This file is a short September 1992 electoral polemic by Murray N. Rothbard, written in the immediate aftermath of Pat Buchanan’s fading primary challenge and Ross Perot’s collapse as an alternative. Its scope is the Bush–Clinton choice as seen from Rothbard’s paleolibertarian right: not an enthusiastic endorsement of George H. W. Bush, but a tactical argument that Bush’s reelection would be the least damaging defensive option.
No publication has been more bitterly critical of George Bush than Triple R; certainly no publication has been more vituperatively opposed to Bush’s lionized Gulf War. But yet, dammit, we are working our way back to the president.
That reluctant turn is the essay’s governing irony. Rothbard frames the election as an imposed choice within a decayed political system, not as a moment of democratic affirmation. His language makes the lesser-evil structure explicit: the voter is choosing which ruling coalition will hold state power, not choosing liberty.
Yes, gulp, and here we are. It is late July, and we’re down to the grim, realistic choice: which of two sets of bozos is going to rule us in the years 1993–1997? Lord knows, it’s a crummy, terrible choice, presented to us by a rotten, extra-constitutional two-party system that is fastened upon us by restrictive laws and a moribund electoral college system.
The essay then divides itself into a “For Bush” and “Contra Clinton” brief. The pro-Bush case is thin by design: Bush is preferable chiefly because he is not Clinton, but Rothbard also credits the Bush–Baker foreign policy on Israel and the Middle East, Bush’s restraint over Bosnia, and his reconciliation with Buchanan. The first of these shows one of Rothbard’s core conceptual moves: foreign policy is the primary test of whether a president is captured by neoconservative and pro-Israel pressures.
Bush–Baker stood firm on delaying the $10 billion loan guarantee until Zionist settlements are slowed down on the Arab lands of the West Bank.
The Bosnia discussion gives the essay its clearest libertarian anti-interventionist note. Even while expressing hostility to the Serbs, Rothbard argues that American military action would become a disastrous quagmire. His praise of Bush is therefore paradoxical: the president’s indecision becomes, in practice, a virtue.
While Bush has been lauded for his action in Desert Storm, the really sensible foreign policy is to do nothing, and Bush’s dithering nature has, apart from the Gulf War, led him to Keep Cool and to stay out of foreign quagmires.
Against Clinton, Rothbard’s argument broadens from policy to culture. He portrays the Democratic convention as a symbol of left-liberal ascendancy: multiculturalism, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, urban spending, and an expanded rights discourse set against private property and parental authority.
The Clinton-managed Democrat convention was the leftest ever: multi-culturalism reigned triumphant, with the “Lesbian Rights” banner almost as prevalent as “Clinton for President.”
Al Gore becomes, in Rothbard’s account, not a centrist restraint but an intensifier of Clinton’s dangers: a spender, environmentalist, and especially a bridge to organized Zionism and neoconservative foreign-policy idealism. Rothbard reads the drift of some neoconservatives toward Clinton as proof that the Democratic ticket would better serve interventionist “New World Order” politics.
Translated from the code words, this means, plain and simple, that Clinton is more pro-Israel and more devoted to a neocon-guided New World Order than George Bush.
The polemic reaches its cultural climax in the attack on Hillary Clinton and the “children’s rights” movement. Here Rothbard translates “family values” into a theory of jurisdiction: children belong under parental governance, not under lawyers, therapists, bureaucrats, or social workers. His anti-statism fuses with conservative family politics.
Well, there’s one clear test: “family values” means that kids get brought up, get governed by, their parents.
The conclusion clarifies that the Bush vote is merely defensive. Rothbard is not satisfied by containment; he wants a comprehensive counterattack against left-liberal power in politics, economics, and culture. The essay’s relevance lies in showing his early-1990s strategic synthesis: antiwar libertarianism, Buchananite populism, anti-neoconservatism, and cultural counterrevolution.
Holding back the hordes may be important, but it’s not exactly soul-satisfying.
The final aspiration is therefore not Republican loyalty but a broader movement beyond electoral triage.
Some day, we must launch a total counterrevolution: in government, in the economy, in the culture, everywhere, against malignant left-liberalism.
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