Anyone sane enough to read to and to understand this word knows that the chances of the United States going back to a completely minimal government are zero. An essential part of the original package was the lack of a standing army, it being argued (very sensibly) that a permanent standing army was the thin end of the wedge for the appearance of the megastate. For confirmation of this principle, all you need to do is to hire a unit of retired Special Forces men to penetrate the Pentagon’ accounts department and have a thorough examination of the Defense Department’s books undertaken. Consideration of what exactly was stuffed into “national defense” expenditures will make ostensibly loony Interstate Commerce rulings make a sort of arational sense.

“Well, as long as my neighbor’s tree-pruning is considered a vital defense need by the Treasury, then we can certainly consider a man growing his own food to be a participant in interstate commerce!” (Source of joke - two- thirds down.)

And Mr. Bullnutt, if the source of his new- found wealth is examined, needs a better excuse than “secret agent for the Department of Commerce.”

Since the Founders knew that governmental care and feeding of Mr. Bullnutt could be justified seriously as a valuable addition to the strength of the State – the British Court was well used to buying the loyalty of those who might harbor secret resentment towards the British Army, even if they decided that Americans weren’t worth throwing money at – they drew a line by saying that the only way to prevent that process from happening at all was a taboo against a professional standing army - period.

I need hardly spell out why a return to this kind of policy is impossible. Do you really want nuclear missiles in the hands of the California state militia, if such an organization even exists?

But that doesn’t mean that the System of Natural Liberty is dead, not by any means. I know we’re accustomed to hearing laissez-faire being robotically described by what passes for the American Establishment as “obsolete,” but that sloganeering was itself new and relevant seventy years ago, not now. The only ideology that can count as “old-fashioned” as of 2003 is none other than the anti-war faction, as the September 11 attack was about as definitive a breathalyzer as the Great Depression. The spin- doctry necessary to ram this point home would be easy to accomplish, as the ban-the-bomb element of the anti-war movement has a certain wishful undertone – the atomic bomb never should have been invented at all. This would be easy to slant as a disguised yearning for yesterday’s technology, as the ban-the-bombers have proven to be fertile parents and grandparents of today’s antitechnology Greens.

So it’s a not far-fetched assumption that the Buckleyite vision of a free economy at home and a strong defense posture with respect to abroad is a possible candidate for the definor of the new political consensus. Making the peace sign tramplable as “obsolete” could remove that same stigma from libertarianism, and thus make their policy ideas truly respectable rather than semi- disreputable.

Rather than discuss how to accomplish this, I’m going to dabble in a little vision-ing myself, in order to discuss what a probable consequences of a successful implantation of Buckleyism as the new “vital center” would be – one bound to be disappointing to libertarians who are not anti-war by inclination.

What I’m referring to specifically is a character known as Bureaucrat Man. If the domestic-regulation part of the government is finally defanged, he’s going to have to find a place to go. This almost certainly implies employment in the private sector.

Which means that you’ll be bumping into this character all over the place. He won’t be located in D.C. anymore; you’ll find him: in the corner grocer; behind the pleasant sales rep at buyhere.com; perhaps as the sales rep of buyhere.com; most possibly at the neighborhood liquor store; and almost certainly as a sales agent for employment-rights lawyers.

One of the points of plausibility behind the claim that the New Deal “saved capitalism from itself” (provided that “capitalism” is a term that is not used as one of those charm-school monikers in the Stork Club set) is that Bureaucrat Man was quarantined in Washington D.C. as a result of it, just as the Crusades had the effect of getting rid of the realms’ spoiled bullies by turning them into noble fighters for Christianity – in the Middle East. Once B.M. no longer has a guaranteed place in the nation’s capitol, that quarantine will be lifted and back into the neighborhood he’ll appear.

Along with a grab-bag of rights to ease his estate. Since the de-fanging of the corporate state is likely to follow the Friedmanite path, whose argumentative axle is that the typical regulatory agency is at heart redundant due to the (previously neglected) option of initiating private lawsuits, B.M will have lots of opportunity to exercise his peculiar talent of “masterly chairwarming.”

If the System of Natural Liberty is restored under the framework of a strong defense force, that’s the way it’ll go. Or stop – or yield.