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This contemporary application episode examines how the rhetorical techniques used to silence the Old Right in 1940-1941 continue to be deployed against critics of intervention today. We analyze the function of labels like “isolationist,” “Russian asset,” “antisemite,” and “conspiracy theorist” as tools of exclusion rather than argument. We document how the Old Right’s predictions about war’s consequences for the American republic have been vindicated by eighty years of evidence: the permanent expansion of military spending, the creation of constituencies dependent on defense contracts, and the erosion of congressional war powers. We profile modern inheritors of the non-interventionist tradition, from Ron Paul to Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna. And we discuss what listeners can do to recover constitutional limits on war-making in an era of potential conflict with Iran.
By Jeff KellickThis contemporary application episode examines how the rhetorical techniques used to silence the Old Right in 1940-1941 continue to be deployed against critics of intervention today. We analyze the function of labels like “isolationist,” “Russian asset,” “antisemite,” and “conspiracy theorist” as tools of exclusion rather than argument. We document how the Old Right’s predictions about war’s consequences for the American republic have been vindicated by eighty years of evidence: the permanent expansion of military spending, the creation of constituencies dependent on defense contracts, and the erosion of congressional war powers. We profile modern inheritors of the non-interventionist tradition, from Ron Paul to Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna. And we discuss what listeners can do to recover constitutional limits on war-making in an era of potential conflict with Iran.