Responding to My Respondents
My last full-length essay on Taki evoked so many thoughtful comments, including essays by Daniel Larison and Richard Spencer (and a long opinion piece by Gerald Russello on the American Conservative website) that I am producing this detailed clarification. The critical thrust of the comments received was more or less the following: First of all, I have overstated the difference between the paleoconservatives and the younger generation of those who are attacking the neoconservatives from the right. Both groups have said pretty much the same things about the evils of the welfare state, the folly of basing a foreign policy on Wilsonian rhetoric, and the leftist origins and cosmology of the neoconservative rulers of the “conservative movement.” There is no significant distinction to be drawn among right-wingers based on generational differences. Where they differ, according to Russello, is that paleos show a deeper knowledge of philosophy and history than those who are coming after them. That difference indicates a greater intellectual reach on the part of the paleos, who have managed to be more than “journalists and activists.”
While my respondents may not be aware of this fact, in 1986 Heritage Foundation’s Policy Review published a commissioned article from me on prominent second-generation paleoconservatives. Almost all of those qualities I now associate with the post-paleo Right are those that I then ascribed to the paleos, who were then mostly in their forties. But my judgments about how paleoconservatism would develop did not turn out to be accurate; one overriding reason for this miscalculation is that the times did not favor our side. Without eutuxia or Fortuna in one’s camp, and particularly in the face of a grim, powerful enemy, a rightwing political movement is not likely to go anywhere in our age and society.
What separates the two rightist groups I discuss is more than a disparity in age or the whiteness of the hair of the older cohort. The paleos are for the most part rooted in the worldview and mentality of the postwar conservative movement, and except for their temporary alliances with the antiwar, libertarian maverick Murray Rothbard, they typically viewed the conservative movement as something that could be salvaged. The Cold War and the Republican Party had a formative influence on the paleoconservative mind. The predictability with which Pat Buchanan has always found a way of rallying at the eleventh hour to Republican presidential candidates, including W, and the praise that Pat, Paul Craig Roberts, Charley Reese, and other paleos of their generation lavish on Reagan and other Republican presidents reveals their political points of reference. My book on the conservative movement has not elicited any comment from this generation of paleoconservatives but it has received attention from the postpaleos. The reason may be that my attacks are aimed at the entire postwar conservative movement. Unlike my earlier treatments of the subject, my new book is not carefully confined to a few neoconservative targets. The postpaleos have no concern about discussing a work that is critical of a movement and a political party that they consider to be corrupt and archaic.
Postpaleos are also less inhibited about discussing topics which for the paleos have been clearly off the table since the death of Sam Francis, e.g., cognitive disparities among the races, the merit of causing the GOP to lose badly to its more frankly leftist opposition as a precondition for a realignment on the right, and various Nietzschean critiques of Christianity. Although such openness to positions that would have offended the American conservative movement twenty five years ago is not uniformly characteristic of all postpaleos, what is typical is their distance from the mindset of a movement to which they never belonged. In some ways they are also less bourgeois and more identifiably yuppie than the group they are destined to replace. But they are also more obviously aligned to an American Right that existed before the postwar conservative movement came along.
Note I am not providing a description that necessarily fits my tastes. Generationally I feel more aligned with the paleos, who by now may consider me a nuisance, than with those who are taking their place. I also share Gerald Russello’s preference for theorists over activists but here some qualifications may be in order. One, there is no indication that postpaleos do not think about their historical condition or that they have read less extensively than the founding generation of the postwar conservative movement. Nor are the young contributors to this site more militant activists than those who founded National Review in 1955. They are simply more alienated than those who preceded them from the “conservative movement” and its left-liberal support system. Two, what is essential to any political movement is activism. The problem with the kind of activism that those of my generation criticized was its mindless support of the GOP and its kowtowing to neoconservative foundation heads. If our side is to go anywhere, we will need pushy activists of our own. Otherwise we can resign ourselves to meeting in broom closets with shrinking dimensions. The reason Jonah Goldberg now lives on the Glenn Beck show, while its host has not shown any interest in me or the brilliant Mr. Russello is that Mr. Goldberg has successful activists behind him. One can turn up one’s nose at the publicity Goldberg bathes in, but the alternative is not to be widely noticed.
Finally, allow me to touch on the delicate question of religious controversy. While the Protestant Reformation contributed socially and economically to the early waves of European modernization, just as the Catholic world did in physics and cosmology, neither side in the religious schism of the sixteenth century contributed to our present problems in the contemporary West. Moreover, the idea that Catholics have somehow resisted current leftist trends more effectively than Protestants is palpably false. In the English speaking world, Catholics have positioned themselves for the most part on the political and social left; and such traditionally Catholic countries as Spain and Ireland are at least as disintegrated as their Protestant neighbors. The fact that Holland now has a Catholic majority has not resulted in that country moving toward the social or cultural right. Although there are Catholic exceptions to the rule, particularly in Eastern Europe, one finds the same kinds of exceptions in Protestant countries that have been relatively untouched by the acids of late modernity. While the Flemish Vlaams Belang is largely Catholic, the Swiss conservatives led by Christoph Blocher are overwhelmingly Calvinist. Neither group of successful European anti-multiculturalists, however, is behaving like the anti-Catholic ranter James Hagee or like the more zealous anti-Protestants I have encountered on the American right. European rightwing populists of all denominations show solidarity in defending their common civilization. The last thing the Right needs at this point is a return to the confessional strife of the sixteenth century.
I keep thinking in this matter about one particularly puzzling statement that I heard from a recent Catholic convert who told me that US would have been a “great country if only it were Catholic.” My thought when I heard this is that my interlocutor had not been looking at the world for a very long time. Why does his supposed Catholic asset not apply to our Northern neighbor Quebec, a onetime agrarian region that now wallows in state-enforced, anti-Christian PC? Quebec’s Catholic history, overwhelmingly Catholic population, and Bourbon fleur-de-lis flag have done nothing to prevent its descent into multicultural darkness. Indeed Quebec managed to jettison its inherited political and cultural character in less than two generations. It went through the same flip-flop as onetime Calvinist Holland did in the same span of time. It is therefore unlikely that had the US in 1790 been a Catholic country, it would have avoided the cultural depredations that ravaged the second half of the twentieth century—or that its Catholic citizens would have been any less further on the left than many of them are at this time.
As for the neopagan critics of all Christians on the right, I am astounded that such intellectuals think they have any workable solution to what ails our civilization. These critics usually propose a greatly sanitized, highly selective version of what the ancients actually believed; or else they act as if we can get people who have ceased believing in the biblical deity to build their lives around Wotan, Jupiter, or some other pre-Christian god. As Carl Schmitt correctly noted, “historical truths are true only once.” Lapsed Christians are no more likely to embrace Graeco-Roman or Germanic deities than they are to bury deceased relatives in Egyptian pyramids. Although of course there are eccentric or bookish exceptions, often living in their widowed mothers’ basements, I am speaking about the rule and not the isolated deviations from it.
Comments
Hear, hear! Of course, Paul’s essay will infuriate uneducated bloggers who blame human rights tribunals, anti-hate speech laws, and 1st Amendment set-asides on the Reformation. Perhaps they too live in the basement of their widowed mother’s house (that’s a great line!)
Regarding Quebec, I offer an addendum: the Canadian Right has often fantasized about les Quebecois being the last defenders of conservatism in the Great White North. Yet Quebec is the most left-wing province in Canada, not because of bad old English Protestantism (which the Quebecois despise), but due to the receptivity of millions of young Catholics to radical leftist ideas usually imported from the US. Duplessis must be spinning in his grave.
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“Although of course there are eccentric or bookish exceptions, often living in their widowed mothers’ basements”
Classic.
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If I may paraphrase the “more Catholic than the Pope” expression:
I get the impression that part of the reason for the rapid liberalization of the Catholic Church in America has been the historical desire among many American Catholics to prove that they are more American than Honest Abe.
That is, in their desire to allay nativist suspicion that Catholics were aliens and a 5th column for Rome, early Catholic bishops pushed their flocks into embracing the cult of Americanism.
The cult having split into Left and Right wings, one now finds liberal Catholics among the most ardent voices of the Left, while one also finds them among the most ardently pro-state capitalist & pro-war voices on the Right.
Left Catholics are always afraid of being denunciation from their fellow-Democrats for being closet-reactionary papist oppressors of women & homosexuals… while Right Catholics react to the leftist image that the Church has in the Heartland, living in constant fear of being denounced as namby-pamby Ted Kennedy types with socialist or pacifist leanings.
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1. A “conservative” movement that opposes the Christian Faith is simply not conservative, and doesn’t belong on a authentically Real Conservative website.
Any political movement that becomes the “useful idiot” of and for another—the Theocons for the Hamiltonian/Lincolnian Whigs ("Neocons"), The Social Democrats and Greens for the Cultural Marxists, Catholics and Royalists for the Clerical Fascists, and the Paleos for the Browns—is a movement brain dead and unworthy of serious consideration.
2. To say that someone, some country, or some religion is Left or Right without first defining what Left and Right supposedly mean is at best to speak vapidly. I have said many times “Left/Right” are not only meaningless distinctions but distinctions that obscure reality. Political ideology looks like a Chinese Checkers board, not a spectrum going from left to right. Or tell me whether the following are “Left” or “Right”:
-- Lew Rockwell
-- Hans-Herman Hoppe
-- Wilhelm Röpke
-- Distributionists
-- Hannah Arendt
-- Leo Strauss
-- Allan Bloom
-- the Neoconservatives
-- ecologists
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
-- Leo XIII
-- Pius XI
These were neither, and to put them on the “Left” or “Right” ignores the “deep structure” of their thought, thought consciously developed against the Left/Right polarity.
What is more, if Left means Marxism and Right means fascism, then (1) we Real Conservatives aren’t Left or Right either; and (2) the Left is looking pretty Right: Leonard Jeffries and Frances Cress Welsing are racialists, and assorted Black Nationalists and La Raza are simply (so to speak) brothers under the skin to “Right Wing” nationalists. And the Right looks Lefty: e.g. the socialism of Benito and ‘Dolf; the anti-capitalist views of own Joe Populist; and the “high tariffs to save jobs” (and thus anti-free market) columnists on this website. Ditto the same columnists lauding Dishonest Abe and his work—really a Neocon view.
This objection (#2) aside, Paul Gottfried writes wisdom today.
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Paul,
You wrote:
“While my respondents may not be aware of this fact, in 1986 Heritage Foundation’s Policy Review published a commissioned article from me on prominent second-generation paleoconservatives”
My question is this: Does this article exist on the internet? Having a link to it, so one can read the words you 22 years ago would be beneficial, in light of this new - and highly enjoyable article.
This sight continues to exceed my expectations. Keep up the great work gentlemen.
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I can’t recommend Paul Gottfried’s writings strongly enough. He is probably the premier paleocon intellectual in America and he is more than willing to look at the tough questions - and even refers his readers to writers that others might instinctively shy away from.
I agree with all of his remarks regarding the “post-paleos” and I guess I find a great deal of personal resonance in what he says about them. I have no interest in propping up the GOP and I find the fondness for Reagan among those who I usually see as allies of mine on the right (Pat, Reese, etc.) to be both vexing and bewildering. I also feel a closer connection to the pre-WWII conservatives figures than I do with most of the post-war right.
I do think that Prof. Gottfried is selling the European New Right short. While their numbers may be small, are the current paleo numbers in the USA much bigger? Isn’t this a case of people living in glass houses throwing stones? Moreover, you can be critical of Christianity and still not lean towards a gooey and silly paganism. Is there a place for religious skeptics in the conservative movement? There certainly was in the pre-war period.
Despite their small numbers, I am not unimpressed with Benoist and others in the ENR. Their characterization here on Taki seems mostly shallow, uninformed, and far too hasty.
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I commend Paul for selling the ENR short. They deserve it. Anyone who joins with Benoist in his sophomoric attack on Christianity is a useful idiot (pace Lenin) for the leftists managerial state.
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Dr. Gottfried: Great piece. Regarding my previous post, I was in no way defending neopaganism. I was simply saying it is too charitable to call the Straussians pagans. Christianity is an integral part of the Western tradition. It seems naive that one could expunge it and fill the vacuum with a reinvented religion.
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Well, nobody called the Straussians “pagans.”
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@ G.H.
I think the post-paleos Dr. Gottfried describes might find this piece by Benoist to be far more interesting and challenging than your own articles. Alain’s work does a far better job of undermining the pretenses of the “managerial state” than what I’ve seen from you.
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I may well ask Richard Spencer to insist on a literacy test for bloggers. Carl O. clearly is illiterate. If you read Benoist, you’d know that he supports a version of multiculturalism (including Islamic immigration) which threatens the Christian West. Please, please, try to find an education somewhere.
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Dr. Havers, is there any chance you could maintain a higher level of civil discourse than to challenge the “literacy” or “education” of people who disagree with you, or is that simply too much to ask?
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It would appear that many post-paleos wonder why the attachment to Reagan by Pat Buchanan and other paleos. I would offer that it is because Reagan was an American patriot in, Willmoore Kendall’s phrase, “his hips.” Buchanan shares this same proclivity to believe in an America of prior hopes and promise. It was inconceivable for Reagan to have been anything but a profound lover of his country, and Buchanan’s deepest motives spring from the same well. In contradistinction, perhaps post-paleos only think of America as an abstraction.
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To “Craig”: you may have a point; I shall try to be a civil Christian gentleman (no, seriously).
As for T2.0: while I agree with Taki that Sartre was a better fornicator than philosopher, he was correct to observe that if “the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would have to invent him.” There would be no meaning to this pathetic thug’s life if takimag didn’t exist. If the paleos, the zionists, the whole world are so horrible, why does this cretin bother?
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Sorry Mr. McGinty, but you are wrong. While you may not agree with the way Reagan chose to express his patriotism, there is little doubt of the love he had for this nation. His life, its writings and its speeches point to nothing less.
Did he achieve all of the ideals he espoused? No. Did he leave our country in a much better place than it was when he took office? Absolutely.
Peace be with you.
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T20
You are delusional Antisemite. the death of 1/3 Jews was no victory. (I’m wating for you to admit being a Holocaust denier, followed soon by a suggestion that it should actually have happened).
As to the larger point. Liberalism is death to Jews and you haven’t attempted to refute my take-down of your idol Kevin MacDonald as ignorant and kooky.
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General McGinty,
You are wrong. Reagan did serve in the military during WWII. Prior to the war he was an officer in the horse Cavalry (National Guard or Reserve?), and spent the war making training films at Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, California as the Adjutant (Captain), along with Alan Ladd (Corporal) and a late friend of mine, Ted Read who was a Sergent - photographer. Ted tried several times to get sent to Europe, but was frozen at the unit. Reagan would have had the same problem. By the way, Reagan didn’t have to serve since he was 30 years old with two kids in the early forties.
John Wayne also had a couple of kids and was even a few years older. His comment was that “Ah, they weren’t going to let me fight.” So he made movies propagandistic for our side which surely had greater value for the war effort than being an aging G.I. in the line.
The point is that some had value other than fighting in the line. During WWII, my own father was in his early thirties, and spent the war working in a GM defense plant in Linden, NJ instead of losing his family which my mother advised he would do if he enlisted. I myself, a Vietnam veteran both in the military and as a civilian contractor, recognize we all can’t be Audie Murphy’s like I’m sure you were.
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McGinty with all due respect, you are all wet. Reagan served 10 years in the army reserves prewar and on active duty in WW2. Reagan also saved this country from collapse for thirty years. His cuts in marginal tax rates and cutting discretionary spending were great befits to the economy and facilitated wealth creation. He also ended the cold war and spread peace throughout the world by talking to our enemies not fighting wars with them.It’s the idiot Bush and Clinton oligarchy that has made our present fix.
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Mr. McGinty you are wrong:high marginal taxes stiffle wealth creation. I got rich in the eighties because of those low rates gave me an incentive to expand my business.It rewarded people who worked.I hired far more people at high wages because the government wasn’t stealing all my capital every year.The lowering of marginal rates, which we started here, led to booming economies all over the world. Ireland and Britain are 2 of many examples.
President Reagan did not hurt poor people. His program gave millions of people a chance to advance by keeping their own money.He never forgot his roots in poverty.Reagan made most of his money under punishing tax rates of 90%.The rich already have the money nobody can advance with those high rates. There were many foreigners on my campus in the 1960’s. They were brought there by liberals who stole the taxes of working people to subsidize their fantasies. Reagan had nothing to with that. All high taxes do is enourage waste and mismanagement.The lower the taxes the richer the people.By the way I lost most of money in the nineties. Thats the way it is in life up and down. The Bush and Clinton gang protect the government and the rich at the expense of everyone else. The average advanced because he had more money to spend and inflation was low. All this great work was squandered under the Bush and Clinton and the great peace dividend was wasted on war and government.
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The terms “Left” and “Right” are both misleading and easily manipulated. Fierce, Enlightenment Liberals like Mises, Hayek, Novak, et al., get labeled “conservatives,” God knoweth how, while those who stand for property, like Belloc and Chesterton, get labeled “Socialist.” Our gov’t is controlled by big-statists like Dick Cheney and George what’s-his-name, who are darlings of the right. Go figure.
As to the necessity of “fortune,” unfortunately it may be misfortune that is coming to our aid. Capitalism, at least in its neo-con version, is collapsing before our eyes(not that it ever worked very well without massive gov’t meddling). Yes, we do need theorists, but we also need practical thinkers, people who can apply the moral intelligence to the complexities of the current situation to find a way forward. Of course, “finding your way” means first knowing where you want to go. Do we know this?
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Mr.McGinty:the Iranian Americans are mostly Jews or Muslims. That is true, but they are hardworking and white. In fact even Hitler thought Iran was the birthplace of the aryan nation.
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Do the post paleos like Pat B.? I never questioned his patriotism, even when I find myself disagreeing with him - which is fairly often.
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A sure roadmap out of the broom closet is an agenda based on “cognitive disparities among the races” and “Nietzchean critiques of Christianity”. Yep, let’s all gather at the next Robert Taft Club meeting and, in between arguing over whose mom makes the best meatloaf, put together a Super Man platform for the ages.
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“the Paleos for the Browns”
There you go again.
“I have said many times “Left/Right” are not only meaningless distinctions but distinctions that obscure reality.”
You have indeed said “many times” to the point of inducing nausea. I thought the moderators were going to ban hobby horse riding and dead horse beating. :-)
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“The real source of the political movement called neoconservatism thus is a change in US Protestantism that changed the political views of large numbers of Protestants. If you want to oppose neoconservatives effectively, you have to start investigating this foundation."--Kari K.
Exactly! The “marriage” of the Fundamentalist/Evangelical Religious Right with the Republican party is the glue that holds the neoconservatives in power within the party and within politics. Both embrace the state of Israel as a prophecy being fulfilled. One as a religious fulfillment and the other as a political/ethnic fulfillment.
I believe that the GOP is using the R.R.. However, as long as great numbers of them support the likes of Rev. John ("CUFI") Hagee and others who prey upon their fears of an “ungodly America” and the “Endtimes” the neocons will continue to hold the reins of power.
The GOP does not want to solve the “abortion issue” because it is a “carrot” for the R.R. that is dangled year after year.
Despite the grave damage that the GOP’s policies have on “working families” in general
(outsourcing, high gas prices etc.).
Many members of the R.R. actually support the use of tax dollars for “faith-based initiatives.” Even when it is pointed out to them that a Radical (anti-American) Muslim group can (and has!) the same right to obtain monies as a Christian church.
Mr. Bush has spoken to them in language that they understand. Therefore they support his policies (perhaps with the exception of NCLB). They see this country’s involvement in Iraq as a noble endeavor. That will bring peace and stability to the Middle-East because it is America’s “mission” to spread democracy (and American power).
To be blunt. Their politics have intermeshed with their religion and they don’t seem to be able to separate the two.
The Neoconservatives; who happen to be of the Jewish persuasion; have also adopted religious visions to secular political ends.
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That evil Kevin MacDonald has a new book out.
http://www.occidentalpress.com/insurrections.html
It is available on amazon as well.
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Mr. Smith,
Hopefully, MacDonald will have done basic research this time and proposes a theory better than “suicidal leftistsm is a group survival strategy”.
Then again, he likely just hanged himself with the extra rope.
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Kari,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to me.
“....Seen from the above perspective, takimag’s move away from religion may have been an error; you started barking at the wrong tree.”
Perhaps you are right.
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Dear Professor,
We are wallowing in the midst of a cultural and demographic crises whilst your poignant commentary re: the lack of motivational activism on the part of a passive Christian populace (which mistakenly equates Western Civilization with Christianity) offers us little hope towards amelioration or a saving of the West.
Even less hope is garnished from your description of the neo-pagan critics of the Christian right who being fractional in number and consigned to windowless basements offer much more than comic relief. In this regard, perhaps you are referring to thinkers other than Nietzsche, Heidegger and De Benoist, none of whom profess a literal return to either ancient pagan Gods or the resurrection of now forgotten cults. True, there exists much in their writings, a painted color here or there which from the perspective of a hungry and disaffected critic might be snatched out of context to confirm the alternative, however an honest reading points rather to a beckoning forwards, beyond and through a discredited Christian heritage by way of transcendence vs. a vitriolic wholesale negation. Clearly Nietzsche cuts deeper and often into the bone with his scathing critiques of Christian values but all three writers seem deserving of a proper hearing with mature debate considering our perilous state. The Christian writers on this site appear overly zealous in their denunciation of such writers and their thinking, as if the mere mention of the word paganism, though emanating from their own authentic ethno-cultural roots might actually enrage their adoptive god of Israel.
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