What has come to be considered the "Right" in America today is really borne of three strands, not so very well integrated:
1) The classical liberalism born of Locke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, which was the liberalism of the Founders and the 19th century, and which now encompasses Austrian economics, neoclassical microeconomics and rational expectations economic theory, and political libertarianism, in the broad sense more than in the party sense.
2) A moderate conservatism that seeks gradual change and to preserve the essence of the good in traditional institutions, borne of Burke's revulsion at the French Revolution and being now essentially country club Republican ism. The relationship of this with classical liberalism is gradual and curious, consider how the Republican party began as an amalgam of conservative Whigs and anti-slavery radicals who were often classical liberals. and
3) Authoritarin conservatism, that of the high Tory or Ultramontagne Continental Conservative. Whether it glorifies the state in monarchal or religious terms, it still views the individual as subordinate to the state. It lacks being totalitarian only because of its traditionalism grounding in morality (in most places) and the sense of reciprocal obligation of all in society in the Great Chain of Being whereby each had is place.
The Paelos are authoritarian conservatives for the most part, but who rarely have the historical or philosophical training to understand the implications of their views.
The subsequent intellectual history of the conservative movement has largely been the story of how the two great strands of conservative thought, classical liberalism and Burkean traditionalism (the "Blue and White Niles of the conservative movement," as I have sometimes called them), have come to recognize each other. They have recognized each other not as adversaries but as complementary aspects of a single overarching worldview. To borrow a military metaphor, it has sometimes seemed to me that the conservative movement's resolute opposition to the advance of world communism was its response to the great but essentially tactical problem of our time. Its commitment to political and economic freedom (the contribution of classical liberalism, as we have seen) was its profound strategic contribution, the enormously important insight that human freedom makes possible a level of political and economic well-being that no dirigiste system can hope to equal. But...traditionalism is neither a strategy nor a tactic; it is, in the fullest sense of the word, a philosophy. As such, it is the bedrock of American conservatism.For the full lecture containing this quote go here
However, the question still remains. Why would America's counterparts of Ultramontanism (Sobran, for example) adopt the very un-Catholic, un-Ultramontanist doctrine of rights libertarianism as their message? Why not simply shout "Throne and Altar?" I believe at least the elder (late) Brent Bozell openly identified with the Spanish Carlists and refrained from posing as Thomas Jefferson.
For whatever reason the First and Third strands of conservatism you mention seem to have blended into a single stream. But it still doesn't make any sense.
Please forgive me for repeating myself, but this paragraph of yours is simply delicious.
Now--why would someone with this view of the individual invoke Rothbardian libertarianism? That is the question.
You recall that Goldwater, whom many of us would consider to have been our particular Pied Piper, always described himself as a "19th Century Liberal".