit from its insights. I think the paleoconservatives are more predictably on the right on cultural, moral, social issues. But I don't see any kind of incompatibility. Do I have only one minute remaining? Okay, so one more question. Then I will have exhausted my allotted time. Go ahead. Yeah, is there really a copy of that photograph that says this is done online? Copy of what? Excuse me. Photograph. They might make it available. This photograph here? Yes. I think the Mises Institute may be able to make it available. They want to copy it. I have the original picture with me. So I think it's a very important historical artifact. Right. Okay, so that is the last question. And I think I have exhausted my time. Thank you for your patience. Thank you.