Murray Rothbard discusses a turning point in American ideological history, through events in his own life:
My total break with National Review and the right wing, my final emotional divorce from thinking of myself as a right-winger or an ally of the Right, came around 1960. The break was precipitated by Khrushchev's visit to the United States in late 1959. During the torpid Eisenhower years of the late 1950s, when foreign affairs were in a frozen deadlock and when the American Left had all but disappeared, it was easy not to put the peace issue at the forefront of one's consciousness. But the Khrushchev visit was, for me, an exciting and welcome sign of a possible detente, of a break in the Cold War dike, of a significant move toward ending the Cold War and achieving peaceful coexistence. Hence I enthusiastically favored the visit; but at the same time National Review became hysterical at the very same possibility, and in conjunction with the still-secret John Birch Society, tried desperately to whip up public sentiment to disrupt the visit.
