Buckley versus Rothbard e a guerra fria

William F. Buckley (o godfather da National Review) faleceu hoje. No embate Buckley (o agente à direita que expurgou a tradição isolacionista-antiwar-proto-libertarian da National Review e da direita e que recebeu o neo-conservadorismo e o "cold war liberalism" de braços abertos) versus Rothbard sobre a necessidade ou não de uma agressiva política externa contra a URSS, por mim, Rothbard ganhou a todos os niveis, embora possamos esperar desde já, a interpretação oposta, nos próximos tempos. Mais tarde a old right ressuscita nos paleo-conservadores e nos anti-war libertarians, visivel agora no impacto da campanha de Ron Paul.

Um excelente ensaio sobre esse embate: A Birthday Tribute to William F. Buckley, Jr., David Gordon, com coisas destas:

"Despite his severe misgivings about Buckley, Rothbard agreed to write for National Review; but his opposition to Buckley’s bellicose policy eventually outweighed their cordial personal relations. Collaboration became impossible, and Rothbard departed from the magazine, never to return.

"...Rothbard made clear the basis of his opposition to National Review’s foreign policy in an essay, "For a New Isolationism", written in April 1959; the magazine did not publish it. To those who favored a policy of "liberation" directed against the Communist bloc, Rothbard raised a devastating objection: "In all the reams of material written by the Right in the last decade [1949–1959], there is never any precise spelling-out of what a policy of ultrafirmness or toughness really entails. Let us then fill in this gap by considering what I am sure is the toughest possible policy: an immediate ultimatum to Khrushchev and Co. to resign and disband the whole Communist regime; otherwise we drop the H-bomb on the Kremlin. . .What is wrong with this policy? Simply that it would quickly precipitate an H-bomb, bacteriological, chemical, global war which would destroy the United States as well as Russia."

Guess what? a "guerra fria" acabou pacíficamente (talvez ajudada pelos custos da invasão do Afeganistão ... o que certamente é curioso...). De histórias antigas, Buckley opounha-se à visita de Khrushchev e acusou de Rothbard de ... ver bem a visita e até estar presente na sua passagem por NY (acusação repetida por um certo anti-rothbardianismo, dor de cotovelo que tem vindo a desvanecer-se aos poucos dada sua obra académica mas também de polémico comentador do dia a dia e fundador de movimento, coisa pouco habitual em produtores académicos que até fogem de tal coisa que fácilmente chamusca uma carreira).

Mas quanto a Rothbard (que se opunha solitáriamente ao Vietname... momento onde na verdade começa a despontar o libertarianism com a edição primeiro da Left&Right de 1965 a 1968 e depois do Libertarian Forum de 1969 a 1984, ambas com imensa literatura anarquista, oposição ao militarismo e ao curso da guerra fria, a par de literatura económica free-markets e escola austriaca):

"...Buckley’s contradiction is that he denied this: he thought he could be fully libertarian while at the same time supporting a militaristic foreign policy and a domestic assault on civil liberties, all in the name of "anti-Communism." (...) But why is this inconsistent with liberty? Would not an end to the horrendously cruel tyranny of Mao have been altogether to the good? Indeed; but to achieve this goal, Buckley was quite willing to risk nuclear war: "The Liberals go on: An offensive by Formosa is likely to bring on a third world war, which will be the end of all of us.(...) If anything, the foreign policy supported by the Senior Editors of National Review was even worse than Buckley’s. James Burnham [ex comunista], who dominated the foreign policy sections of the journal, called in The Struggle for the World (1947) for preventive nuclear war against Soviet Russia. Frank S. Meyer found classical liberalism entirely compatible with a war of nuclear annihilation. Concerning him Rothbard remarked: "Frank S. Meyer and his fellow anti-Communists look forward almost with enthusiasm to a nuclear holocaust against the Communist nations which would annihilate tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of human beings. The devastation and suffering caused by nuclear war would bring about so many more ‘screams in the night’ as Communism has ever done as to defy comparison." (Unpublished Letter to H. George Resch, October 28, 1961) As if this were not enough, another of the founding editors, Willi Schlamm, wrote a controversial work that became a best seller in West Germany, Germany and the East-West Crisis, also defending preventive nuclear war.(...)"

Buckley após o fim da guerra fria fez o esperado: sem ameaça onde fazer recair o seu paradigma incentiva ao Golfo I e II, já recentemente mostra-se desiludido quanto a esta última (pelos pressupostos? pelos resultados? não sabemos bem). Fica-se à espera dos RIPs. Buckley foi muito pouco gracioso com Rothbard no seu RIP escolhendo a via fácil:

"After Rothbard’s death in January 1995, Buckley reacted with malicious spite. In an obituary published in National Review on February 6, 1995, Buckley classed Rothbard with the cultist David Koresh. He wrote: "In Murray’s case, much of what drove him was a contrarian spirit." Rothbard, in Buckley’s view, was mentally ill, the victim of "deranging scrupulosity". Buckley did not scruple to mock Rothbard, who, "huffing and puffing in the little cloister whose walls he labored so strenuously to contract", was left with "about as many disciples as David Koresh had in his little redoubt in Waco. Yes, Murray Rothbard believed in freedom, and yes, David Koresh believed in God."