A New “Godfather” of Neoconservatism for the Twenty-First Century

In a 2003 article on the American Enterprise Institute web site entitled “The Neoconservative Persuasion” the late Irving Kristol boasted of being the “godfather” of neoconservatism.  Gaining political clout in the 1980s during the Reagan administration, the neocons have dominated American foreign policy ever since.

In his article Kristol explained that the original neocons like himself were all former communist “Trotskyists” who decided to temper their communistic impulses in light of all the failures of socialism.  They remained foreign policy imperialists, statists, Zionists, and enemies of classical liberalism, however, as Kristol also explained in the article.

The neocons, said the “godfather,” supported Reagan’s libertarian-ish-sounding economic agenda of tax rate cuts and deregulation because economic growth is necessary to generate the tax revenues to finance an aggressively imperialistic foreign policy.  The main purpose of such a policy, said Kristol, is in his words: “We must defend Israel.”  Yes, not America but Israel.

Kristol passed in 2009, so the neocons have been without a godfather for seventeen years.  But now along comes Javier Milei, who also idolizes Reagan (and Trump) and makes many speeches in favor of libertarian economic policy.  And like Godfather Kristol, he is a Zionist (proclaiming to be “the most Zionist president in the world“) and a foreign policy imperialist.  He supports the genocidal mass murder of women, children, and babies that has occurred at the hands of the U.S./Israeli military in Gaza, the bombing of Iran, everything NATO does, and has introduced a domestic spying bureaucracy in Argentina, as all good neocon imperialists would do.

In other words, the neocons have a new “godfather” of neoconservatism for the twenty-first century in Javier Milei.  War is the health of the state and always ratchets up governmental power while destroying liberty.¹  When the war ends government’s never give back all of the “emergency powers” they acquired during the war, as Robert Higgs famously explained in Crisis and Leviathan.  That is why Milei’s warmongering neoconservative Zionism trumps whatever nice things he might say about anarcho-capitalism, libertarianism and economic freedom in general.

1. See Hoppe, Mises Institute: Quo Vadis?, n.7: “See DiLorenzo’s remarks at Faculty Panel: Policy and History, Mises University, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (July 25, 2025): ‘I know one of the things Hans Hoppe is bothered about is that, apart from Milei’s economic speeches and what he’s done in policy, he’s a neocon warmonger on foreign policy. And war is the health of the state. He calls himself a libertarian. And Hans is concerned that, in Latin America especially, people who are just learning about libertarianism will think that … you’re a neoconservativism and neverending war—you know the policy of the American state in the past what 200 years—is what libertarians are about.'” [↩]