In the 1950s,
Frank Meyer, a prominent contributor to the
National Review, called his own combination of libertarianism and conservatism
fusionism. The
agorist philosopher
Samuel Edward Konkin III coined the term
right-libertarianism in order to describe this mixed ideology. In a 1975 interview with
Reason, California Governor
Ronald Reagan appealed to libertarians when he stated to "believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism".
Ron Paul was one of the first elected officials in the nation to support Reagan's presidential campaign and actively campaigned for Reagan in 1976 and 1980. However, Ron Paul quickly became disillusioned with the Reagan administration's policies after Reagan's election in 1980 and later recalled being the only
Republican to vote against Reagan budget proposals in 1981, aghast that "in 1977,
Jimmy Carter proposed a budget with a $38 billion deficit, and every Republican in the House voted against it. In 1981, Reagan proposed a budget with a $45 billion deficit—which turned out to be $113 billion—and Republicans were cheering his great victory. They were living in a storybook land". criticized President Reagan,
Reaganomics and policies of the
Reagan administration for, among other reasons, having turned the United States' big trade deficit into debt and the United States became a debtor nation for the first time since World War I under the
Reagan administration. Rothbard argued that the
presidency of Reagan has been "a disaster for libertarianism in the United States" and Ron Paul described Reagan himself as "a dramatic failure". Rothbard had become the doyen of
libertarianism in the United States. After his departure from the
New Left, with which he helped build for a few years a relationship with other libertarians, Rothbard had involved the segment of the libertarian movement loyal to him in an alliance with the growing
paleoconservative movement, seen by many observers, libertarian and otherwise, as flirting with racism and social reaction. Suggesting that libertarians needed a new cultural profile that would make them more acceptable to socially and culturally conservative people, Rothbard criticized the tendency of proponents of libertarianism to appeal to "'free spirits,' to people who don't want to push other people around, and who don't want to be pushed around themselves" in contrast to "the bulk of Americans", who "might well be tight-assed conformists, who want to stamp out drugs in their vicinity, kick out people with strange dress habits, etc." whilst emphasizing that this was relevant as a matter of strategy. Rothbard argued that the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America might result in the loss of "the tight-assed majority". In the 1990s, Rothbard,
Lew Rockwell and others described their libertarian conservative views as
paleolibertarianism. In an early statement of this position, Rockwell and
Jeffrey Tucker argued for a specifically
Christian libertarianism. Those libertarians continued their opposition to "all forms of government intervention—economic, cultural, social, international" whilst upholding
cultural conservatism in social thought and behavior. Paleolibertarians opposed a licentious libertarianism which advocated "freedom from bourgeois morality, and social authority". In 2001,
Edward Feser emphasized that libertarianism does not require individuals to reject traditional conservative values. Libertarianism supports the ideas of
liberty,
privacy and ending the
war on
marijuana at the legal level without changing personal values. Defending the
fusion of
traditionalist conservatism with libertarianism and rejecting the view that libertarianism necessarily requires support for a
liberal culture, Feser implied that a central issue for those who share his viewpoint is "the preservation of traditional morality—particularly traditional sexual morality, with its idealization of marriage and its insistence that sexual activity be confined within the bounds of that institution, but also a general emphasis on dignity and temperance over self-indulgence and dissolute living". has been strongly criticized. In
Democracy: The God That Failed, first published in 2001, Hoppe argued that "libertarians must be conservatives". Hoppe acknowledged "the importance, under clearly stated circumstances, of discriminating against communists, democrats, and habitual advocates of alternative, non-family centered lifestyles, including homosexuals". In contrast to
Walter Block, Hoppe argued that libertarianism need not be seen as requiring
open borders and attributed "open border enthusiasm" to "egalitarianism". While defending "market anarchy" in preference to both, Hoppe has argued for the superiority of
monarchy to
democracy, maintaining that monarchs are likely to be better stewards of the territory they claim to own than democratic politicians, whose time horizons may be shorter. == Notable people ==