Paleoconservatism

From RationalWiki
(Redirected from Paleocon)
Jump to: navigation, search

Paleoconservative is a neologism created by those following within the movement to distinguish their so-called "traditional" conservative values from the neoconservative ones. A strong dose of religious conservatism (including homophobia), nationalism, isolationism, and economic protectionism comprises its ideological content. Most paleoconservatives are against immigration, modern economic theory, and any intervention by the US anywhere, and have little regard for any benefits of an egalitarian society. Their economic views are more likely to tend toward distributism and producerism than modern capitalism, although there is a contingent of ultra-capitalist Austrian schoolers as well. They claim to stress rigid "traditionalism," a sense of self gained from understanding their personal and cultural heritage, and being "deeply rooted" in history and place. However, their definition of that history is a bit off.

The most notable living paleoconservative is Patrick Buchanan. The second is Phyllis Schlafly.

[edit] The Old Right

Paleoconservatism claims its roots in the "Old Right", a loose grouping of people, many of them former liberals, who emerged during the Great Depression and World War II as opponents of Franklin D. Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policy. As the Cold War got underway after WWII, these people remained isolationist and opposed the Cold War, grouping post-war foreign and domestic policy together as two sides of the same coin, the "welfare-warfare state."

Early examples include journalists John T. Flynn, Garet Garrett, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Albert Jay Nock, revisionist historians Harry Elmer Barnes (one of the first major Holocaust deniers) and George Morgenstern (who claimed that FDR had dragged America into WWII by deliberately goading the Japanese to attack), libertarian Murray Rothbard, and U.S. Senator Robert Taft. With militant anti-communism in vogue, they found themselves isolated from the conservative movement and shut out from outlets like William F. Buckley's National Review, but continued as an outside tendency through such groups as Leonard Read's Foundation for Economic Education and an emerging Austrian school of economics led by Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt, who later became libertarian icons. It was not until the fall of the Berlin Wall that isolationism re-emerged on the right (outside of the libertarians, who had become a distinct movement from conservatism), led by people like Pat Buchanan who had been interventionist during the Cold War.

However, the economic laissez-faire of the Old Right is at odds with the protectionism and anti-immigration views espoused by modern paleoconservatives, not to mention the religious conservatism of paleocons which was not a significant factor in the Old Right. More likely influences on modern paleocons include Cold War-era groups like the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby. The JBS and Liberty Lobby in particular espoused all the elements present in today's paleoconservatism (conspiracism, religious conservatism, isolationism, etc.)

[edit] See also

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support