bal interventionism, in the post-World War II era.rnOld Right Republicans, the soul of the party, alwaysrnmanaged to lose the presidential nomination, perpetuallyrnstolen from them by the Eastern Establishrnent-Big Banker-rnRockefeller wing of the party, who used their media clout, asrnwell as hardball banker threats to call in the delegates’ loans, torndefeat majority sentiment in the party. In 1940, a Morgan bankrnblitz managed to steal the presidential nomination for the unknownrnutility magnate and leftist Republican Wendell Wilkiernfrom Old Right isolationist Senator Taft and Tom Dewey, allrnhis political life a Rockefeller stooge, who in 1940 followed whatrnwas then the isolationist Rockefeller line. In 1944, Dewey, nowrnan internationalist following the Rockefellers’ shift, won the Republicanrnnomination. He was renominated in 1948, beatingrnout the Old Right isolationist Senator John W. Bricker (R-OH)rnfor the nomination, Bricker getting the consolation post of VicernPresident.rnAs far as I was concerned, Dewey’s nomination completedrnthe congressional sellout, and even though I was unhappy thatrnTruman ran a demagogic leftist campaign against the 80thrnCongress, I could not bring myself to support Dewey. Hence,rnonce again naively, I embraced the new states’ rights or “Dixiecrat”rnticket of Strom Thurmond for President and FieldingrnWright of Mississippi for Vice President. I actually believedrnthat the States’ Rights Party would continue to become a majorrnparty and destroy what was then a one-party Democraticrnmonopoly in the South. In that way, an Old Right, MidwesternrnRepublican coalition with States’ Rights Democrats couldrnbecome the majority party!rnAt Columbia graduate school, I found a Students for Thurmondrngroup. I showed up at the first meeting, which consistedrnof a group of Southern students and one New York Jew, myself.rnThere were a brace of other New York Jews there, but theyrnwere all observers from the Henry Wallace Progressive Party,rnpuzzled and anxious to find out to what extent fascism and thernKu Klux Klan had permeated the fair Columbia campus. Theyrnwere especially bewildered when I got up at the meeting andrnmade a fiery stump speech on behalf of states’ rights andrnagainst centralized socialism. What was a nice Jewish boy doingrnin a place like this?rn1 have been asked many times whether the Old Right wasrnrife with anti-Semitism. Left-wing undercover operators andrnsmear artists such as “John Roy Carlson” had written a bestsellingrnwork. Under Cover, tarring all anti-New Dealers andrnAmerica Firsters with the anti-Semitic and “neo-Nazi” brush,rnand the reputation of the Old Right has grown worse over thernyears, since, as usual, the interpretation of history has beenrnsolely in the hands of the internationalist winners.rnThe answer to this question, however, is a resounding No. Inrnmy decade on the Old Right, I never once encountered anyrnanti-Semitic hostility. It is true that there were unfortunatelyrnvery few Jews on the Old Right, but those that were there—notablyrnthe great libertarian Frank Chodorov—were widely admiredrnand encountered no ethnic hostility. It is true thatrnthere was a general unhappiness with the fact that most Jewsrnseemed to be leftists, as well as widespread opposition to thernZionist program of driving Palestinian Arabs out of their landsrnand homes, but these were attitudes that I myself fully shared.rnThe Old Right finally began to fade away over the issue ofrnthe Cold War. All Old Rightists were fervently anticommunist,rnknowing full well that the communists had played a leadingrnrole in the later years of the New Deal and in getting us intornWorid War II. But we believed that the main threat was notrnthe foreign policy of the Soviet Union, but socialism and collectivismrnhere at home, a threat that would escalate if we engagedrnin still another Wilsonian-Rooseveltian global crusade,rnthis time against the Soviet Union and its client states. MostrnOld Rightists, therefore, fervently opposed the Cold War, includingrnthe Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and thernquasi-debacle of the Korean War. Indeed, while the entire left,rnwith the exception of the Communist Party, got behind thernKorean War as opposition to North Korean “aggression” underrncover of the United Nations, the Old Right, particularly itsrnhard-core members in the I louse of Representatives, led by thernChicago Tribune, opposed all these policies to the hilt. HowardrnBuffett, for example, was one of the major voices in Congressrnopposed to the Korean adventure.rnBy the mid-1950’s, however, the Old Right began to fadernaway. Senator Taft was robbed of the Republican nominationrnin 1952 by a Rockefeller-Morgan Eastern banker cabal, usingrntheir control of respectable “Republican” media. In the earlyrn1950’s, Taft himself and the doughty Colonel McCormiekrnpassed away, and the veteran Old Right leaders faded from thernscene. The last gasp of the Old Right in foreign policy was therndefeat of the Bricker Amendment to the Constitution in 1954,rnan amendment that would have prevented internationalrntreaties from overriding American rights and powers. Thernamendment was sabotaged by the Eisenhower administration.rnFinally, the Old Right was buried by the advent in late 1955rnof the lively weekly National Review, a well-edited periodicalrnthat hlled the ideological vacuum resulting from the deaths ofrnMcCormiek and Taft and the retirement of other isolationistrnstalwarts. National Review set out successfully to transform thernAmerican right from an isolationist defender of the Old Republicrnto a global crusader against the Soviet Union and internationalrncommunism. After National Review became establishedrnas the GHQ of the right, it proceeded to purge allrnright-wing factions that had previously lived and worked inrnharmony but now proved too isolationist or too unrespectablernfor the newly transformed Buckleyite right. These purgesrnpaved the way for later changes of line as well as future purges:rnof those who opposed anti-Stalinist, pro-welfare state liberalsrncalled “neoconservatives,” as well as of those who persisted inrnopposing the crippling of property rights in the name of “civil”rnand other victimological “rights.”rnAs time passed and Old Right heroes passed away and werernforgotten, many of the right-wing rank-and-file, never long onrnhistorical memory, forgot and adapted their positions to thernnew dispensation. The last political manifestation of the OldrnRight was the third-party Andrews-Werdel ticket of 1956,rnwhich called for the repeal of the income tax and the rollbackrnof the New Deal. Its foreign policy was the last breath of thernpre-Cold War Old Right: advocating no foreign war, thernBricker Amendment, and the abolition of foreign aid. Thernbetrayal of Senator Taft in 1952 had driven me out of thernRepublican Party, and after supporting the Andrews-Werdelrnticket, I spent the following decades in the political wilderness,rntrying to join abortive third “Constitution” parties and tornseparate libertarians out from a right wing that I no longerrnrecognized and that seemed to me far closer to the hated NewrnDeal, domestic and foreign, than to its Old Right enemy,rnwhich I had happily discovered and embraced in the years justrnafter World War II.rnAUGUST 1994/19rnrnrn