criminals.rnMy reputation as the school rightist actually came in handy.rnIn my junior year in high school, I was the supporter, in one ofrnthose meaningless school elections, of my friend Lloyd Marcusrnfor school president or speaker or whatever the post was called.rnWe thought we would be up-to-date politicos, so we happilyrnhad handbills printed up: “Lloyd Marcus: Charges and Facts.”rnAll of the “issues” were trivial. There was nothing ideologicalrnabout them; only personal friendships were at stake. But toughrnold Miss Birch, the school founder, scented “communism”rnand “strike” at the very sign of a handbill. (Lloyd Marcus wasrnthe son of the fabulously wealthy Bernard K. Marcus, whornhad gone to jail as part of the Bank of the United States scandal.rnLloyd was indeed a “Park Avenue leftist,” but the differencernin ideology between the pro-Marcus and anti-Marcusrncamps was trivial and irrelevant to the election.) The ringleadersrnin the Marcus camp were called into Miss Birch’s office onernby one and quizzed sternly about “communism” and whetherrnwe were affiliated with the American Student Union, the communistrnstudent front at the time. I assured Miss Birch that norn”strike” or Student Union thought was in any of our minds. Inrnthe event, all of the Marcus ringleaders (including the nowdistinguishedrnconcert pianist and music historian CharlesrnRosen) were expelled, except myself. The idea that the schoolrnrightist was a commie was unthinkable.rnWhen I entered Columbia during World War II for collegernand graduate school, the universe of people I met expanded,rnbut the political ambience remained the same. Everyone wasrneither a communist or a social democrat, or a variety of each.rnThe only other Republican student at Columbia was an Englishrnmajor, and so we had little in common, as I was increasinglyrnsteeped in economics, both for its own sake and becausernit seemed to me that the knottiest political problems and thernstrongest arguments for socialism and statism were economic,rndwelling on the alleged failures of free-market capitalism. Thernmore I engaged in debates and discussions with fellow studentsrnand professors, who were all some variety of leftist, the morernconservative I became.rnI was so far out of it politically on campus that sometimes Irnserved as a kind of father-confessor. One time, someone I knewrnonly slightly came to see me and poured out a tale of woe. (Hernwas later to become a sociologist.) “Murray, you know I havernbeen active in many liberal causes. Well, today, I was stunned,rnI don’t know what to do. All my friends whom I thought werernregular liberals came to me and invited me to join their cell ofrnthe Communist Party. I had no idea they were communists!rnWhat should I do? Should I join?”rnWhat can you say to a mere acquaintance who spills out thisrnkind of confession? I do not remember how I reacted, probablyrnwith some sort of cliche like “to thine own self be true” orrn”don’t let anyone intimidate you.” I never knew what he decided,rnbut I am reasonably certain that he decided not to bernsucked into the C.P.rnDuring this period, I knew that there was a right-wingrnmovement out there, but my knowledge was confined tornsuch grand newspaper organs as the Hearst press, the marvelousrnNew York Sun, and reports about Congress. For a while, afterrnthe war, I was perhaps the only New Yorker outside of librariesrnto subscribe to my favorite paper, the Chicago Tribune, which,rnin the grand old Colonel Robert McCormick era, was hardrnright throughout, not just in its editorial pages but in its reportorialrnstaff as well. I had not yet, however, met any otherrnrightist.rnFinally, in 1946, I discovered the Old Right personally byrnfinding the new Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) atrnIrvington-on-Hudson, New York, where I met the movementrnintellectuals and activists and was introduced to wonderfulrnOld Right literature I had never heard of—libertarians AlbertrnJay Nock and H.L. Mencken, Frank Chodorov, John T. Flynn,rnand Caret Garrett—and all this very rapidly converted mernfrom a free-market economist to a purist Hbertarian. This literaturernalso converted me to hard-core isolationism in foreignrnpolicy. I had never really thought much about foreign policy,rnbeing steeped in economics, but now I realized that a noninterventionistrnforeign policy was part and parcel of a devotion tornfreedom and resistance to statism.rnLibertarians in the post-Worid War 11 right naturally thoughtrnof themselves as “extreme right-wingers” amid the right-wingrnspectrum. There was no enmity between us and the lessrnextreme or less pure; we were all happy to work together in thernanti-New Deal cause: we were trying to get our less extreme alliesrnto be more consistent; they were trying to get us to be morern”pragmatic.” Even in party politics, a purist libertarian likernCongressman Howard Buffett (R-NE), whom I got to knowrnpersonally, rose to become Senator Taft’s Midwestern campaignrnmanager at the ill-fated 1952 Republican Convention. Irnbecame a member of the Young Republican Club of NewrnYork in 1946 and wrote its policy paper blasting Harry Truman’srnprice controls on meat, which he was forced to repeal duringrnthe 1946 campaign. I was astonished in later years to see “conservatives”rnhail Harry Truman as a model President: on the contrary,rnwe opposed Truman hip and thigh, for his domesticrnstatism as well as for his interventionist foreign policy. Indeed,rnone of my happiest political moments came when the RepublicanrnParty swept both Houses of Congress in the Novemberrn1946 elections on the slogan “controls, corruption, and communism.”rnMy first foray into print was a letter I sent to thernScripps Howard New York World Telegram celebrating thernRepublican victory, saying “Hallelujah!” and naively expectingrnthe Republican Congress to promptly repeal the entire NewrnDeal. Well they said they would, didn’t they?rnThe first disillusion of many set in quickly. The National Associationrnof Manufacturers, before that pledged to repeal thernentire socialistic and pro-union Wagner Act, caved in, at theirrnwinter 1946 meeting, to the “responsible” corporate elementsrn(read the “enlightened” Rockefeller-type forces) and changedrntheir tune to call for what finally did occur: not repealing butrnextending the powers of the federal government to apply criteriarnof “fairness” to unions as well as employers. In short: to extendrngovernment power over labor relations instead of removingrnit completely. And with the NAM acquiescence, thernRepublicans, led by Senator Taft (a brilliant man but someonernwho was, disastrously, philosophically—and not just tactically—rndevoted to compromise), went along with this new sell-out positionrnand passed the amending Taft-Hartley Act instead ofrnabolishing the entire Wagner Act. Politically, repeal might havernsucceeded, since the public was fed up with unions and strikesrnin 1946, and they had, after all, elected a right-wing RepublicanrnCongress. Also in this 80th Congress, the Republicansrnlargely abandoned their “isolationist,” noninterventionist principles,rnled by their foreign affairs committee head, renegade isolationistrnSenator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI), who managed tornestablish the first, disastrous “bipartisan foreign policy,” i.e., glo-rn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn