BRUCE VANDEVORT tax). As well, the rebels resented conservative tolerance of the police state methods of the governments of the era, e.g., harsh drug laws, repression of cultural and political nonconformists, violations of freedom of speech. Once on its own, the dissident group faced the problem or establishing an identity for itself among the myriad of the new U.S. political tendencies created by the upheavals of the 1960's. A first option, to continue the link with Ayn Rand's 'Objectivist' movement, was rejected, as Rand and her disciples had begun to articulate support for a limited State, a stance uncomfortably close to that held by the Y.A.F. « Goldwaterism '> proved equally untenable, as the Arizona sage climbed aboard the Nixon-Agnew bandwagon. Following a brief hiatus, durlng which militants variously styled themselves 'anarcho-capitalists', 'Rational Anarchists' or 'Rational Libertarians', agreement was more or Jess reached on the designations 'Right-wing Anarchist' or, simply, 'Libertarian'. However, confusion persists. Thus, the dust jacket of Karl Hess's recent book, Dear America, describes Hess, a leading ideologue of the movement (4), as a 'Left-wing Libertarian' (which gives one the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps the honorable title of 'Libertarian' has been pre-empted in the U.S. by the 'Rightwlng anarchists'). This confusion in designations is natural, given the mixed bag of ideas which passes for 'Right-wing anarchist' philosophy. Difficulties spring essentially from the tension existing between the movement's cherlshed concept of absolute individual freedom and its equally strong desire to achieve community. Hess's book is illuminating on this point. Thus, whlle denouncing in vigorous terms State incursions upon private initiative and rights, he is forced, in his recipe for resistance, to falJ back on the frail hope that a cluster of disciples can, by leading exemplary lives, in time win over the philistines. That this passives resistance might be insufficient to curb State power, mlght have already been tried and found wanting, is passed over in uncomfortable silence. In brief, Hess, like his fellow 'Rightwing anarchists', behaves as if he had just discovered the (4) Hess served in the early 1960's as a speechwriter for various Republlcan party luminaries, includlng Gerald Ford, Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. Having left this employment following disilluslonment with Republlcan support of the Vietnam war, he passed through the S.D.S.L ~e J.W.W. and on to the 'Right--wlng anarchlst' movement, where he waay occupies a position on lts Left wing. Karl Hess, Dear America (New York: Morrow, 1975), 279 pp. 54
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