Traditional Conservatism

[Hunter Wallace]

What is traditional conservatism?

[albion]

>>The term "paleoconservative" (sometimes shortened to paleo when the context is clear) refers to an American branch of conservative thought that stands against both the mainstream tradition of the National Review magazine and the neoconservatives. They trace themselves to the Old Right Republicans of the interwar period who successfully kept America out of the League of Nations and cut down non-European immigration in 1924, and opposed the New Deal.

>>Paleos tend to be more critical of federal power over state and local authority, more willing to question free trade, harshly critical of further immigration and to follow an isolationist foreign policy. They are also more critical of the welfare state than the neoconservatives tend to be.

>>The name "paleoconservative" differentiates itself from "neoconservatism". Where the neos were (Latin for) new the paleos were old. The paleoconservatives view the neoconservatives as interlopers. They furthermore tend to see the methods of the neo-conservatives as simply those of right wing Trotskyites as opposed to traditional conservatives. Paleo's view the mainstream conservatives, and especailly the neoconservative faction, as a betrayal of sacred principles and a denial of human nature.

http://www.oldright.com/index.php

[Hunter Wallace]

But why do the paleoconservatives call themselves traditional conservatives? Correct me if I am wrong here, but didn't the paleocon movement begin in the 1980s? If that is the case, then what is traditional about paleoconservatism?

I dug this up today. I just can't figure this out. Where do these people get off calling themselves the "Old Right" when the paleocon movement did not even exist until the 1980s? Even the neocons have been around longer than the paleocons.

"Paleoconservatism" is a phrase that came into circulation during the 1980s, perhaps as a rejoinder to the rise of neoconservative influence on the American Right. More importantly, it is mean to signify a brand of conservatism whose roots reach back to before the Cold War and even World War II. As such, paleoconservatives readily accept the much-used label "Old Right" so as to identify themselves in part with a conservativism that arose in opposition to the New Deal."

Joseph Scotchie, The Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999), p.1

[Sinclair]

If you go back far enough, conservatism was, in some ways, interventionist economically: It was the liberals who wanted freer markets.

[AntiYuppie]

Some have tried to frame the Civil War in terms of the struggle between the northern plutocracy and the Southern Aristocracy, i.e. a New World replay of the English Civil war conflict between "roundheads" and "Cavaliers." I never bought that comparison because it was the "roundhead" North that supported a protected mercantile economy while the "Cavalier" South favored free markets and free trade. There was no real conflict between feudalism and capitalism in the US, only between different capitalist factions from more or less the same social class. Most of the "aristocracy" of the South was grounded in affectations, not in any historical precedent.

Not only has there never been a "right wing" in the 18th century sense here in America, but there isn't one any longer in Europe. The real struggle on the right both here and in Europe will be whether rightist ideology will be grounded in nationalism (i.e. ethnic and racial concerns trumping economic ones) vs. whether we will continue to have a pseudo-right that caters to the interests of the international investor classes. At this point, the Republican party is of the latter variety, while the European "New Right" (e.g. LePen, Haider) is moving in the direction of an authentic, nationalist right.

Yesteryear's "throne and altar" conservatism is today's "blood and soil" nationalism. Yet yesterday's plutocratic internationalists in America still manage to style themselves as "the far right." This must be due to the fact that America never had "throne and altar" to begin with.

[Regime Criminal]

Originally Posted by AntiYuppie
Some have tried to frame the Civil War in terms of the struggle between the northern plutocracy and the Southern Aristocracy, i.e. a New World replay of the English Civil war conflict between "roundheads" and "Cavaliers." I never bought that comparison because it was the "roundhead" North that supported a protected mercantile economy while the "Cavalier" South favored free markets and free trade. There was no real conflict between feudalism and capitalism in the US, only between different capitalist factions from more or less the same social class. Most of the "aristocracy" of the South was grounded in affectations, not in any historical precedent.

Not only has there never been a "right wing" in the 18th century sense here in America, but there isn't one any longer in Europe. The real struggle on the right both here and in Europe will be whether rightist ideology will be grounded in nationalism (i.e. ethnic and racial concerns trumping economic ones) vs. whether we will continue to have a pseudo-right that caters to the interests of the international investor classes. At this point, the Republican party is of the latter variety, while the European "New Right" (e.g. LePen, Haider) is moving in the direction of an authentic, nationalist right.

Yesteryear's "throne and altar" conservatism is today's "blood and soil" nationalism. Yet yesterday's plutocratic internationalists in America still manage to style themselves as "the far right." This must be due to the fact that America never had "throne and altar" to begin with.


You make some interesting points here. America's error, in my opinion, was not so much the revolution itself, but rather its petulant separation from its particularistic roots. The American Revolution was never universalistic and it was this that distinguished it from the French Revolution. It was a very English affair and the war was conducted as between feuding brothers not enemies (Mel Gibson's fantasies notwithstanding). Indeed, even today, in some respects America is the most English of Britain's former colonies. 1776 and all that, has always in my mind been the second English Civil War, and as such it has infinitely more meaning than the plastic bombast attached to it by modern commercial anniversary-merchants.

The analogy does become stretched however, once we enter the American Civil War. I would agree with you that the supercial comparison between southern plantations and feudalism is flawed. Slaves were not integral to the feudal order, and serfdom involved a sense of obligation that is not present in slavery.

The question however, remains as to whether America's fatal flaw has been the absence of anchoring elements: a feudal or post-feudal aristocracy and an established church and whether such things were most present or likely to beome most present in the South rather than the North. There is something in this argument and to bring it back to modern nationalism, there is something, blood and soil, that harkens back to the agricultural order. The land must be at the heart of any stable European order, and equally any kind of nationalism must, to be consistent, stress the hereditary, so a hereditary link to the land that entails a political property right should surely be a good thing. And this is, in essence, feudalism (minus serfs). And it is this ballast that America, and sadly since the destruction of the House of Lords that Britain, lacks. A permanent, hereditary ruling class with a direct link to the land.

Now that altar has faded and throne is tarnished can one resurrect such an order? That is a very difficult question to answer.

[Regime Criminal]

Posted that mid way through by accident.

I suspect that the interesting thing about America is that as a universalistic experiment it has been an abject and grisly failure. However, as a particularistic attempt to entrench an English constitutional acquis, it has been an extraordinary success. America has succeeded in preserving English constitutional liberties better than England has.

[Hunter Wallace]

You make some interesting points here. America's error, in my opinion, was not so much the revolution itself, but rather its petulant separation from its particularistic roots. This only began to occur in the 1940s/1950s. See Kaufmann's The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America.

[otto_von_bismarck]

The American Revolution was actually much less ideological than it is popularly taken to be today. It was also heavily colored by American Protestantism at the time. The Founders saw themselves as "restoring" traditional Saxon liberties that had withered away in England since the Norman Conquest.

I thought it mainly had to do with taxes and the fact that the colonial elite( with the possible exception of Franklin) felt snubbed by the actual British Aristocracy( and the navigation acts were starting to be strictly enforced which roused Hancock and other shipping magnates against the Brits).

[Hunter Wallace]

Originally Posted by Regime Criminal
Arguably as the American Revolution was essentially a liberal (classical) revolution and the US constitution an English liberal document, then paleo-conservatives are really paleo-liberals.
The American Revolution was actually much less ideological than it is popularly taken to be today. It was also heavily colored by American Protestantism at the time. The Founders saw themselves as "restoring" traditional Saxon liberties that had withered away in England since the Norman Conquest.

[themistocles]

Well, I would agree....The American Revolution wasn't so much about creating something new as preserving old privileges for the colonists from creeping and previously unused authority from the crown. I guess, in a way, you might say it was a "conservative revolution", if there ever was such a thing.

[AntiYuppie]

Originally Posted by themistocles
Well, I would agree....The American Revolution wasn't so much about creating something new as preserving old privileges for the colonists from creeping and previously unused authority from the crown. I guess, in a way, you might say it was a "conservative revolution", if there ever was such a thing.


What you say is true of the revolutionary faction that gave rise to the Federalist wing - Washington, Adams, Hamilton, etc. They basically wanted British Constitutional monarchy without a monarch, whereby they would enjoy the same freedoms and sovereignty as those in the mother country.

On the other hand, the American Revolution also attracted men like Jefferson, Paine, and others who were true radicals who were staunchly anti-monarchist and wanted to establish not just a new nation but a new order. Recall that Jefferson and others in his faction were enthusiasts of the French Revolution, and in all likelihood saw the American Revolution in the same "class struggle" (aristocracy vs. middle class) terms.

[Il Ragno]

It is this ballast that America, and sadly since the destruction of the House of Lords that Britain, lacks. A permanent, hereditary ruling class with a direct link to the land.

And the propensity to put their money where their mouths are. During the two world wars, for instance, the casualty rates among the British elites (upper classes and aristocracy) were at par, percentagewise - even slightly ahead - of the casualty rates for the common citizenry. That sort of blood and soil nationalism has since become obsolete; or, rather, has morphed into your blood, my soil.

[AntiYuppie]

Originally Posted by il ragno
And the propensity to put their money where their mouths are. During the two world wars, for instance, the casualty rates among the British elites (upper classes and aristocracy) were at par, percentagewise - even slightly ahead - of the casualty rates for the common citizenry. That sort of blood and soil nationalism has since become obsolete; or, rather, has morphed into your blood, my soil.


Even during the war with Argentina over the Falklands, a member of the British Royal family (I forget whom) flew a helicopter as a missile decoy. I can't picture Jorge's half-mestizo playboy nephew George Prescott Bush, much less the progeny of a Kristol or Podhoretz, doing the same for their daddy's wars.

[Hunter Wallace]

Henry Cabot Lodge and his followers wanted to keep America out of the League of Nations precisely because he feared it would hinder American interventionism. The U.S. spent much of the early twentieth century attempting to extend its domination over Latin America and the Carribbean. The most notorious example of this was how we engineered the secession of Panama from Columbia.