By W. James Antle III The Week

I’ve written previously about how two ascendant factions within the major political parties — the progressive Democrats and populist Republicans — are mostly anti-war, but may have difficulty cooperating on foreign policy because they disagree about former President Donald Trump and other issues. The same can be said of the two most anti-war groups in the GOP: the populists and the libertarians.

Three leading lights of national conservatism — Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen, and Gladden Pappin — came together to write a New York Times op-ed (recently discussed by my colleague Damon Linker) arguing that hawks are a major impediment to a better Republican Party. This was also a major theme of the libertarian moment that preceded the right’s current nationalist-populist one.

But many of the newfangled conservatives of the Trump era consciously reject classical and procedural liberalism, much less libertarianism. Sensing the natcons’ desire to cast them out of the big tent, libertarians are quick to return the favor. J.D. Vance and Justin Amash may agree about the Iraq war, but they have radically different views about libertarianism. And only one of them remains a member of the Republican Party.

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