The tradition of Ron Paul: defeated in the Cold War, it is back in this current war.

'WAR is the health of the state," proclaimed Randolph Bourne, one of the comparatively few progressive intellectuals not to be seduced by the siren call of World War I. Bourne himself was but a momentary courier of the warning torch meant to illuminate the threat that standing armies, militarism, and foreign intervention supposedly present to liberty. "Brutus"--the author of the leading essays against ratification of the Constitution (the Anti-Federalist, as it were)--warned repeatedly that a permanent military and the strong central government necessary to sustain it were inimical to liberty at home. Thomas Jefferson famously shared similar anxieties.

One irony of the Bush years is the Left's sudden--and convenient--interest in the Founders' intent. It seems no Democrat can refrain from invoking Ben Franklin's hoary maxim that "those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Whatever happened to the "living Constitution"? Apparently abortion and gay rights require unlimited elasticity and penumbrae galore, while transnational terrorists seeking nuclear bombs are protected by the Left's conception of "original intent."

But there are more credible Cassandras, and not surprisingly they reside on the right. Bourne was no conservative, but the insight that involvement abroad fuels the expansion of the state was central to the formation of the modern conservative and libertarian movements. Albert J. Nock, the elitist, near-anarchist libertarian who influenced William F. Buckley Jr., among others, came of age chronicling how social planners and war planners were capable of switching from one job to the other as quickly as a new sheaf of papers could be placed on their desk.

After the First World War, the bipartisan hostility to "interventionism"--a hostility today called "isolationism"--rested on a faith that government activism abroad, even in the name of liberty, would (must!) encourage liberty-destroying activism at home. Pearl Harbor, an old-fashioned sneak attack, shattered this rough consensus. But when the war ended, some wanted to refashion it. Russell Kirk, for example, wanted the U.S. military demobilized.

Other conservatives saw in the Evil Empire's threat the need for a painful compromise. Everyone on the right agreed that the Soviet Union was the apotheosis of everything detestable about collectivism. But a significant divide emerged about whether it posed an existential threat to America. "The most important issue of the day, it is time to admit it, is survival. Here there is apparently some confusion in the ranks of conservatives, and hard thinking is in order for them," wrote Buckley in an essay for Commonweal in 1952. And while he was deeply invested in the warnings of Nock and other anti-statists and non-interventionists (in 1941, at the age of fifteen, WFB had attended an America First rally), he could not turn his back on the present danger. "The thus-far invincible aggressiveness of the Soviet Union does or does not constitute a threat to the security of the United States, and we have got to decide which. If it does, we shall have to rearrange, sensibly, our battle plans; and this means that we have got to accept Big Government for the duration." Three years later, Buckley launched NATIONAL REVIEW, which dedicated itself to fighting Communism abroad and--where sensible--curtailing statism at home. (The subtitle of that 1952 essay read, "Ideally, the Republican Platform should acknowledge a domestic enemy, the State.")

The Buckleyite position came to define mainstream American conservatism (and much of libertarianism) until the fall of the Berlin Wall. But a few rightist intellectuals dissented. The most famous was Murray Rothbard, a brilliant anarchist libertarian who saw in the Cold War a sweeping con job. The "blight of anti-Communism," Rothbard tellingly wrote in the left-wing journal Ramparts, paved the way for a takeover of American conservatism by defenders of Truman's "imperialist aggression." The Cold War was merely a convenient justification for statism, the crushing of dissent, and war lust. Churchill, de Gaulle, and Khrushchev were equally "butchers." Truman was the "butcher of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." NATIONAL REVIEW had a "clerical fascist" tinge, while various hard-Left organs--such as the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy--earned Rothbard's support and membership.

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Ron Paul is perhaps the most famous heir to the Rothbard tradition. He even has a portrait of Rothbard on his wall (that is, according to Wikipedia; Paul's office declined to grant an interview for this piece). Paul claims to be the standard-bearer of a truer, more authentic conservatism. In debates he spins an odd historical interpretation in which the GOP has always succeeded when championing either withdrawal from foreign conflicts (Korea, Vietnam) or non-interventionism. Most analysts, on the other hand, will tell you the GOP's advocacy of a strong defense has been a strength. Still, Paul claims that withdrawal not only from the U.N. (yippee!) but also from NATO, the WTO, NAFTA, and every "entangling alliance" (read: support for Israel, mutual-defense agreements, etc.) is the truly conservative position. When the Republican presidential candidates debated in South Carolina, he invoked Robert Taft's opposition to NATO. Left out of Paul's tale: Taft supported the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, promised "100 percent support for the Chinese National government on Formosa," advocated "occasional extensions ... into Europe, Asia, and Africa," and favored keeping six divisions in Europe, at least until the Europeans could defend themselves.

In the 1980s, as Reagan supported rollback, Paul favored roll-up. He wanted the U.S. to leave NATO and abandon Japan. On Grenada he was more nuanced, but he aimed his fire at Reagan's decision not to seek a declaration of war from Congress (a frequent safe harbor from which Paul criticizes nearly every military engagement). In the foreword to A Foreign Policy of Freedom, a collection of Paul's foreign-policy floor speeches, Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. calls the Cold War and the War on Terror all part of the same "farce"; both were ruses to justify large government.

Paul himself grounds much of his anti-interventionist rhetoric in fiscal conservatism. The whole apparatus of "empire" costs too much; everyone could afford health care without it. Also, he is a foreign-policy moralist who doesn't want blood on his hands. This is an honorable if mistaken objection to non-isolationist foreign policy, which must ultimately lead to the death of someone, more or less at our hands. There has always been a pacifist strain to libertarian domestic policy (government is violence). Why should foreign policy be different? One answer might be: because it is different. The international arena simply isn't a liberal polity where concepts such as contracts and property rights apply as they do in, say, Cleveland. To treat the world as just another sphere of liberalism is a category error.

There are other problems with Paulism. First, the case that intervention abroad naturally leads to the curtailment of liberty at home is less ironclad than even most conservatives, never mind libertarians, might think. Manchester liberalism arose in the British Empire. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846. Exactly 100 years later, the National Health Service was born not from empire but from its ashes. In America, women got the vote in the aftermath of World War I, and the Army was integrated by the "butcher of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." The Civil Rights Acts were passed during Vietnam. Ronald Reagan liberalized the economy while increasing spending on defense, and Bill Clinton reinvigorated government with the proceeds from the alleged "peace dividend." Oh, and for the record: Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises--who reportedly share space with Rothbard on Paul's wall--were subjects of the Hapsburgs.

Similarly, does "empire" really cost too much? Greater efficiencies surely can be found in any enormous bureaucracy, and there's no doubt that various treaty arrangements should be revisited. But, as Walter Russell Mead and Niall Ferguson have argued, maintaining global trade and stability worked to Britain's advantage--and, now, works to ours. Empire's moral costs are also murkier than Paul thinks. Thwarting the Nazis and Communists came at a bloody price, as will, undoubtedly, any sustained effort against bin Ladenism. But let's not concede the moral high ground to those who would not take up such fights.

Finally, is America an empire at all? It certainly isn't in the sense that Rome was. Our foreign garrisons are there by invitation and negotiation; we'll pull them out if asked, as we did in the Philippines. Some scholars argue that America is merely the leader of a "liberal hegemony." Mead and Ferguson say America is a "liberal empire." Whatever the right term, it is slanderous to lump us in with Huns, Nazis, and Communists.

Buckley was right in 1952: Much "hard thinking" was required of conservatives. And it is required of us again. So it's good news that Paul is running. Alas, too many conservatives dismiss him out of hand rather than engage him. The Rothbard-Paul vision was rightly defeated during the Cold War. Now that the Cold War is over, it seems not only fair but wise to give it another hearing--and if it can't be defeated on the merits, it deserves to win.

Mr. Goldberg, an NR contributing editor, is the author of the forthcoming Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.