As laissezfaire reemerged as a live possibility, so too did the antagonism between freemarket "liberals" and traditionalist "conservatives" that had riven Western societies amid the age of revolution and the early emergence of industry. The Mont Pèlerin Society of the early 1960s, like the American po liti cal environment in subsequent de cades, cast these divergent groups as uneasy allies. Their interaction was volatile and eventually unsustainable. The foundational tension of postwar American conservatism had begun to emerge.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 375