capitalism

376 Philosophic Radicals
Wilson administration had been, ardently desired U.S. entry
to aid Great Britain, and the president worked relentlessly,
if often deviously, to bring about conditions that would justify
entry—for example, by carrying out a series of increasingly
stringent economic warfare measures against Japan in
hopes that a war provoked with Japan might open a “back
door” for U.S. entry into the European conflagration.
Opposing the government’s maneuvers, the leading
pro-peace organization was the America First Committee
(AFC), formed in September 1940. A broad coalition of
ideologically diverse antiwar people, the AFC included
such notable proto-libertarians as writer John T. Flynn, who
headed its New York City chapter and whose 1944 book, As
We Go Marching, is a libertarian classic.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, antiwar sentiment
practically disappeared. Isolated individuals who
persisted in opposing or speaking critically about the war
were not only investigated by the FBI, but also shunned,
fired, blacklisted, and otherwise rendered impotent for purposes
of public debate and often for purposes of earning a
living. The only notable war resisters who stood firm were
the members of certain small religious sects, such as the
Jehovah’s Witnesses. When the young men in these groups
refused to obey the draft laws, they were rewarded for their
dedication to the Prince of Peace with long terms in prison
and with especially vile treatment while they resided there.
After the early 1950s, the bipartisan commitment to the
cold war, the further decline of classical liberalism, and the
smearing of formerly antiwar people and organizations as
isolationists and appeasers pushed pro-peace activity onto
the outer fringes of politics and ideological debate. In 1965,
escalation of the U.S. military engagement in Vietnam
revived mass antiwar activity, but New Left, religious, and
left-liberal organizations led the way, notwithstanding
attempts by Rothbard and a few other libertarians to nudge
the antiwar movement in a libertarian direction.
Opposition to the Vietnam War, however, did create a
diverse coalition of people dedicated to seeking peace, and
libertarians, whose own modern movement sprang from the
turmoil of the 1960s, have continued, for the most part, to
treat peace as the proper default setting for international
relations and to oppose the U.S. government’s persistent
efforts to remake the world at gunpoint. When U.S. forces
invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, most libertarians
opposed the action, and as the occupation dragged on amid
increasing sectarian violence, some libertarians who had
initially supported the action came to oppose it and to regret
their previous support.
Libertarian insistence on every individual’s right of selfdefense
does not require anyone to exercise that right, of
course, if religious or other scruples go against a resort to
violence, even in self-defense. Of the relatively few libertarians
who also were pacifists, perhaps the most notable
was the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. A former soldier
who had seen a great deal of combat, he came to oppose
violence. He also came to understand that governments
consist of stationary bandits who induce their subjects to
submit to robbery and other crimes by a combination of
threats and propaganda. “Governments,” he wrote,
not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly
immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest
man cannot and must not take part, and the advantages of
which he cannot and should not enjoy. And as soon as
people clearly understand that, they will naturally cease to
take part in such deeds—that is, cease to give the governments
soldiers and money. And as soon as a majority of
people ceases to do this the fraud which enslaves people
will be abolished.
RoH
See also Collectivism; Conscription; Imperialism; Nationalism; War;
War on Terror
Further Readings
Cole, Wayne S. America First: The Battle against Intervention.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953.
Ekirch, Arthur A., Jr. The Civilian and the Military: A History of the
American Antimilitarist Tradition. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1956.
Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men:
A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court.
“Lyoff N. Tolstoy.” Liberty and the Great Libertarians. Charles T.
Sprading, ed. San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1995 [1913].
204–217.
Mises, Ludwig von. Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition. 3rd ed.
Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education,
1985 [in German, 1927].
———. Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics
and History of Our Time. New York: New York University Press,
1983 [in German, 1919].
Radosh, Ronald. Prophets on the Right: Profiles of
Conservative Critics of American Globalism. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1975.
Richman, Sheldon. “New Deal Nemesis: The ‘Old Right’
Jeffersonians.” The Independent Review 1 no. 2 (Fall 1996):
201–248.
Rothbard, Murray N. “War, Peace, and the State.” Egalitarianism as
a Revolt against Nature, and Other Essays. 2nd ed. Auburn, AL:
Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000 [1974].
Stromberg, Joseph P. “Imperialism, Noninterventionism, and
Revolution: Opponents of the Modern American Empire.” The
Independent Review 11 no. 1 (Summer 2006): 79–113.
PHILOSOPHIC RADICALS
John Stuart Mill once said of Jeremy Bentham that he “has
been in this age and country the great questioner of things