A Short History of Conservative Bickering and Its Current Uses

Unity never feels as real yet proves as illusory as it does on Election Day. Whichever candidate wins, factional unity loses. This realization occurs at an accelerated rate for the losers. The winners eventually experience a crackup, too. Governing forces politicians to take the concrete stances that inevitably peel off parts of a coalition. 

An August Fox News poll indicated that Donald Trump has retained the support of 93 percent of Republicans. An elected-by-the-Kremlin hoax, investigations by more than a dozen House committees, two impeachments, numerous indictments and lawsuits, secretaries of state threatening to censor ballots, and an assassination attempt tend to unite a movement. 

Conservatives trauma-bonded to Donald Trump. The former president’s counterpunching, and occasional lead rights, endeared him to frustrated past supporters of human punching bags like Mitt Romney and John McCain. To an even greater extent, the contempt progressives hold for conservatives, as well as their disregard for politics’ Marquess of Queensberry rules, fueled conservatives’ support for Trump. The lone characteristic shared across the Right remains opposition to the Left. Beyond that superficial common denominator lies division.  

That division could bubble to the surface as early as Wednesday, November 6. Should the Republicans lose again, recriminations and reassessments will come quickly. Should they win, and Trump enters office as a lame duck, festering disagreements on the Right over trade, abortion, monetary policy, deficits, America’s role in the world, and much else will grow in volume and visibility. 

Conservatives will soon embark upon a great argument. Is this such a bad thing? 

In researching my upcoming book, The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, which will be released in spring 2025, I recovered the letters of pioneering movement conservatives from odd hiding spots and venerable institutions such as Yale’s Sterling Library and the Hoover Institution Library and Archives. Those letters reveal not just friendships but also feuds. These conservatives did not abide by Benjamin Franklin’s maxim that “We must all hang together or we will all hang separately.” They fought each other as ferociously as they fought the Left.

Young Americans for Freedom 

In September 1960, Stan Evans wrote a concise statement of principles for young conservatives. When the 26-year-old presented the document to the mostly younger folks gathered at William F. Buckley’s family estate in Sharon, Connecticut, the group opted to retain, virtually unamended, the four hundred or so words that Evans had composed on an airplane as Young Americans for Freedom’s founding document. The Sharon Statement affirmed freedom as the foremost transcendent value; defined maintaining internal order, providing external defense, and administering justice as the legitimate aims of the federal government; and emphasized that justice and self-interest must guide American foreign policy. 

In retrospect, the Sharon Statement reads almost like a conservative Nicene Creed. At the time, dissent, at least from a few adults, greeted it. Gerhart Niemeyer, a professor of government at the University of Notre Dame, wrote National Review senior editor James Burnham weeks after the Sharon Statement’s publication: 

I have, indeed, come to a point of rupture, but it is not a rupture with National Review. It is a definite and clear rupture with the 19th century liberalism that parades under the banner of conservatism. It is an ideological view of man and society, as ideological as is New Deal liberalism, socialism, nazism, and communism. Instead of contributing to the healing of our time, it will compound its illness, even though it is not a very potent factor in events. At any rate, if I am to be associated with ideologues, I might just as well keep the company of the ruling Liberals. From the point of view of truth, both associations are equally bad.

A German émigré, Niemeyer embraced a European–style conservatism. He opposed the emerging fusionist position of conserving the American tradition of freedom inherent in the Founding. He believed fusionism was becoming another form of ideology, which he saw as contrary to conservatism — a force meant to negate ideology. As a person who had fled Nazi Germany in 1933, he regarded ideology as the last thing a world brought by it to brutal wars and unprecedented inhumanity needed.  

“I now feel obliged to do what I can to counteract the influence of this document,” Niemeyer confessed in a letter held in James Burnham’s papers at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, “and I shall do it in writing.” 

A more publicized battle over the Sharon Statement and Young Americans for Freedom occurred later in the decade. “Why don’t you leave now, and let the ‘F’ in YAF stand then for what it has secretly stood for all along — ‘fascism’?” Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard urged his younger followers in 1969. Karl Hess, who had journeyed from Goldwater speechwriter to a bearded and beaded anarchist prophet within a few short years, wrote “The Tranquil Statement” on his so-named boat in hopes of replacing “The Sharon Statement.” The document diverged from the original perhaps most significantly by calling the United States the world’s greatest threat to peace and freedom. At the YAF convention in St. Louis, one libertarian challenging the status quo famously burned a duplicate of his draft card (conventioneers did not necessarily know the difference between a xeroxed draft card and the genuine article), which set off anarchy — perhaps a predictable outcome for any convention populated to any degree by anarchists.

The hardcore libertarians walked out of YAF on philosophical grounds at the decade’s end, just as Niemeyer had set himself apart from mainstream conservatism at the beginning of the decade because of the organization’s classical liberal stance. The lesson? Movements attract those with strong views, and the splitter impulse unfortunately runs deep in such people. In the case of YAF, vis-à-vis the traditionalist Niemeyer and the anarchist and libertarian Rothbardians, pleasing all factions within the broader right-wing coalition proved impossible even within its philosophically ecumenical framework.

The fact that Young Americans for Freedom’s 1960s began and ended with disputes over important philosophical matters rather than personal concerns strikes as some kind of cosmic joke. Although the organization supplied the lifeblood of the conservative movement for decades to come, its heyday largely consisted of infighting, intrigue, and jealousies that were thinly draped in differences of principle. During timeouts from fighting one another, they battled the Left.

National Review

The heavyweight division experienced much the same as the pee-wees, but in reverse. One might expect a conflict between giants of the Right, such as William F. Buckley, Jr., and Friedrich Hayek, to have stemmed from a dispute over ideas — perhaps Buckley’s emphasis on God over man was too much for Hayek’s tastes, or Hayek’s refusal to embrace the label “conservative” alienated the National Review editor. Nothing of the sort occurred. Instead, a petty matter stood as the catalyst of their backbiting. 

Hayek wrote Buckley in 1961: 

The suggestion in the Bulletin of the National Review dated November 25, that Mr. Hammarskjold cheated at cards, seems to me to overstep the bounds of common decency. I am convinced that a magazine that allows itself such inexcusable allegations does more harm than good to the cause that it intends to serve.

Dag Hammarskjöld, the young secretary general of the United Nations, had died in a September plane crash in Africa. Reports alleged that he had been found in the wreckage with an ace of spades on his collar. The Bulletin, a newsletterish periodical produced by National Review in its off weeks after it transitioned from a weekly to a biweekly in the late 1950s, included a playful insinuation that perhaps the peculiar discovery meant that Hammarskjöld cheated at cards.

The year prior, Hayek had written a book review for National Review. Otherwise, he strangely stood athwart the magazine, whispering, “No, thanks,” until he was coaxed to memorialize Ludwig von Mises upon his death in 1973. In 1961, Hayek asked for Buckley to remove him from the mailing list and announced that he wished to sever any association with the magazine.

That request left the 36-year-old editor confused but not at a loss for words in his response to the older, more accomplished man.

Buckley responded: 

As I think back on your coolness towards our enterprise (I have not, in six years that the magazine has been published, had from you a single letter commending a single article, editorial, or book review), it occurs to me that you must be harboring some grudge against me or the magazine which you now, for your own reasons, seek occasion for externalizing. What is your long-term complaint?

Hayek countered that he had found nothing playful about the passage Buckley had encouraged him to reconsider. He denied a grudge and reiterated that he felt as though National Review undermined their cause. “Cancel my subscription!” — a refrain that had become a running joke at the magazine — manifested in Hayek’s letter as a demand to cease sending him a gratis copy. It’s not just that Hayek did not wish to write for the magazine. He did not wish to even see a free copy of it in his mail. 

Russell Kirk wondered if recent disturbances within the Mont Pelerin Society — in which, in his telling, tolerant Christians clashed with “the rigid quasi-Benthamite liberals” — had influenced this dispute. Kirk noted that Chicagoites Milton Friedman, Aaron Director, and George Stigler objected to his referencing Wilhelm Röpke’s A Humane Economy instead of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty in a recent National Review column. “While I can’t account fully for Hayek’s distemper,” he wrote Buckley shortly before Christmas, “in general he is a vain and impractical person, who thinks he is the law and all the prophets, and that nothing is needed for the salvation of humanity but the obedient reading of Hayek’s works.”

David Collier, publisher of Modern Age, counseled Buckley to ignore the “emotional professor.” He noted that he had already heard about the quarrel before Buckley brought it up. “I fear that from the academic elements of the society,” the academic explained, “we must always expect unusual reactions such as these.” 

The John Birch Society

The contretemps came amidst Buckley’s criticisms of John Birch Society leader Robert Welch, whose publication, American Opinion, at the time listed Hayek’s mentor Ludwig von Mises on its editorial advisory committee.

Clarence Manion, the former Notre Dame Law School dean and a key figure in publishing Barry Goldwater’s A Conscience of a Conservative, telegrammed Buckley in March 1961 to warn him not to say anything negative about Welch or the John Birch Society:

For the sake of National Review and the conservative cause I fervently hope that you will say nothing about the society or Welch unless it is unequivocally favorable[.] Any criticism from you at this moment would ruin us all[.] We have the liberals backed against the wall and they know it[.] Their one opportunity to escape is to drive a hole through the thickening wall of conservative opposition[.] The origins of this drive against John Birch are so foul and disreputable that I cannot describe them in a telegram[.]

Buckley’s criticisms of Welch in 1961 struck so gently as to catalyze praise from an unusual corner. The John Birch Society leader wrote, “Despite the differences of opinion between us, which remain and are stressed, I think that the article is both objectively fair and subjectively honorable.” The salvos that followed in 1962, and again in 1965, left no ambiguity.

The former Notre Dame Law School dean and others worried about conservatives jumping on the pig-pile against the John Birch Society initiated by the Left, which included a politicized investigation by California’s attorney general, senators calling for hectoring tax inquiries, and, as revealed by Matthew Dallek in 2023’s Birchers, the FBI utilizing the Anti-Defamation League to violate the civil liberties of John Birch Society members through a creepy, well-funded effort. National Review editors were primarily concerned that the entire Right would be anathematized by linkage with Welch’s fanciful conspiracy theories if it did not anathemize Welch. 

The Conservative Party of New York

In 1962, several figures associated with National Review, including Frank Meyer and Bill Rickenbacker, helped launch the Conservative Party of New York. The new political party immediately faced strategic dilemmas, if not the moral dilemmas of the controversy surrounding the John Birch Society. Doug Caddy, who had been the prime mover in the formation of what later became Young Americans for Freedom, objected to the upstart party’s challenge to Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javitz, and the other liberals dominating the New York Republican Party. Caddy referred to the Conservative Party in a letter to National Review as “this latest effort to splinter the Republican Party and to plow money and activity into a third party.” He urged, “It is now that we must gather around our only hope — the Republican Party — and stage our fight to the finish.”

The letter, and really everything else Caddy-related, elicited a visceral response from fundraiser and committee-organizer extraordinaire Marvin Liebman. That February, Liebman alleged that Caddy had spread “stories” about him. He resigned from YAF’s National Advisory Board. In June, he urged Buckley not to correspond with his former protégé lest he twist his words.  

“I earnestly believe that [Caddy] is a sick young man,” Liebman wrote Buckley that spring. “He seems to be afflicted by paranoia. He has an extremely vicious streak in him and, I believe, the less to do with him, the better.” 

Fleeting Disputes

Not every tiff ended on a you’re-dead-to-me note. 

In 1966, Milton Friedman and Frank Meyer, present at the creation of the Philadelphia Society two years earlier, briefly fell out. Friedman described himself as “shocked” at Meyer’s “inexcusable” behavior toward fellow economist Martin Anderson. The behavior involved Meyer, in his capacity as the American Conservative Union’s director of publications, republishing one of Anderson’s papers as an American Conservative Union task force study. Friedman wrote to Buckley in response to the paper’s publication: “I herewith resign from the ACU Advisory Assembly.”

Meyer contended to Friedman that Anderson had not accurately described his agreement with the American Conservative Union, that the Columbia University professor had gone back on his word, and that the American Conservative Union had accurately described the publication as drawn from an earlier study. Grasping the errors, Friedman wrote Meyer: “I owe you an apology and Martin owes us both one.” 

Most of the feuds found in the old letters and memos, of which the aforementioned are just a small sampling, fall into this category of being short-lived. Conservative leaders fought, they reconciled, and — if not for some nerd dredging it up all these years later — everyone forgot about it. Most cases also conform to this Meyer–Friedman kerfuffle in that they ultimately amounted to nothing. In hindsight, the majority appear to be unproductive, juvenile, and beneath the dignity of the combatants. A few did complicate efforts at united action. Sometimes, figures with big footprints engaged in petty conduct. 

However, in certain instances, the internecine battles catalyzed important strategic and philosophical turning points that altered, for better and worse, the trajectory of the Right. Thus, postwar conservatives solidified their beliefs not only through opposition from society but also through constant challenges from within their own ranks. Disagreements, often fatal to friendships, serve as the lifeblood of philosophical movements. 

A Conservative Reckoning Awaits

Fast-forward to the present. Conservatives increasingly hide in cocoons of carefully curated social media feeds and watch cable news programs designed to act as mirrors, reflecting their viewers’ beliefs back at them. A movement that is united behind its leader and strongly polices dissent does not stimulate thought but anesthetizes it. So, too, does a movement that replaces intellectual figures of the like referenced here (Friedman, Kirk, Niemeyer, etc.) with schtick-reliant performers who, while not conflict-averse, pick fights over trivialities and passing fads rather than deep-rooted philosophical issues. The unfortunate blurred distinctions between the role of a party and the role of a movement further inhibit honest, open conversations. 

Debate, friction, and confrontation force people to define what they stand for. This happens only when these conversations delve beyond the surface, concentrate on ideas rather than personalities, and do not shift blame to outside forces. By looking inward and exploring to great depths, one can examine the characteristics of an outlook that either repulse or attract outsiders, miss or address societal maladies, and mislead or guide us in the right direction. 

Win or lose in November, a reckoning awaits. This naturally evokes trepidation. However, an uneasy feeling does not always signal bad things ahead. 

A movement that lacks arguments is not a movement but, to coin a bad neologism, a stillment. Anything that remains stagnant for too long eventually reveals itself to be dead. 

Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine.

The post A Short History of Conservative Bickering and Its Current Uses appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.