Yeah that doesn't remind me of the Pax Americana of the last era of Republican control or anything.
The problem with this analysis is one of history. Internationalist civilizing, policing, and power projection into other lands has been a feature of both political parties and both the Left and the Right, as to matters of actual governance, through the entire 20th century. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR, all progressives of the early third of the century, were dyed in the wool interventionists (Wilson's claim that the United State's role in the world was to make the world "safe for democracy" is now part of political rhetorical legend).
The Vietnam war was brought to us courtesy of two Cold War era liberals, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
Bush's view of democratization and nation building in the Middle East has yet to be either legitimated or discredited. Time will tell.
Since you've quoted Hayek repeatedly as a borderline patron saint and his commentary is representative here, I think that suffices as not emanating from the "left." It's a complaint about conservatives that still is pervasive at places like CATO, which you quote all the time, and surely must be aware of.
Yes, and I've always openly maintained that conservatives have some longstanding differences with libertarianism in two major issue areas: social issues and national security issues (although on social issues, there is some overlap, here and there).
I was referring to your "atomistic individualism" comment which when destrawmanized refers to libertarianism's focus on individual liberty and streak of self-reliance.
Some versions of libertarianism have, unfortunately, made a totem out of the concept of "liberty," and been intellectually sloppy in its treatment of the dynamics and conditions of liberty as applied to the realities of the human condition. Conservatism approaches that problem in a much more realistic and philosophically refined manner, in my view.
That former is basically what libertarianism is. It's in the word. The logic that undergirds all those things heavily associated with libertarianism - such as the legalization of drugs, gambling, and prostitution - that you are attributing to the "sociopolitical left" concurrently arose out of what I mentioned above.
Which points out another interesting aspect of the similarities and, at the same time, differences between the Left and the libertarian movement in the social issues arena.
Some libertarians want to simply leave things like prostitution and drug use alone, and let people engage in these things and take the consequences themselves. In doing so, however, they ignore the larger effects of such "freedom" upon communities and society as a whole, when such behavior spreads and deepens its presence.
The Left, on the other hand, sees things such as drug use and sexual adventurism as a political statement; as an attack on bourgeoisie values and morality, and hence as a tool of cultural warfare.
Both sides support similar behavior and conduct, but for different reasons. The effects upon the culture, however, are the same regardless of the reasons they are allowed to flourish unchecked by rule of law based, democratic delimiting principles.