Free-market advocates believed market defense required a holistic spiritual worldview

Evidence

Like many of his contemporaries in the early Mont Pèlerin Society, Buckley believed that support for free markets would be po liti cally viable only if it were represented as part of a holistic and spiritually grounded worldview. He also shared with the society’s early members an extraordinary faith in the power of ideas to effect po liti cal change over time. “Our po liti cal economy and our highenergy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas— not by daytoday guess work, expedients and improvisations,” he contended in the mission statement. The ideas expressed in the National Review soon attracted public attention and notoriety that far exceeded its sparse initial circulation of 7,500: the editor of Harper’s labeled the magazine’s readers “extremist” and “the precise opposite of conservatives,” and the literary journalist Dwight Macdonald referred to it as a haven for “the lumpen bourgeoisie, the halfeducated, halfsuccessful provincials.” Over time the National Review attracted allies as ardent as its enemies; after a de cade of existence on the edge of fi nancial insolvency, it had accumulated 100,000 subscribers and attained a prominent role in establishing the terms of American po liti cal debate. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 354

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Mont Pèlerin Society’s own conviction that market ideas needed moral/spiritual packaging — the chapter’s broader argument about the fusion of free markets with traditionalism. — connects to: Neoliberals framed the spread of markets as dependent on moral and religious foundations — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 120; Neoliberal theorists valued Christianity instrumentally for enforcing market submission, not from faith. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 123; Neoliberal thinkers rejected natural-rights foundations, deriving morality from market evolution — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 28 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals framed the spread of markets as dependent on moral and religious foundations #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 120
• Capitalism emerged ideologically through intensified spiritualization rather than secularization #expands (0.80)
• Neoliberal theorists valued Christianity instrumentally for enforcing market submission, not from faith. #qualifies (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 123
• Neoliberal thinkers rejected natural-rights foundations, deriving morality from market evolution #complicates (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 28