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Paleoconservatism (sometimes shortened to paleo or paleocon when the context is clear) is a term for an anti-communist and anti-authoritarian[1] right wing movement that stresses tradition, civil society and classical federalism, along with familial, religious, regional, national and Western identity.[2] Chilton Williamson, Jr. describes paleoconservatism as "the expression of rootedness: a sense of place and of history, a sense of self derived from forebears, kin, and culture — an identity that is both collective and personal.”[3] Paleoconservativism is not expressed as an ideology and its adherents do not necessarily subscribe to any one party line.[4]
Paleoconservatives in the 21st century often focus on their points of disagreement with neoconservatives, especially on issues like immigration, affirmative action, U.S. funding of Israeli military actions, foreign wars, and welfare.[2] They also criticize social democracy, which some refer to as the therapeutic managerial state,[5] the welfare-warfare state[6] or polite totalitarianism.[7] They see themselves as the legitimate heir to the American conservative tradition.[8]
Paul Gottfried (and possibly A. F. Seabrook as well) is credited with coining the term in the 1980s.[9] He says the word originally referred to various Americans, such as traditionalist Catholics and agrarian Southerners, who turned to anticommunism during the Cold War.[10] They then began referring to the conservative opposition as neoconservatism.[citation needed]
Paleoconservative thought incubated within the pages of the Rockford Institute's Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.[11] Patrick Buchanan was heavily influenced by its articles[10] and helped create another paleocon publication, The American Conservative.[12] Its concerns overlap those of the Old Right that opposed the U.S. New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s,[13] as well as the American social conservatism of the late 20th century expressed, for example, in the book Single Issues by Joseph Sobran.
[ Core beliefs
[ Paleo and conservative
The prefix paleo derives from the Greek root palaeo- meaning "ancient" or "old." It is somewhat tongue-in-cheek — and refers to the paleocon's claim to represent a more historic, authentic conservative tradition than that found in neoconservative. Adherents of paleoconservatism often describe themselves simply as "paleo-." Rich Lowry of National Review claims the prefix “is designed to obscure the fact that it is a recent ideological creation of post-Cold War politics.”[14]
The paleoconervatives use the suffix conservative somewhat differently from some American opponents of Leftism. It refers specifically to their stated desire to restore the culture and heritage of Christendom. Paleocons reject attempts by Rush Limbaugh and others to graft short-term policy goals — such as school choice, enterprise zones, and faith-based initiatives — into the core of conservatism.[15]
Moreover, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming and some other paleocons de-emphasized the "conservative" part of the "paleoconservative" label, saying that they do not want the status quo preserved.[16][17] Fleming and Paul Gottfried called such thinking "stupid tenacity" and described it as "a series of trenches dug in defense of last year's revolution."[18] Francis defined authentic conservatism as “the survival and enhancement of a particular people and its institutionalized cultural expressions.”[19] He said of the paleoconservative movement:
What paleoconservatism tries to tell Americans is that the dominant forces in their society are no longer committed to conserving the traditions, institutions, and values that created and formed it, and, therefore, that those who are really conservative in any serious sense and wish to live under those traditions, institutions, and values need to oppose the dominant forces and form new ones.[20]
The earliest mention of the word paleoconservative listed in Nexis is a use in the October 20, 1984, issue of The Nation, referring to academic economists who allegedly work to redefine poverty.[21] The American Heritage Dictionary (fourth edition) lists a generic, informal use of the term, meaning "extremely or stubbornly conservative in political matters." Outside of the United States, the word is sometimes spelled palaeoconservative.[22]
[ The conservative heritage
Many paleoconservatives identify themselves as "classical conservatives" and trace their philosophy to the Old Right Republicans of the interwar period[23] which helped keep the U.S. out of the League of Nations, reduce immigration with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, and oppose Franklin Roosevelt. They often look back even further, to Edmund Burke, as well as the American anti-federalist movement that stretched from the days of Thomas Jefferson to John C. Calhoun.[24]
Paleoconservatives question the supposition that European culture and mores can ever be transplanted or even forced upon non-Western cultures, due to separate cultural heritages.[25] As a result, paleocons are most distinctive in their emphatic opposition to open immigration by non-Europeans, and their general disapproval of U.S. intervention overseas for the purposes of exporting democracy. They are also strongly critical of American neoconservative and their sympathizers in print media, talk radio and cable TV news.[26] Paleocons often say they are not conservatives in the sense that they necessarily wish to preserve existing institutions or seek merely to slow the growth of liberalism.[27] They do not wish to be closely identified with the U.S. Republican Party.[26] Rather, they seek the renewal of "small-r" republican society in the context of the Western heritage, customs and civilization.[28] Joseph Scotchie wrote.
Republics mind their own business. Their governments have very limited powers, and their people are too busy practicing self-government to worry about problems in other countries. Empires not only bully smaller, defenseless nations, they also can’t leave their own, hapless subjects alone. . . Empires and small government aren’t compatible, either.[29]
By contrast, paleocons see neoconservatives as empire-builders and themselves as defenders of the republic, pointing to Rome as an example of how an ongoing campaign of military expansionism can destroy a republic.[30]
On some issues, many paleocons are hard to distinguish from others on the conservative spectrum. For example, they tend to oppose abortion on demand[31] and gay marriage,[32][33] while supporting capital punishment,[34] handgun ownership[35] and an original intent reading of the U.S. Constitution.[36] On the other hand, paleocons are often more sympathetic to environmental protection,[37] animal welfare,[38] and anti-consumerism[39] than others on the American Right.
[ A better guide than reason
Paleoconservatives argue that since human nature is limited and finite, any attempt to create a man-made utopia is headed for disaster and potential carnage. They also see social democracy, ideology, and managerial society as malevolent attempts to remake humanity.[citation needed] Instead, they lean toward tradition, family, customs, religious institutions and classical learning to provide wisdom and guidance.[40]
Thomas Fleming stated this opposition to abstract ideals in a way that critic David Brooks called a "startling crescendo":
Among the most dangerous of our theoretical illusions are the political fantasies that can be summed up in words like democracy; equality, and natural rights; the principle of one man, one vote and the American tradition of self-government. No one who lives in the world with his eyes open can actually believe in any of this.[41]
Historian W. Wesley McDonald explains the opposition to ideology this way:
In a humane social order, a community of spirit is fostered in which generations are bound together. According to [Russell] Kirk, this link is achieved through moral and social norms that transcend the particularities of time and place and, because they form the basis of genuine civilized existence, can only be neglected at great peril. These norms, reflected in religious dogmas, traditions, humane letters, social habit and custom, and prescriptive institutions, create the sources of the true community that is the final end of politics.[42]
Along these lines, Joseph Sobran, in his "Pensees", argues that Western civilization relies on civility at the center of the society:
Civility is the relationship among citizens in a republic. It corresponds to the condition we call "freedom", which is not just an absence of restraint or coercion, but the security of living under commonly recognized rules of conduct. Not all these rules are enforced by the state; legal institutions of civility depend on the ethical substratum and collapse when it is absent. And in fact the colloquial sense of civility as good manners is relevant to its political meaning: citizens typically deal with each other by consent, and they have to say "please" and "thank you" to each other.[43]
Paleocons often say that tradition is a better guide than reason. For example, Mel Bradford wrote that certain questions are settled before any serious deliberation concerning a preferred course of conduct may begin. This ethic is based in a "culture of families, linked by friendship, common enemies, and common projects." So a good conservative keeps "a clear sense of what Southern grandmothers have always meant in admonishing children, we don't do that."[44]
Thomas Fleming calls tradition "a body of wisdom and truth and a set of attitudes and behavior handed down from one generation to another. It is our parents' respect for their grandfathers that we reflect when we refuse to think ourselves wiser than our ancestors and do not presume to condemn their shortcomings." By following tradition, Joseph Sobran said that society can maintain continuity with the past, through words, rituals, records, commemorations, and laws:
There is no question of "resisting change." The only question is what can and should be salvaged from "devouring time." Conservation is a labor, not indolence, and it takes discrimination to identify and save a few strands of tradition in the incessant flow of mutability. In fact conservation is so hard that it could never be achieved by sheer conscious effort. Most of it has to be done by habit, as when we speak in such a way as to make ourselves understood by others without their having to consult a dictionary, and thereby give a little permanence to the kind of tradition that is a language.[43]
Furthermore, James Kalb argues that tradition succeeds where ideology fails because it includes habits and attitudes about things that are hard to articulate rationally. Many aspects of social life resist clear definition, so technocratic approaches to social policy deserve suspicion:
Our knowledge is partial and attained with difficulty. The effects of political proposals are difficult to predict and as the proposals become more ambitious their effects become incalculable. We can't evaluate political ideas without accepting far more beliefs, presumptions and attitudes than we could possibly judge critically.[45]
[ Against abstraction
Many paleocons also say that Westerners have lost touch with their classical and European heritage, to the point that they are in danger of losing their civilization.[46] Robert S. Griffin notes that paleocons fear the United States becoming a "secularized, homogenized, de-Europeanized, pacified, deluded, manipulated, lowest-common-denominator-leveled, popular-culture-dopified country"[47]
The decadence of a civilization by loss of faith and vigour can be observed more than once in history. What is extraordinary about the American situation is the stupidity. The Romans, such is my impression, did not become stupid and incompetent with their decadence. Americans have not lost faith in their cultural inheritance—they have been entirely separated from it. How this happened is one of the few topics still worth exploring in this Twilight.[48]
Paleocons tend to dislike abstract principles presented without connection to concrete roots, like religion, heritage or traditional institutions. This distaste for universalism includes the doctrinal conclusions by socialists, neo-Thomists and Straussians. For example, Mel Bradford wrote in "A Better Guide Than Reason" (citing Michael Oakeshott) that:
The only freedom which can last is a freedom embodied somewhere, rooted in a history, located in space, sanctioned by genealogy, and blessed by a religious establishment. The only equality which abstract rights, insisted upon outside the context of politics, are likely to provide is the equality of universal slavery. It is a lesson which Western man is only now beginning to learn.[49]
Some paleocons also profess a conservative value-centered historicism, which Gottfried defines as “the belief that historical circumstances set values.” This is distinguished from nihilism, postmodernism and moral relativism. Samuel Francis argued that this position is a “Burkean appeal to tradition.”[50] For example, Edmund Burke wrote in his "Reflections on the Revolution in France."
I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.[51]
Claes Ryn says that life has “an enduring purpose, but one that manifests itself differently as individuals and circumstances are different.”[52] He writes:
For the conservative, the universal imperative that binds human beings does not announce its purpose in simple, declaratory statements. How, then, does one discern its demands? Sometimes only with difficulty. Only through effort can the good or true or beautiful be discovered, and they must be realized differently in different historical circumstances. The same universal values have diverse manifestations. Some of the concrete instantiations of universality take us by surprise. Because there is no simple roadmap to good, human beings need freedom and imagination to find it. Universality has nothing to do with uniformity.[53]
[ Federalism
Federalism is another key aspect of paleoconservatism, which they use as an antitype to the managerial state. The paleocon flavor urges honoring the principle of subsidiarity, that is, decentralism, local rule, private property and minimal bureaucracy.[54] In an American context, this view is called anti-federalism and paleocons often look to John Calhoun for inspiration.[55]
As to the role of statecraft in society, Thomas Fleming says it should not be confused with soulcraft. He gives his summary of the paleocon position:
Our basic position on the state has always been twofold: 1) a recognition that man is a social and political animal who cannot be treated as an "individual" without doing damage to human nature. In this sense libertarian theory is as wrong and as potentially harmful as communism. The commonwealth is therefore a natural and necessary expression of human nature that provides for the fulfillment of human needs, and 2) the modern state is a cancerous form of polity that has metastasized and poisoned the natural institutions from which the state derives all legitimacy—family, church, corporation (in the broadest sense), and neighborhood. Thus, it is almost always a mistake to try to use the modern state to accomplish moral or social ends.[56]
Russell Kirk, for example, argued that most government tasks should be performed at the local or state level. This is intended to ward off centralization and protect community sentiment by putting the decision-making power closer to the populace. He rooted this in the Christian notion of original sin; since humanity is flawed, society should not put too much power in a few hands. Gerald J. Russello concluded that this involved “a different way of thinking about government, one based on an understanding of political society as beginning in place and sentiment, which in turn supports written laws.”[57]
This federalism extends to culture too. In general, this means that different regional groups should be able to maintain their own distinct identity. For example, Thomas Fleming and Michael Hill argue that the American South and every other region have the right to “preserve their authentic cultural traditions and demand the same respect from others.” In their Southern context they call on citizens to “take control of their own governments, their own institutions, their own culture, their own communities and their own lives” and “wean themselves from dependence on federal largesse.” They say that:
A concern for states' rights, local self-government and regional identity used to be taken for granted everywhere in America. But the United States is no longer, as it once was, a federal union of diverse states and regions. National uniformity is being imposed by the political class that runs Washington, the economic class that owns Wall Street and the cultural class in charge of Hollywood and the Ivy League.[58]
In a similar fashion, Pat Buchanan argued during the 1996 campaign that the social welfare should be left to the control of individual states. He also called for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education and handing decision-making over to parents, teachers and districts. Controversies such as evolution, busing and curriculum standards would be settled on a local basis.[59]
In addition, he opposed a 1998 Puerto Rican statehood plan on the grounds that the island would be ripped from its cultural and linguistic roots: "Let Puerto Rico remain Puerto Rico, and let the United States remain the United States and not try to absorb, assimilate and Americanize a people whose hearts will forever belong to that island."[60]
[ Family
[ A universal rule
Paleocons often argue that modern managerial society is a threat to stable families. Allan C. Carlson, former president of the Rockford Institute, argues that
The family is the natural and fundamental social unit, inscribed in our nature as human beings, rooted in marriage, rooted in the commitment to bring new life into the world, and rooted in a deep respect for both ancestors and posterity.[61]
He calls this a universal rule of human nature, true for Westerners and non-Westerners alike. He also argues that happiness "comes through natural family bonds" and that the "the future of any nation shall be by way of the family."[62] He defines family as "a man and a woman living in a socially sanctioned bond called marriage for the purposes of propagating and rearing children, sharing intimacy and resources, and conserving lineage, property, and tradition."[63]
To be human is to be familial. Any significant departure from the family rooted in stable marriage, the welcoming of children, and respect for ancestors and posterity—any deviation from this social structure makes us in a way less “human”: that is, I think it fair to say, the true message of modern science.[61]
Joseph Sobran picks up this same theme, saying that heterosexual marriage is hard-coded into human nature:
[Even] the Pope can’t change the nature of marriage. It existed, by necessity of human nature, long before Jesus or even Abraham... This has nothing to do with mere disapproval of sodomy. Even societies that were indifferent to sodomy saw no reason to treat same-sex domestic partnerships as marriages. Why not? Because such unions don’t produce children.... To put it as unromantically as possible, people who have children should be stuck with each other, sharing the responsibility.[64]
Paleocons also question the validity of gender feminism in similar ways, some questioning feminism in both its radical and moderate forms. They say that the push for total gender equality dehumanizes both men and women, damaging the nuclear family and sacralizing abortion. Certain attitudes toward feminism also create room for the managerial state to try engineering sexual equality. Gottfried described this position, which was influenced by scholar Allan Carlson, thus:
The change of women’s role, from being primarily mothers to self-defined professionals, has been a social disaster that continues to take its toll on the family. Rather than being the culminating point of Western Christian gentility, the movement of women into commerce and politics may be seen as exactly the opposite, the descent by increasingly disconnected individuals into social chaos.[65]
[ The "post-family order"
Allan C. Carlson says that we live in a “post-family order,” in which elites no longer accept the centrality of family life.[66][67] In response, he calls for a pro-active social conservatism that seeks “real alternatives to the centralized ‘corporate state’ that are compatible with liberty and family life." He argues that there is a permanent tension between the family and “individualist, industrialized society.”[68] He says the modern “abstract state” too often sees the family as “its principal rival” and tries to suppress it. It can also hurt family living by the unintended consequences of public policy with good intentions.[68] He also chides U.S. Republicans “for consistently favoring Wall Street over Main Street.”[69]
As an alternative to the "abstract state", Carlson argues the state must recognize that men and women "are different in reproductive, economic, and social functions", even though they share political and property rights.[63] He says that churches and other religious bodies must step in and help rebuild “family-centered communities.”[68] As for common people, he says,
Men and women are both called home to rebuild families with an inner sanctity, to relearn the authentic meanings of the ancient words husbandry and housewifery, and to exercise the natural family functions of education, the care of the weak, charity, and a common economic life.[68]
Carlson argues that the family's greatest challenge in the early 21st century comes from what he calls "“soft totalitarianisms", which are "packaged around a militant secular individualism, but still seeking to build a marriage-free, post-family order."[70] This includes same-sex marriage, the Left's association of family values with fascism, abortion,[71] and "equity feminism."[63] Samuel Francis uses similar ideas to argue that society should regulate sexual behavior, specifically laws against sodomy and gays in the military.[72]
[ Paleoconservative intellectuals
[ The coalition
Paleoconservatives come from all walks of life, including Evangelical Christians, Calvinists, Traditionalist Catholics, monarchists, libertarian individualists, Midwestern agrarians, Reagan Democrats, and Southern conservatives. Other contemporary luminaries include Donald Livingston, a Professor of Philosophy at Emory and corresponding editor for Chronicles;[73] Paul Craig Roberts, an attorney and former Reagan administration Treasury official; commentator Joseph Sobran, a columnist and contributing editor for Chronicles;[73] novelist and essayist Chilton Williamson, senior editor for books at Chronicles;[73] classicist Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles;[74] and historian Clyde N. Wilson, long-time contributing editor for Chronicles.[73] Another prominent paleoconservative, Theodore Pappas,[75] is the current executive editor of Encyclopædia Britannica.[76]
The movement combines disparate people and ideas that might seem incompatible in another context.[77] Such diversity of thought echoes the paleo opposition to ideology and political rationalism, reflecting the influence of thinkers like Russell Kirk[78] and Michael Oakeshott.[79]
In addition, while paleoconservatism is not a doctrinal movement, supporters typically sympathize with the Christian Right's attacks on moral relativism, big government and secular humanism, even as they complain that the movement is obsessed with the Middle East and the Republican Party's short-term goals. Pat Buchanan argues that a good politician must "defend the moral order rooted in the Old and New Testament and Natural Law" — and that "the deepest problems in our society are not economic or political, but moral.[80] On the other hand, Samuel Francis complained that the "Religious Right" focuses on certain social issues and neglects other civilizational crises.[81]
[ The Kirkian legacy
Russell Kirk is a key figure, in that several of his books present an outline of a pervasive Anglo-American conservative tradition that exists despite many other distinctions. His own career stretched long enough to for him to defend Robert Taft in the 1950s, write for National Review during the Cold War, criticize neoconservatism in the 1980s, and give speeches supporting Buchanan in 1992. One neoconservative writer, Dan Himmelfarb, even refers to Kirk's The Conservative Mind as "the seminal work of paleoconservatism", even though it was first published in 1953.[82]
Kirk developed six "canons" of conservatism. Gerald J. Russello described them thus:
- a belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
- an affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
- a conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural distinctions;"
- a belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
- a faith in custom, convention and prescription, and
- a recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which is a respect for the political value of prudence.[83]
In addition, Kirk said Christianity and Western Civilization are “unimaginable apart from one another.”[47] He said that "all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief."[84]
Kirk called libertarians "chirping sectaries", quoting T. S. Eliot, and said that they and conservatives have nothing in common. He called the movement "an ideological clique forever splitting into sects still smaller and odder, but rarely conjugating." He said a line of division exists between believers in "some sort of transcendent moral order" and "utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct." He put libertarians in the latter category.[85]
Kirk also popularized the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke as the prototypical conservative — and many paleocons consider him a hallowed ancestor.[86] For them, he represents a vital link between the American right and the greater tradition of British customs and common law.[87] As such, his ideas are a touchstone for a conservatism that respects tradition, while rejecting authoritarianism.
[ Precursors of paleo
In the United States, the Southern Agrarians,[88] John T. Flynn,[89] Albert Jay Nock,[90] Garet Garrett,[91] Robert R. McCormick,[92] Felix Morley,[93], and Richard M. Weaver among others, articulated positions that have proved influential among contemporary paleoconservatives. Some paleocons enthusiastically embrace the decentralizing tenets of the Anti-Federalists,[94] such as John Dickinson[95] and George Mason.[96] Neoconservative critic David Brooks lists William Jennings Bryan, T. S. Eliot, Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, and Walker Percy as major paleo influences.[41] The German-born Johannes Althusius and his tract Politica, with its core emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity, has proven influential as well.
Paul Gottfried once noted an "occasional paleo association with over-the-top Catholicism."[97] In fact, counter-revolutionary (Roman Catholic) European precursors to the paleoconservatives include Joseph de Maistre, Charles Maurras, Donoso Cortes, Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and Pope Pius IX, though they tend to carry influence limited to the Roman Catholic traditionalist subset of paleoconservatism. G. K. Chesterton[98] and Hillaire Belloc[99] are also popular Catholic forebears of paleo thought.[100] As for Chesteron and Belloc, Joseph Sobran explained their relevance:
This new, paganized Western society under the comprehensive state would have come as much less of a surprise to us if we’d paid more attention to the two great English Catholic writers of the pre-Bolshevik period.... In 1912, Belloc predicted the rise of a new form of tyranny, which he called “the Servile State,” neither capitalist nor socialist, in which one part of the population would be forced to support the other. He was not always accurate in detail, but he was right in principle. He saw that thee cellular structure of Christian society
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