‘Please provide evidence for your assertion that Harding was “initiated” into the Ku Klux Klan. Poor Warren can’t get no respect but I never heard that claim before. Again, I’d like to see where you read that.’

Harding reportedly was inducted to the Klan by Imperial Wizard William Simmons. The claim’s made in a number of books on race in the 1920s and the Second Era Klan—e.g. Wyn C. Wade’s THE FIERY CROSS, Philip Dray’s AT THE HANDS OF PERSONS UNKNOWN, etc. If you want I can hunt track down some more detailed bibliographic information on the matter. (I wouldn’t be surprised if most biographies of Harding specifically went more or less entirely without mentioning it—the gruesome fact is that being a member of the Klan would not have been a distinctive or unusual fact about a politician of the time.)

‘BTW, the Klan was refounded during the term of Woodrow Wilson, who brought Jim Crow to the federal government and absolutely loved “Birth of a Nation” which he considered accurate history.’

Of course. Nothing in my remarks about Harding should be taken to imply that Wilson wasn’t a scumbag, or even that Wilson wasn’t even more of a scumbag than Harding. He probably was. Fortunately, neither Bush nor Kerry (for all their faults!) happens to have the attitudes towards race that white public figures in the 1910s-1920s routinely acted on.

As for Harding’s joke about “jumping the fence,” I’ve read a number of differing accounts about the remarks and Harding’s attitudes toward the possibility (some claim he was indifferent and joked about it; others claim he was ashamed and tried to hide it; etc.). Even at the strongest, though, the remark would be compatible with Harding joining the Klan—it was not at all rare for politicians of the 1920s to opportunistically participate in the KKK without actually believing much of it. I don’t know whether Harding was of this sort or was more of a sympathizer (a la Wilson); but I don’t actually think that either option would be any better for judging his political legacy.

‘As to quotas and tariffs, well…..nobody is perfect, but then I was comparing Harding to Bush and Kerry!’

But it’s not just a matter of minor flaws that vanish in the comparison to contemporary pols. The tariff rates that Harding and the Republican legislature enacted during the 1920s were far worse than anything even remotely envisioned by either major party today, and of course was among the leading causes of the worst economic depression in U.S. history. But beyond that, neither the tariffs nor the immigration quotas stand alone; they are both quite clearly of a piece with the nativist, white supremacist politics of the 1920s. The Republican administrations between Wilson and Roosevelt enthusiastically participated in that vicious atmosphere—and on some issues actively made things a lot worse. And whatever their merits vis-a-vis Wilson before and FDR after, or vis-a-vis modern pols such as Bush and Kerry, these are things that need to be remembered.

Thanks for the questions. Hope this helps.

“In Right-wing political philosophies, political power rises from the bottom up. These would include true democracies and representative republics. In Left-wing political philosophies, political power originates at the top and moves downward.”

This is not what the terms were made to signify, and it’s not how they’ve historically been used. In Revolutionary France (where the terms were coined) the “Left” were those (among them many classical liberals and libertarians such as Frederic Bastiat) who argued for the sovereignty of ordinary people, claimed that government could have no rights except those that people chose to give it, and defended the right of those people to make fundamental changes to the structure of government. The Right were those who argued that the absolute authority of the King was sanctioned by Almighty God.

If you want to clarify how the terms are used, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind would recommend that the clarified terms have at least some connection with their historical use.

Warren G. Harding also drove tariffs sky-high, approved the first ethnic immigration quotas in American history, and was initiated into the bloody Ku Klux Klan in the White House.

Bush and Kerry may be assholes, but thank God that men like Harding no longer make it onto the ballot.

“If you don’t vote for what you truly want,(limited govt.), you’ll never get it.”

But I don’t want limited government. I want no government. So building the Libertarian Party is for me (as it is for many others) just as much a strategic move as voting for some worse statist. (Indeed, this is the case even if you are (just like Badnarik) a committed minarchist Constitutionalist. “Limited government” isn’t on the ballot; Michael Badnarik is, and the argument for voting for him is, at the strongest, that he would do the most to advance the cause of limited government if elected.)

Given that, there are some good reasons to think that if you are in the particular circumstance of, for example, living in a swing state where a handful of votes may determine the outcome, there may be good reasons to think that a vote for Kerry is the wisest course of action available. (As Roderick argues, the case is much less strong insofar as these considerations aren’t in play—if I were still living in Alabama rather than Michigan, I wouldn’t hesitate to put in a ballot for Badnarik.)

‘I don’t understand what you are talking about. British politics have nothing to do with American politics.’

This would come as a surprise to Russell Kirk, who explicitly drew from the work of British conservatives such as Edmund Burke. American conservative thought and practice has always been directly linked with English conservatism. It would be downright foolish not to understand the connections between Tory thought in the wake of the French Revolution—including, in particular, their critique of univeralist ideology and reconstructive politics (in both cases, their main target was the classical liberals, who they blamed for the Revolution). American conservatives have certainly made no bones about these connections.

‘Neo-conservatives aren’t part of the American “Conservative Tradition;”’

Is there any particular reason for saying this other than the fact that you don’t like them? Anarchists typically loathe the fact that Marxist-Leninist butchers are also part of the socialist tradition, even though they were, comparatively, Johnny-come-latelies who mangled a huge amount of the tradition to serve their own bloody-minded ends. But few would deny that the Marxist-Leninists were, in fact, part of the socialist tradition.

“Look up Bill Buckley on lewrockwell.com, and you’ll find out exactly what it meant to be a conservative before the neo-cons showed up. Not because Buckley is one, but because he, more than any other person, fucked it all up. Also, conservatives (circa 1930’s-1940’s) were traditionally not widely associated with any social regulation, merely economic issues.”

I’m well aware of Rothbard’s broadsides against Buckley. You may notice that the Commonweal quote from Buckley that I linked is one commonly cited by Rothbard. And pretty much everything that can be said against Buckley is well-deserved.

But I can’t agree with the notion that there was anything of value in the conservative tradition to be fucked up when Buckley reached the scene. This, for example, is simply not true: “conservatives (circa 1930’s-1940’s) were traditionally not widely associated with any social regulation, merely economic issues.” In fact, American conservatives during the 1930s and 1940s routinely embraced militant white supremacy—especially in the South. The Old Right that LewRockwell.com fawns over included many very honorable people with good reasons for opposing interventionist warfare—but also an unfortunate number of anti-Semites and admirers of fascism. (Charles Lindbergh and Father Coughlin are not to be praised for their anti-interventionism: they only opposed intervention because they were fond of the Nazi terror-empire.)

Neo-conservatism is Prussian authoritarianism combined with rampaging Trotskyist globalism. That sucks; but paleoconservatism, with its legacy of social authoritarianism, (sometimes) economic protectionism and welfare populism, and (always) xenophobia and militant racism is not an improvement. Both of them are ugly movements that trace important parts of their influence to ugly forebearers in British conservatism, the French Right, and the Kaiser’s Prussia. The conservative tradition is not worth saving. If you want to find a tradition to reclaim from statism, it is anti-state liberalism that you should look into. (Generally speaking: the dude who wears the Crown is a less reliable libertarian than the dudes who are chopping that crowned head off.)