Paleoconservatism

Paleoconservatism (sometimes shortened to paleo or paleocon when the context is clear) refers to an American branch of conservative Old Right thought that is frequently at odds with the current of conservative thought as espoused by the Republican Party elite. Paleoconservatives disagree with those whose beliefs they classify as neoconservative. Thus, paleoconservatives disagree with sentiments and ideology as expressed in National Review and the Weekly Standard magazines. The term derives from the Greek root palaeo- meaning "ancient" or "old".

Core beliefs

Many paleoconservatives also identify themselves as "classical conservatives" and trace their philosophy to the Old Right Republicans of the interwar period who successfully kept America out of the League of Nations, cut down non-European immigration in 1924 and stood opposed to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal proposals.

Paleoconservatives, or "paleocons," are most easily distinguishable from other conservatives in their emphatic opposition to illegal immigration, their strong opposition to affirmative action, and their general disapproval of U.S. intervention overseas; these issues do not exhaust the paleoconservative philosophy but merely represent distinctive stands that Paleocons take on hotly contested issues. Many neoconservatives, by contrast, are more consensus-oriented on the issues of illegal immigration and affirmative action and support a more activist internationalist foreign policy.

Many paleos are often concerned with the culture-eroding effects of popular culture and some reject free trade ideology especially when it leads to an acceptance of the deterioration of America's industrial base. Some Paleos are sympathetic to the Producerist orientation, though others support laissez-faire economic policies articulated by classical liberals such as Frederic Bastiat in the nineteenth century.

Intellectual precursors and modern expositors

Some historians, such as Paul V. Murphy and Isaiah Berlin, see the paleoconservatives' intellectual ancestors as those anti-modern writers who defended hierarchy, localism, ultramontanism, monarchy and aristocracy. European precursors to paleoconservatives include Joseph de Maistre, Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and Pope Pius X, though they tend to influence the Roman Catholic traditionalist subsect of paleoconservatism. Likewise, modern European continental conservatives, both Frenchmen Jacques Barzun and René Girard, have a mode of thought and cultural criticism esteemed by many paleoconservatives. In America, the Southern Agrarians, Charles Lindbergh, Albert Jay Nock, and Russell Kirk, among others, articulated positions that have proved influential among contemporary paleoconservatives. The southern conservative thread of paleoconservatism embodying the statesmanship of nineteenth-century figures such as John Randolph of Roanoke, John Taylor of Caroline and John C. Calhoun has proven influential as well, and has found a modern expositor in the late Mel Bradford.

Paleoconservatives in modern America

In our time, prominent "paleoconservatives" include Pat Buchanan, and Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo. Today, there are also a number of influential academics, commentators and journalists in the paleo ranks.

The best known contemporary paleoconservative is probably the commentator Patrick Buchanan, whose culture war speech is probably the most widely known paleoconservative critique. The main paleoconservative magazines are Chronicles Magazine, The American Conservative, and the John Birch Society's The New American. There are many followers of the late Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell who embrace paleolibertarianism, and being culturally conservative, they espouse many of the same themes of paleoconservatives, but are wholly committed to economic laissez-faire. Rep. Ron Paul and other members of the Liberty Committee frequently espouse a principled brand of classical republican statesmanship that reverberates with many paleocons. Other present-day paleoconservative luminaries include Emory Philosophy Professor Donald Livingston; Paul Craig Roberts, an attorney and former Reagan administration Treasury official; commentator Joseph Sobran; journalist Chilton Williamson; and historian Clyde N. Wilson. In many ways paleoconservatives consist of a disparate pool from all walks of life, including the blue-collar middle class to more affluent professionals, evangelical Christians and Roman Catholic traditionalists, libertarian individualists, Midwestern agrarians, Reagan Democrats, and southern conservatives.

Paleoconservatism has recently become the principal operating philosophy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). In its publications and conferences it often champions pre-WWII Old Right ideas, such as isolationism, limited government and cultural homogeneity. While they esteem free-market solutions they do not engage in the borderline market idolatry that characterizes the orientation of many libertarians and neoconservatives. They are keen to recognize the limitations of the market; as they would have the state curtail the market for vice. They promote various agrarian and distributist works.

Many American paleoconservatives see themselves as iconoclasts, breaking what they regard as liberal taboos. Three particular targets of their ire are the widely popular figures of Martin Luther King, Franklin Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Paleoconservatives are in enmity with the Marxist Frankfurt School as well. Some paleo-conservative figures, especially the late Samuel Francis, have had close ties to allegedly racist groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, American Renaissance and the journal The Occidental Quarterly.

Since the end of the Cold War, the rift within the conservative movement has deepened with the ascent of the neoconservatives, though the demarcation line is often indistinct and shifting. Harsh words have of late been exchanged between David Frum of National Review and Patrick Buchanan of The American Conservative. Frum charged that paleocons, in their sometimes harsh criticism of President George W. Bush and the war on terror, have become unpatriotic supporters of America's enemies and, at times, anti-Semitic. Buchanan and others have retorted that "neocons" influence the U.S. government towards pursuit of global empire and for the benefit of Israel and multi-national corporations with whom they have close ties; in doing so, paleoconservatives charged, they violate conservative principles of sovereignty while creating new enemies and fomenting Anti-Americanism abroad.

Paleoconservatives vis-à-vis neoconservatives

To put paleoconservativism in its proper perspective, one needs to understand its antagonism and differences with neoconservatism, as well as the Left. Historian Thomas Woods astutely elaborates on the divergence in the conservative movement, and the assent of the neoconservatives, and their distinguishing features from more traditional conservatives:

The conservative’s traditional sympathy for the American South and its people and heritage, evident in the works of such great American conservatives as Richard M. Weaver and Russell Kirk, began to disappear... [T]he neocons are heavily influenced by Woodrow Wilson, with perhaps a hint of Theodore Roosevelt...They believe in an aggressive U.S. presence practically everywhere, and in the spread of democracy around the world, by force if necessary....Neoconservatives tend to want more efficient government agencies; paleoconservatives want fewer government agencies. They generally admire President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his heavily interventionist New Deal policies. Neoconservatives have not exactly been known for their budget consciousness, and you won’t hear them talking about making any serious inroads into the federal apparatus.[1]

The phraseology "paleoconservative" ("old conservative") was a rejoinder issued in the 1980s to differentiate traditional conservatives from "neoconservatism". The rift is often traced back to a dispute over the director of the National Endowment for the Humanities by the incoming Reagan Administration. The preferred candidate was professor Mel Bradford and he was replaced after an effective media and lobbying effort (focusing on his dislike of Abraham Lincoln) by William Bennett. During that same time period, the neocon's intellectual godfather Irving Kristol had given the neoconservative movement a sense of self-consciousness with his book entitled Neoconservatism: Autobiography of an Idea. The trends preceding that pronounced schism go back as far as the 1950s, and the defection of former liberals, some ex-Troskyites ostensibly to the Right. These defectors gave rise to the neoconservative movement, but they articulated a vision much different from the old vanguard of conservatives. Neoconservatives were not opposed to the New Deal, but they thought LBJ's Great Society somehow went too far. Neoconservatives embrace an interventionist foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. They espouse especially strong support for Israel and believe the United States should ensure the security of the Jewish state. What made this movement so potent was the number of influential neoconservative intellectuals who attained positions of power in the federal government and in the mass-media. Now, many consider neoconservatives to be the conservative mainstream. This seems to be a strange turn for "conservatism" to take given that neoconservatives look to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as exemplars of ideal Presidents.

Not surprisingly, the paleoconservatives view neoconservatives — or those whom they identify as such — as interlopers. The paleo view of the mainstream conservative movement is that of a self interested movement tied to special interest groups, the gurus of globalization, the machinery of international finance and embroynic world government. Neocons are seen as lacking the self confidence to defend conservatism's old ideas.

Paleoconservatism and civil society

Paleoconservatives esteem the principles of subsidiarity and localism in recognizing that one must surely be an Ohioan, Texan or Virginian as they are an American. They embrace federalism within a broader framework of nationalism and are typically staunch supporters of states' rights. They tend to be critical of overreaching federal power usurping state and local authority. They are also much more critical of the welfare state than the neoconservatives tend to be.

Paleoconservatives on Economics

No issue divides paleos- more than trade policy. Many paleoconservatives are beholden to protectionist conceptions of trade policy, the so called Producerist orientation, and they see free trade and globalization as detriment to the nation's economic prosperity and sovereignty. Pat Buchanan, author of The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy and William R. Hawkins of U.S. Business and Industry Council Education Foundation are the perennial expositors of the nationalist economic creed in our time.

However, the southern conservatives and paleolibertarians are generally in favor of economic laissez-faire and free trade. They generally favor a bare minimum of trade barriers and tariffs. They may even concede America's economic ills, but they do not scapegoat foreign competition, and instead place culpability on bad fiscal, tax and monetary policy, as well as over-regulation by the government. This Tertium Quid' trade position also recognizes the value of free trade, economies of scale, comparative advantage, and specialization of labor. Nonetheless, its adherents concurrently reject the edifices of globalization such as the WTO, GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, and FTAA. Lew Rockwell surmises this position:

"NAFTA is imperialist. It preaches to other countries about what kinds of laws and regulations they should have-the social democratic mixed economy that is impoverishing us. NAFTA is, of course, not the free trade of Jefferson, Randolph, Taylor and Calhoun. It is trade for the few and not the many, for the particular interests and not the general interests."

Rep. Ron Paul reminds us that NAFTA is not free trade anyway, but managed trade by globalist plutocrats. Thus, both paleo- free traders and paleo- protectionists often recognize the sovereignty-eroding effects of globalization, and they all generally seem to be opposed to so called free trade treaties, the machinery of international finance, globalization, and world government.

Paleoconservatism's foreign policy concerns

In relations with other nations, paleoconservatives are more willing to question the logic of globalization, more critical of illegal immigration and tend to embrace a more isolationist foreign policy.

A big pillar of paleoconservatism is a foreign policy based upon non-interventionism or what is often pejoratively characterized as isolationism. However, paleoconservatives find support in the wisdom of the founding fathers and a subsequent generation of antebellum statesmen. George Washington had declared, "It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." John Quincy Adams avowed, "America does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

An important organization of the two decade between-wars era of the twenties and thirties was For America. It should be noted that Taft and the isolationists upheld the principle that politics stops at the water's edge and supported World War II once the US was involved. During the Cold War many paleoconservatives supported overseas committments as necessary to the defense of the United States against communist aggression. Many supported NATO when it was a defensive organization despite it being an "entangling alliance" but they summarily dropped their support when NATO was used as a mechanism for intervention in Yugoslavia where they believed US interests were either marginal or non-existent. Paleoconservatives often esteem their America First principles as being commensurate with those of the Founding Fathers as embodied in the Neutrality Act.

Paleoconservatism's immigration policy concerns

Where immigration allows foreigners into a nation, it then becomes a domestic policy concern. Cultural cohesiveness and some degree of cultural homogeneity are considered indispensable to paleos.

In the United Kingdom the late MP Enoch Powell expressed grave concern over the costs of integrating new immigrants into Britain. He voiced opposition to antidiscrimination laws which applied to private citizens. Powell's concern in the 1960s foreshadowed a deepening cultural crisis that threatens to unravel the cultural fabric of the West in the eyes of paleoconservatives. The core populace of United States, Canada, and Western European nations have become alienated by immigration policies that submerge them in a deluge of immigrants.

While the United States' motto E Pluribus Unum has been co-opted into a mantra for diversity and multiculturalism, the founding fathers often expressed a desire for cultural homogeneity; they saw it as a necessity, a sort of a cohesive glue that binds a federal republic together. In Federalist #2, John Jay opined, "Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs... This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties." Their homage to diversity was recognizing that natural regional cultures existed and more would would develop as the United States expanded.

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan's recent book The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization is the clarion statement of paleoconservative concern over the open borders immigration policy. Today, Westerners are criticized for being elitist and xenophobic, though paleos maintain that they simply want to keep their dominant cultures and traditions from denigrating into an amalgamated multicultural deluge, a veritable Tower of Babel in our time. Their sentiment may be encapsulated in Edmund Burke's adage, "People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors." The conservative would ask, if our ancestral homelands are no longer ours than what hopes have we to look to a future for posterity?

In California, much sentiment against immigration arose in reaction to the waves of illegal immigration during Central America since the 1960s; included in this group are individuals with Paleo tendencies, including former Congressmen William Dannemeyer and Bob Dornan. Texans too, are starting to feel the frustrations as local governments profess de facto allegiance to Mexico, raising the Mexican flag over their town halls, conducting the affairs of government in Spanish, and discriminating in government hiring by giving preference to those who speak Spanish or are bilingual and rejecting qualified anglophone whites.

With the rise of Muslim militancy, particularly after 9/11, and a Muslim populace agitated by an interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East, many paleos are concerned with the volume of Muslim immigrants that have come into Western nations, particularly in Europe. They see this not only as a demographic disaster in the making but a recipe for Balkanization, social convulsions, political violence and intensified terrorism by Islamists. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's controversial remarks find sympathy among paleos, in which he opined, "Muslim civilization is inferior to Europe and its history." Multiculturalism as they see it embodies the faulty premise of cultural relativism, that is all cultures being equal, they can likewise coexist in a harmonious hodgepodge. Paleos reject such multiculturalist premises as delusional and see a deeper cultural conflict emerging. In their eyes, the problems of Balkanization afflicting Yugoslavia in the 1990s will likely grip the West if it continues to embrace droves of immigrants, particularly Muslims. One-in-five people in France are Muslim immigrants or the children of recent immigrants, and mostly of North African origin. Germany with a dwindling birthrate is not projected to replenish its populace in the coming years, and the only proposals that the Left can come up with is to allow more immigrant workers from the east and Muslim countries.

Prominent paleoconservatives

Paleoconservative organizations

External links