Let me quote Wally Conger quoting PCR:

And speaking of neocons of the John Sunlight variety, Paul Craig Roberts does a remarkable job of succinctly defining the core belief-system of neocons on this morning’s LewRockwell.com:

"Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler’s revolution, neoconservatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of the world."

Read the whole article here.

What strikes me here is how Left and Right have once again reversed polarity.

Libertarians are used to thinking of the authoritarian Left as "international(ist) socialist" and the authoritarian Right as "national(ist) socialist" — think Stalin and Hitler. But as well as PCR’s description fits the contemporary mainstream American Right, it could apply just as readily to the mainstream American Left if we change the last word from "world" to "country"!

The left socialists, aka communists, wanted to export their system of economic centralization. The right socialists, aka fascists, wanted to focus their economic intervention on "the nation."

Now, the left and right socialists differed on more than the scope of their mission. They also differed on egalitarianism versus anti-egalitarianism, as well as the stated purpose of revolution (overthrowing bourgeois culture) versus counter-revolution (protecting bourgeois culture), so I don’t want to push this point too hard.

But still. It seems to me that the main difference between Left and Right these days is the question of whether to focus their imperialism at home or abroad.

Dan D’Amico and some 9 or 10 other grad students at GMU will be celebrating Murray Rothbard’s birthday tonight by eating at Denny’s (which Dan says was Rothbard’s favorite restaurant) and watching Death Wish (which he says was his favorite movie).

Interesting timing. I had just been wondering what Rothbard’s favorite movie had been. That may seem like a strange thing to wonder, but Jeff Riggenbach had recently mentioned Rothbard’s love of the Godfather movies:

It was the legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg, cast in the role of Hyman Roth, whom Wikipedia calls an “elderly Jewish organized crime figure retired to Miami and overlord of criminal enterprise[s] in Cuba” (that is, a renamed Meyer Lansky), who spoke a probably immortal line in an onscreen conversation with Al Pacino (as Michael Corleone) in The Godfather: Part II: “This is the business we have chosen.” Doherty writes that “Old movement hand Ralph Raico was known to sigh, at news of the latest absurdity or strategic misfire or failure on the part of a fellow libertarian, echoing the Godfather, ‘This is the movement we have chosen.’”

I used to hear Ralph say that back in the ’70s, but I always thought he’d got it from Murray (Rothbard). Burt Blumert seems to remember things the same way. “‘This is the business we have chosen,’” he recalled nearly four years ago in a short Internet essay, “was Murray Rothbard’s favorite line from Francis Ford Coppola’s great movie and he often adapted it when confronted by some wacky or unprincipled libertarian.”

This was the 4th or 5th time I’d heard the Godfather movies mentioned in connection with Murray Rothbard. I enjoy the mentions, because (a) they are interestingly connected, not always directly, with libertarianism, and (b) I love the Godfather movies and like to think that they were something I had in common with my hero. George Will hated them; Murray Rothbard loved them. All was in alignment.

But Death Wish?!

Now I know that Rothbard’s favorite bread was Wonder Bread, because he talks about it about half way through his lecture on price theory (MP3). When I first listened to this lecture, I thought Wonder Bread? WONDER Bread!? You gotta be kidding me.

Then I realized I was being the worst sort of snob: the sort whose snobbery is based on assumptions rather than experience. I hadn’t tasted Wonder Bread since I was 10 years old. I grew up with plenty of cultural indoctrination (and other sorts of indoctrination). Why should I assume Wonder Bread is lousy bread, that it barely deserves the name “bread”?

So I went out and bought a loaf of Wonder Bread. While I was at it, I figured I’d confront some other forms of food snobbery. I bought bologna, and Kraft’s individually wrapped slices of American cheese — the kind that looks too shiny to be real cheese. I bought the canary-yellow mustard that comes in the squeeze bottle. While I was at it, I bought some cans of Budweiser beer. Might as well confront all the big snobberies at once.

Well, now I am no longer the worst sort of snob — at least not for those products. I now know from recent personal experience that they are all awful. Really unbelievably awful.

I’m trying not to be the worst sort of snob about Death Wish. I haven’t seen the movie. I should suspend judgment.

This week’s theme at A.W.A.D has been “There is a word for it.”

A.W.A.D adds: