Paleoconservatism is informed by certain philosophical presumptions that differ markedly from the presumptions of neocons and most modern conservatives.
Have you ever noticed how enthusiasts of all sorts frequently speak a language that is completely unintelligible to the rest of us? For example, computer geeks . . . err . . . enthusiasts have their own language as do gear heads . . . err . . . hot rod enthusiasts. Wonkish political obsessives like me are guilty of the same thing, I am afraid. I don’t know a gigabyte from RAM or a header from a flathead, but I can rattle off the various shades of conservatism in Rainman-like fashion.
I was reminded of this tendency recently when I published an article on paleoconservatism and abortion. The article was originally published at Intellectual Conservative, and later published at several mainstream, GOP-oriented conservative websites. It made some very controversial assertions so I expected to get feedback. Well I did. Most of it was positive. Some of it was not. But what surprised me was that most people weren’t taking issue with my controversial assertions. Instead, many seemed to be unfamiliar with the term paleoconservative. I was surprised because my article appeared on conservative oriented political websites. I assumed paleoconservative would be a term familiar to those who frequent such websites. Well you know what they say about assuming. I was also disappointed. That many conservative internet surfers didn’t know what a paleoconservative is is an indication that my side seriously needs a marketing campaign.
As a result, I have decided that a little Conservatism 101 is in order. I will attempt to explain the origin and history of the movement now called paleoconservatism, and how it differs from “regular conservatism,” for lack of a better term. But perhaps more importantly, what does this movement have to offer us that regular conservatism does not?
First of all, this is a topic about which a book could easily be written, and some have. It is not my intention to be exhaustive or to reinvent the wheel. For a more exhaustive treatment, see the Wikipedia entry on paleoconservatism. I know Wikipedia can be a bit hit and miss, but the paleoconservative entry is fantastic. (No I did not write it.) It was updated recently, and the first half is particularly well done. Several other books and magazines have been written that address this subject, and I will provide internal links to helpful resources.
Since most readers will be familiar with the tenants of “regular conservatism,” it may be easiest to describe paleoconservatism by how it differs from the more mainstream variety. First a little history.
Prior to World War II, there existed a coalition often referred to now as the Old Right. The Old Right was a collection of traditionalist and libertarian politicians, writers, businessmen, scholars, etc. who composed the loyal opposition to the Left which was ascendant at the time. The ascendant Left was represented most obviously by Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. Perhaps nothing resembling a “movement” as we know it today existed back then, but the Old Right did what it could given the tenor of the times. The Old Right differed from the modern conservative movement in that it opposed foreign military intervention and favored a policy often derisively referred to as isolationism. The Old Right opposed American entry into World War I and World War II. On that note, the most prominent organization of the Old Right was the America First Committee (AFC) which was organized to prevent US entry into WW II. (The AFC was populated by a lot of anti-war leftists as well.) The conservative argument for opposing foreign intervention and entanglements is that it is not America’s responsibility to be a global policeman. Foreign adventuring necessitates big government, big spending, the sacrificing of liberties at home, and of course places American troops in harm’s way.
The Old Right also opposed, generally with limited political success, FDR’s New Deal. They believed his New Deal programs were wasteful, not authorized by the Constitution, and ineffective and counterproductive to reviving the depressed economy.
Some elements of the Old Right also opposed what they saw as a trifecta of insults to freedom and the Constitution that took place in 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment which authorized the Income Tax, the Seventeenth Amendment which mandated the direct election of Senators, and the creation of the Federal Reserve. (Tax protestors don’t scold me. I am aware that many believe the Sixteenth Amendment was not passed appropriately by the States and/or doesn’t authorize an individual income tax. That debate is beyond the scope of this article.)
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and American entry into the War, non-intervention fell out of favor. When the hot war ended, America was faced with a Cold War attempting to halt the global expansion of Communism and Soviet influence. The “modern conservative movement” (MCM) as it is often called arose after WWII and after the start of the Cold War. Unlike the Old Right, the MCM supported a strong internationalist foreign policy as a means of combating the Soviet menace. Some recognized foreign intervention as inconsistent with the traditional conservative support of small government, but felt the Soviet threat warranted a temporary alteration in principles. A small contingent on the Right, led by Murray Rothbard among others, continued to resist the call for an aggressive foreign policy to contain Communism, but they were in the minority. (The merits of their argument deserve an additional column as well.)
You might wonder, “If the Old Right is characterized as pre-WWII, then would it not be accurate to designate the post-war alternative as the New Right instead of the more cumbersome modern conservative movement?” There is a related movement called the New Right but it is not an entirely analogous term. The MCM is generally conceived as originating and coalescing in the 50’s especially around the issue of the Cold War. Seminal events in its genesis would be the publication of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind in 1953 and the founding of National Review in 1955. The New Right refers to that coalition that flourished after the Barry Goldwater campaign. Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but the term MCM seems to better encompass the decade or so before what is usually conceived of as the official beginning of the New Right. For the purposes of this article the MCM will indicate the post-war conservative movement that is to be distinguished from the Old Right.
Another element of the post-war anti-Communist, anti-Soviet forces were ex-leftists who had grown disillusioned with the excesses of Soviet Communism. Beginning in the 70’s they started to leave the Democratic Party in frustration over the emergence of radical liberalism, especially the counterculture, the perceived direction of the party with the McGovern nomination, and the perceived weakness of the Democrats on foreign policy. This group included Irving Kristol and others frequently associated with the advent of neoconservatism, a term I suspect the average reader is more familiar with.
Since they were ex-liberals, the neoconservative element of the MCM was generally supportive of a broad social safety net. They were comfortable with New Deal programs such as Social Security and FDR’s economic interventions. Most were supportive of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the Civil Rights movement, although most opposed quotas.
The Old Right was, as I already pointed out, hostile to Roosevelt and the New Deal. Some of the conservative elements that made up the original MCM did not support the New Deal or economic intervention either. This was true of both the traditionalist elements and the libertarian elements of the fledgling MCM. But by the mid-50’s it was generally assumed by most conservatives that the New Deal was a fait accompli, so serious opposition to it was dropped. This was partially based on pragmatic political concerns, but it was also felt that opposing the Soviets was the paramount issue, and they should not waste political capital or alienate potential allies with less urgent issues. A pragmatic consensus quickly arose that opposing settled leftist gains such as Social Security was a political loser, so they were essentially taken off the table.
The transformation from isolationist Old Right to interventionist modern right has been much observed and commented on. The de facto adoption of political pragmatism over rigorous adherence to principles as a defining component of modern conservatism has been less commented on, and I will devote a future article to discussing the far reaching implications of that decision.
So the neoconservatives were pro-intervention, supported a social safety net, were comfortable with some government intervention in the economy but supported free-trade and liberal immigration policies and were generally socially conservative. While the depth of their commitment to social conservatism has been questioned by some, they were clearly anti-counterculture which they saw as a radical and anti-American threat.
A question: does what the neoconservatives supported initially sound familiar to anyone? It actually sounds very much like the agenda of the MCM and the GOP of today. More on that later.
The MCM has always been a coalition of rather diverse elements who were united in their opposition to the radical Left as much or more than they were united in their common goals and philosophy. One element was the traditionalists personified by Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver. Another element was the economic libertarians personified by Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Traditionalists placed less faith in free-markets and rejected economic reductionism. They denounced the libertarians as hidebound ideologues. The libertarians denounced the traditionalists as too friendly to the state and rejecters of reason. But both factions opposed federal government expansion although perhaps for somewhat different reasons, and both opposed the economic and cultural collectivists on the Left. The fusionists, whose main spokesmen at the time was Frank Meyer of National Review, tried to chart a middle course. Fusionism is described by Donald Devine of the American Conservative Union as advocating “libertarian means to traditional ends.” Whether fusionism was a coherent intellectual philosophy or just an attempt to reconcile a diverse coalition is a matter of much debate among partisans on all sides.
But whatever fusionism might have lacked as a coherent philosophy, you could argue that the MCM that emerged was generally fusionist in its orientation, socially and culturally conservative but libertarian on economics. All sides supported limited government, tax cuts, minimal government intervention in the economy, and a strong national defense. (Actually it could be argued that a strong national defense is neither traditionalist nor libertarian nor fusionist, but its support by most was a product of the Cold War times.)
Also holding the movement coalition together was near unanimous agreement on the strategy of political pragmatism mentioned above with the GOP as the chosen vehicle, and a fear of the Democratic Left. The near unanimous consensus that the GOP should be the vehicle of choice was facilitated by the slow but sure shift of once conservative Democrats in the South to the GOP starting with the Goldwater campaign in ’64.
So what the heck is a paleoconservative and where do they belong in this grand scheme? Many paleos, whose beliefs coincide largely with the Kirk-style traditionalists, would gripe that they were really a barely tolerated part of the coalition from the beginning, but there was at least a general civility. The late paleocon, Sam Francis, claimed that the neocons were at first welcomed into the movement as useful allies, but tensions between the traditionalists and the newly grafted neocons soon rose. The traditionalists charged that the neocons were still unrepentant leftists. The neocons charged that the traditionalists were backwards looking reactionaries.
Things really came to a head at the start of the Reagan administration, as the spoils were being divvied up. Traditionalists, who had been a part of the MCM from its inception, expected a piece of the pie. The Johnny-come-lately neos were accused of trying to get all the spoils for themselves. Things really got ugly concerning the appointment of Mel Bradford to head the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mel Bradford was a traditionalist extraordinaire. He was also a proud Southerner. One aspect of the traditionalist element has been respect for the inherent conservatism of the Southern tradition. Russell Kirk recognized it, Richard Weaver recognized it, and Mel Bradford recognized it. The Southern Agrarians, who had been an element of the Old Right, had eloquently articulated it in their book I’ll Take My Stand. These men recognized that the South had always served as a traditionalist brake on the grand designs of Northern progressives. The neos did not want Dr. Bradford to get the job. To them he was hopelessly behind the times. Their choice was William Bennett, so they set out in a rather nasty way to tarnish Bradford’s reputation. They especially focused on his veneration of the South and his traditional Southern view of the merits or lack thereof of Lincoln. Of course accusations of racism were hurled, and this was an early harbinger of things to come. (Note the hysterical and hyperbolic reaction of the neocons to Trent Lott’s Strom Thurmond remark.) This incident among others confirmed to the traditionalists that their suspicions had been right from the beginning; the neocons really were a type of leftist instead of a type of conservative, since free and easy accusations of racism are too often the first recourse of the left.
The term paleoconservative was coined around this time by either Thomas Fleming and/or Paul Gottfried originally as a joke. Paleo, as a prefix meaning old or ancient, was to designate the opposite of neo meaning new. Even though it was initially coined as a joke, the term caught on. Some paleos have objected to the term, suggesting it invokes images of dinosaurs. It may well be true that the term was embraced and used by the paleos' enemies because they saw it as unflattering. At this point we are probably stuck with the term. It is now routinely used by both its proponents and its detractors. Personally, I kind of like the term. As a proud traditionalist, I am perfectly comfortable with a word that invokes ancient or old as opposed to a word that invokes the new. Such an attitude I’m sure appalls the progressives.
In the 80s, the term paleoconservative was still mostly used in-house by conservatives “in the know.” It began to be used by a broader audience during the lead up to the first Gulf War. The MCM had been characterized by support of foreign intervention in the struggle against the Soviets. With the Soviet threat diminished or eliminated, the paleos sought to revert back to the traditional conservative position of avoiding foreign intervention. The neos, however, saw America, as the lone remaining superpower, as having an international opportunity/responsibility to shape the world in America’s interests and ostensively in a way that would benefit all.
The paleoconservative movement as we know it today synthesized and galvanized around opposition to the first Gulf War. For the paleos, that war was not our fight. American foreign policy should focus on safeguarding America and protecting American’s vital national interests, not punishing acts of aggression around the world.
The most prominent paleoconservative public face was Pat Buchanan. He articulated for the masses the three areas where paleos are most commonly recognized as differing from “regular conservatives.” They were early strong opponents of immigration, a position which is now becoming in vogue. They were skeptical of the benefits of free-trade, and favored a policy of “economic nationalism.” They were particularly weary of free-trade deals that they believed sacrificed our national sovereignty such as NAFTA and GATT. And of course, they opposed most foreign intervention.
You can see how paleoconservatism came to be largely defined by its positions on issues where it was at variance with the neocons and the rest of the conservative movement and the GOP, especially on the triad of issues mentioned above. The paleocons believe the conservative movement has been nearly entirely co-opted by neocon ideology or “neoconized,” if you will. The less flattering characterization that is often used is that the movement had been “hi-jacked” by the recent interlopers. As far as the “official position” of the conservative movement, they are correct, although many grass-roots conservatives support the paleoconservative positions. They just lack an organized or effective voice. This is especially true on immigration, where the Establishment’s support of “comprehensive” (read “guest workers”) immigration reform and reluctance to support an enforcement only policy, is very much at odds with the conservative base.
In my paleoconservative article that inspired this follow-up, I wrote:
While paleos are often distinguished by their opposition to foreign intervention, immigration, and free trade, what really sets them apart from other conservatives is much deeper than just policy. They differ on significant underlying philosophical presumptions. One helpful way of looking at this difference is to ask where paleoconservatives draw the “it has all been down hill since then” or alternatively the “those were the good ol’ days” line in the historical sand. Paleos generally reject the Enlightenment in whole or in part. They reject Lockean “contract theory” and the concept of “natural rights” out right.
This essay has been an attempt to place paleoconservatives in a historical context, and to focus on how they differ from other conservative on important policy issues. In this light you can see that paleoconservatives are a continuation or recovery of the traditionalist element of the Right that has been there from the beginning. In many ways it has more in common with the Old Right, especially the Southern Agrarian element, than it does with the modern right. Many commentators have noticed this commonality.
However, as I stated in the passage above, the underlying differences are much deeper than mere differences on certain issues. Paleoconservatism is informed by certain philosophical presumptions that differ markedly from the presumptions of neocons and most modern conservatives. It is a hard concept to initially get your arms around for the uninitiated, but once you understand the presumptions the positions on issues naturally follow. It is not just a hodge-podge of policy differences. Likewise, the neocons have their own different set of underlying philosophical presumptions. While the modern Right generally takes positions on the issues similar to the neocons, it is not at all clear that all conservatives entirely understand what philosophy they are buying into.
It will be through trying to illustrate these core philosophical differences, not just debating the merits of free-trade vs. fair trade, that a broader understanding will be fostered of how the sides differ and what each has to offer with regard to addressing the problems we face as a nation today, and where we went wrong in the past.
I will leave the complicated and perhaps cumbersome discussion of each side’s underlying philosophy for later essays. I hope this essay has adequately laid the historical framework.
Dan:
I found your essay very informative, but to my mind you’re still missing one important element.
It’s one thing to discuss the historical and philosophical traditions of paleoconservatism, and another to look at its modern-day practical application. We had quite a revealing discussion a few months back that I summarized in my essay “In Their Own Words: The Undisguised Racism of the Far, Far, Far Right.”
As these practitioners of paleoconservatism and modern day Defenders of True Conservatism identify themselves, the key issue that drives them isn’t so much free trade and foreign policy, but their racial superiority. Paleoconservatism is a testament to their superior blood line, from which all other policies flow.
A brief sampling of their pronouncements on what it means to be a “Real Conservative”, which is to say a “Paleoconservative”, are summarized below:
● If you look at traditional philosophical conservatism (e.g. Weaver, Kirk, et al), there is much allowance for distinctions made on race, etc. Kirk, Weaver and Eliot all supported segregation – a very wise concept.
● Only a left-wing ideologue or utopianistic neoconservative would say that race is unimportant. Race is important, and so is a proud and strong defense [of] segregation. If God wanted one race, he would have made us all beige.
● I know I am of pure noble blood. I have DNA proof, and I have my genealogy back to the 14th Century Europe, tied to noble homes.
● Like Kirk and Weaver (the “fathers of American conservatism”), I think that race does matter. It is natural for races to want to keep to themselves. It has always been this way (think of mandatory ethnic segregation in Ancient Greece or Rome, or in Jerusalem, or in Medieval or Modern Europe). This is God’s plan. I do not want to interfere with it.
● Traditional conservatives (paleoconservatives) reject the abstractions of the Enlightenment. They reject Enlightenment “rights theories,” and prefer a tradition modus vivendi of “natural hierarchies.”
● I am in agreement with folks like TS Eliot and Richard Weaver that Western Civilization made a wrong turn during the Enlightenment and we still have not recovered from it. The very fabric of our civilization is being ripped apart.
● Regarding race and philosophers, I just dug up these quotes by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant:
– “strong smell of the Negro which cannot be avoided through any hygiene”
– “the Negro is strong, fleshy, agile, but under the rich supply of his motherland, lazy, indolent, and dallying”
– miscegenation “gradually extinguishes the characters, and is, despite any pretended philanthropy, not beneficial to mankind”
● Listen, folks. A great race war is coming. Each race will fight for its own survival. Each race will fight bravely. But in the end, only one race will survive.
This is what the people who call themselves Paleoconservatives believe. It isn’t a matter of opinion or personal preference to them; it is demanded by the very logic of paleoconservativism as its present-day advocates follow it.
To complete your analysis, I think this needs to be recognized and understood. Otherwise, we’re left with a well-reasoned academic article that misses the point of what it means to be a paleoconservative in the 21st century.
Phil Jackson
It may seem like the paleo conservatives are something from the past, but in fact they’re the wave of the future: Exhume Goldwater ’08.
Mr. Jackson:
You lose your audience by quoting Kant. Why not quote Russell Kirk, who, while writing with great Sophoclean angst about the moral struggles of world history and using unnecessarily florid language, writes off slavery with one reference to that “partisan issue.” Indeed, from where he stands, there must be 2 sides to consider.
Felix:
I didn’t quote Kant to expound upon my position. I quoted a paleo who defended his paleo credentials by quoting Kant!
As for Russell Kirk, here are additional quotes from the paleos who said that anyone who disagrees with their position is not a “True Conservative”. [The capital letters are mine; otherwise the citation from the paleo is unchanged]
** Russell Kirk: “The White community is ENTITLED [to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically], because, for the time being, IT IS THE ADVANCED RACE. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but IT IS A FACT that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”
** Richard M. Weaver: “Some of the means, for example the Ku Klux Klan, were irregular, but essentially it was the political genius of Jefferson, of Washington, of Madison, and of Pinckney expressing itself in times of trouble and oppression.”
So according to the paleos, Kirk and Weaver are “correct” about segregation because white skin color is a clear-cut sign of racial superiority; (a determination made, coincidently, by white skinned people based on the criteria established by white skinned people.) Moreover, the only problem with the KKK is that some of their methods were “irregular” (not “wrong”). What, then, was the “regular” way to lynch a man simply because he had the wrong color skin?
These are intellectually and morally bankrupt positions. These paleos tell us we can’t be seen as a human being. You must be black, white, brown, Asian, “Persian”, etc. Why? Because each classification is assigned a value by them to elevate their own self-worth.
Continuing to cite Kirk and Weaver as evidence that Kirk and Weaver define all things “Conservative” is a classic tautology. It’s much like the circular reasoning that can arise from misapplying Aristotelian logic. All men are made in the image of God. We KNOW God is not a black/Asian/Hispanic, etc. Therefore everyone who isn’t “white” isn’t really a man. The only conservatism paleos allow is their brand of conservatism. Everyone else who thinks differently is a fraud.
Regarding slavery, these same paleos took great care to point out that Aristotle supported slavery, and Aristotle is one of the intellectual fathers of paleoconservatism because he thought the races should be segregated like Russell and Kirk. But when you actually read Aristotle’s works, you see that support for “natural” slavery is not based on skin color, but on other human factors. It was a culturally-based application of logic to a “natural order” that believed in multiple gods, thought the earth was flat, that soil, wind, fire and water were the four basic elements, and arose in a time where people lived and died within miles of where they were born (apart from military expeditions), which also explains the focus of classical theorists on family ties and bloodlines. Supporting slavery wasn’t a principle as much as it was a judgment about certain aspects of the human condition based on various assumptions that, by the very nature of Aristotelian logic, would be overturned when mankind’s understanding of nature grew more sophisticated.
The process of logic and reasoning taught by these classical scholars is still the basis today for much of the way we scientifically evaluate information. But the conclusions arising from this process are only as good as the information upon which it is based. Modern day racists ignore the scientific method that today would factor in a wealth of more sophisticated variables, and rely only on 2000 year old “conclusions”. The modern day white supremacists pay homage to Aristotle’s conclusions, not the process he taught us to help decide an issue.
This is the problem I have with paleoconservatism as it is practiced today. It swaddles itself in high minded principles, but when it comes to practicing its “faith”, the people it attracts most seem to be a bunch of narrow minded bigots. Rather than look to the philosophical foundations of a socio/economic/political philosophy to “understand” it, we’re better off looking at how it is actually practiced.
I see no more reason to care about what paleocons think or say about anything, any more than I care what liberals think or say about anything. Paleocons are dinosaurs, extinct since Pearl Harbor, with a nasty nativist streak and in many cases, an even nastier anti-Semitic streak.
God save us from paleocons. They are a disease.
Rightwingprof, what exactly does it mean to be “right-wing?” The origin of the term goes back to the French Revolution as I am sure you are aware. Those on the right supported the established order of Church, Crown, aristocracy, etc. against Jacobin radicals who wanted to remake France in the name of some abstract concepts of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”. And of course what they got was Napoleon. Didn’t work out too well for the over-throwers of the system, now did it?
So paleoconservatives are to be dismissed because they are Dinosaurs. I would think that if you were so “right-wing” being called a Dinosaur would be a high compliment. But instead the extent of your learned “professorial” denunciation of paleoconservatism is that it is old. Extinct since Pearl Harbor about 60 years ago. What percentage of human history is 60 years? Forget the Greeks, Romans, the Founding Fathers and that Jesus guy, they’re all old.
Just exactly how are you “right-wing?” You pass the progressive litmus test perfectly. “Old bad. New good.”
With “right-wing” opponents like you, the left has absolutely nothing to fear.
Thanks Mr. Phillips. I’ve learned a new word (paleocon) and finally had someone explain an old one (neocon) in a way I could understand.
But, with Mr. Jackson’s posts, I now have a problem…
I was beginning to think I was a paleocon because I abhor political pragmatism, and by extension, much of what I see in the current GOP that has more in common with a weather vane than with a truly principle-based world view.
But if to be a paleo means having a racial superiority view of the world at its core, then that doesn’t work for me either. In fact, it’s abhorrent to me.
So where does that leave me, if I don’t like the pragmatism of neocons, nor the apparent racist underpinnings of the paleocons? Maybe I’m old right. I still oppose the New Deal, even though it was implemented 30 years before I was born.
Nevadamistermom
You put your finger on the issue that troubles me too. I oppose many of the big-brother, nanny-state, quasi-socialist policies (like the New Deal) that you object to. I’ve always been content to simply say that I am “conservative” as a shorthand way of categorizing my views.
But then along come the True Defenders of Conservatives (the paleocons), who insist that they and they alone have a lock on what it means to be a True Conservative. Anyone else is a “Liberal”, “deluded”, “traitor to his race”, or similar such designation. [I’ve been called all of these by the paleocons I took on, and worse. One of their websites — Vanguard News Network, which has as its slogan “No Jews, Just Right — took me on in a piece entitled “Experts Agree: Ni**ers Greater Problem Than Racism” for making the incredible statement that we should judge people for what they actually do, rather than classify them by the color of their skin http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/index.php?s=phillip+ellis+jackson
These people aren’t just a bunch of Neo Nazi nuts masquerading as paleocons. As you can see from the people posting the comments in the permanent link, they are the same people at American Renaissance (http://www.amren.com/), which is a sanitized version of the Vanguard News Network. They ARE the paleocons!
So what does this tell us? I don’t have a dispute with Dan Phillip’s scholarship tracking the origins of paleoconservative thought. But before everyone jumps on that bandwagon and drinks the paleocon Koolaid, recognize that the PEOPLE who today embrace and espouse this philosophy are the SAME bigots and racists who treated us to the words of wisdom I chronicled above.
You need to understand who these people really are, and what real agenda underlies their supposed embrace of “True Conservative” principles. My best advice to everyone is to keep the classification system as broad as possible (Conservative vs. Liberal), and then look at what people actually do — rather than the authors they cite to prove their superiority — before lending any support to them.
Mr. Jackson,
Yes, now that I know what is at the paleo’s core, I have to say I feel more than a little duped by Mr. Phillip’s column. The racist aspect is a rather significant omission, is it not? Sort of like those Amway folks who invite you for coffee and conversation, and only once they have you tucked safely in the confines of their living room does the real reason for their “friendship” become clear.
Like you, I’ll stick with “conservative” without the need for any prefixes.
Nevadamistermom —
Don’t blame Dan Phillips. I corresponded with him directly at an earlier point and he seems like a very good fellow without a hidden agenda. He did a very commendable piece on the intellectual underpinnings of paleo thought. What he missed was tying it to the actual practitioners today who use it to justify their racism. His essay is correct as far as it went. My point was that to understand how this abstract philosophy is actually practiced, we need to go farther than an academic essay and look at the individuals involved and the real world policies they promote. They (the practitioners), are the Amway salesmen you spoke about!
Best regards, Phil
Dr. Jackson, Navadamistermom
Dr. Jackson, with all due respect, I think you have an axe to grind. The problem with the neo/paleo debate from the beginning has been that neos have been too quick to yell racism as I pointed out in my article. Sometimes this has been because that is what they really think about paleos, but very often it has just been a tool used to discredit paleos and marginalize them. The use of that tactic with regard to Mel Bradford seems a clearly calculated part of their power grab.
I hope this doesn’t sound like blatant self aggrandizement, but in the last couple of decades the primary home of intellectual and thoughtful opinion making within conservatism has been the neos and the paleos. Not that there are not bright and thoughtful run-of-the-mill conservatives, there are. But unfortunately most conservative “thought” these days is blatant partisan hackery. I believe that one of the main reasons the neos saw the paleos as someone who needed to be discredited and marginalized instead of just argued with or ignored is because the paleos were their primary intellectual challenge.
In today’s PC dominated climate even raising the question of “racism” and “white supremacy,” whatever either of those mean, is unfair and plays into the hands of the left. I think that conservatives of whatever type should strike the “r word” from their vocabulary.
Once the charge is made, there are only two ways to respond. You either stomp your feet and exclaim loudly, “No I am not a racist, how dare you even suggest such a thing!” That obviously plays into the hands of the left, who have expanded the meaning of racism to mean much more than just hate, but any variance with PC orthodoxy. Or you respond to the charge in a way that is thoughtful and nuanced, which makes you de facto guilty of racism, because you didn’t respond indignantly, “No I am not a racist, how dare you even suggest such a thing.”
But this subject, like all others, requires nuance, not simplistic PC formulations. Some of what makes the paleos vulnerable to charges of “racism” has to do with the philosophical distinctions that I have promised to discuss. Paleos believe the particular, not just the universal, is important. In fact they celebrate the particular as a way of preventing cultural (and literal) tyranny and homogenization. They decry the growing homogenization and sameness of America that modern commerce, television etc. has brought.
Thus, the cries of racism. Particular things like ethnicity, culture, religion etc. matter. (They matter in the immigration debate, for example. They matter in whether it is reasonable to assume that Iraq can be forced to accept American style Jeffersonian democracy at gun point.) There is more to our society, any society, than naïve trumpeting of a “proposition.” (A reference to the paleo/neo “proposition nation” debate.) But you will search the internet, magazines, books, etc. in vain for any evidence of hate from any leading paleo minds. You will find abundant evidence that they are not PC, but I would like one example of hate by any leading paleos.
But as I said, in today’s climate, racism does not mean hate as it should if it is to be used at all. By today’s standards every paloe is by definition guilty of racism because they dare recognize that the particular matters.
As has been pointed out here before, National Vanguard and American Renaissance are generally not considered paleo. They are better described as white nationalist. They of course, like paloes, recognize particularity and curse political correctness. But paleos are not nationalists. They are regionalists.
I will be happy to write an article along the lines of how paleos and white nationalists differ. Such an article needs to be written anyway and would fit in well with my Conservatism 101 theme. But I will do so carefully because I don’t want to play into the PC game of intentionally vilifying and finger pointing at another group so as to prove my PC bona fides that “I am not one of those types of conservatives.”
The dogma of “anti-racism” is a much bigger problem these days than is racism. (See this very thoughtful article on anti-racism. http://www.solargeneral.com/library/antiracism.htm.) Conservatives of all types should be uniting against the PC left in a crusade against dogmatic anti-racism. Instead we have one type of conservative attacking another because their thoughts aren’t pure enough. To me it is obvious that this sort of internecine warfare plays into the hands of the left. I wish it were as obvious to others.
Dan:
As I said above and to you in other forums, I don’t ascribe ulterior motives to people just because I disagree with their opinions. But there comes a point when we all need to focus in on what’s driving the conversation, and call things what they really are.
You chose to write an academic essay about paleoconservativism that ignored, in my opinion, very real examples of how the proponents of this philosophy think and act in the political arena. It’s your prerogative to tell half a story and leave it at that, just as it’s mine to add in the missing pieces. If you think I’m distorting the practical application of paleoconservativism, by all means show me where I’m wrong.
But instead of doing that you simply dismissed everything I wrote and reaffirmed your previous statement, accused me of having an axe to grind that belittles my response by implying that I am just writing a hit piece on paleos because I don’t like them for some reason. And then you tied that remark to another comment that that “neos have been too quick to yell racism.”
I assume from this that in addition to a grudge-wielding axe grinder you consider me to be a stereotypical neocon as well (stereotypical as you describe them), which is an interesting analysis. And just how did you arrive at that conclusion? If you’ve read all my earlier essays, my books, and my other political writings, you’ll see that I’m sometimes quite libertarian in my beliefs, sometimes quite traditional, and other times I’m said to depart from conservative thought all together by the people disagreeing with me. This is because I’m not blindly wedded to the defense of a particular political or philosophical point of view to the exclusion of all other discussion, evidence, and reasoning.
I have not previously, and will not now, question your motives or deride your scholarship. What I will do, as I have done before, is either question certain conclusions you’ve drawn from your research, or introduce other relevant issues to the conversation that flesh out your main points. This is what people do when they are having a legitimate debate about issues.
You made the following statement after questioning my motives: “The problem with the neo/paleo debate from the beginning has been that neos have been too quick to yell racism as I pointed out in my article. Sometimes this has been because that is what they really think about paleos, but very often it has just been a tool used to discredit paleos and marginalize them.” To which I will again ask you, exactly what part of the racist bilge that I cited WRITTEN BY PALEOCONS in defense of paleoconservatism do you not find racist?
I did not repeat the personal attacks made against me by these same defenders of paleoconservative thought because this wasn’t a personal grudge. If you look at the essay I wrote that started the racist paleo diatribe (“Off to the Races”), you’ll see how their intellectual defense of paleoconservative thought quickly degenerated into race-based slurs against all non-whites. All I needed to do to illustrate my point was point to these words.
You seem to have taken offense at the fact that self-identified paleos make racist pronouncements under the guise of promoting paleoconservatism, and that I’ve pointed this out. I’m not sure from your last post whether your objection is that these comments are not really all that racist, or whether they are atypical of how actual paleos think and act, or whether you are concerned that the Left might somehow view our dirty laundry.
To the last point, I couldn’t care less if every Leftist saw these racists for exactly what they are. Rather than hide and protect them, they need to be exposed.
To the point that these racists don’t represent the actual mainstream of paleo policy, I’d like to see some evidence of this. If you simply quote Buchanan and Kirk and Weaver and other so-called paleocons intellectuals, you’re missing the point. I’ve already given you practical examples of Kirk and Weaver’s racist point of view, and while I don’t believe that Buchanan is a racist, he’s just one man. As I began my comments long ago, you did a great job of illustrating abstract, academic paleo thought. But I’ve shown that it’s used as a subterfuge by modern day practitioners of racial superiority to allow them to espouse their racist beliefs. You’ve questioned my motives, but done nothing to challenge my data in support of my argument.
So I’ll give you the same “test” I used a few months ago when the paleos reared their collective heads on this website to denounce the belief that people should be evaluated for the deeds they do, not the color of their skin.
Below are four reader quotes from American Renaissance, and one quote from the website “White Supremacy”. Can you tell which one is from the overtly racist website?
1. “Just as the skunk cannot escape the stench of his own body and takes it with him wherever he goes, the Mexican cannot escape stench of his own culture and takes it with him wherever he goes”
2. Do you think that when most ‘Americans’ are actually Mexicans, Asians, or Africans, that the country will remain the same?
3. “Personally, I would love to walk into Axworthy’s office and surrender one of my ‘priliges’: My fist right into his face!”
4. “The Black Insurgent types will always whine and gripe. Without EVER having the mentality to come to grips with their own problem —”
5. “White race-traitor elites are selling out our futures, non-whites hate us, the only people white working folks can rely on are themselves and other like minded whites.”
Quote #2 is from the overtly “White Supremacy” group.
And yet you still maintain that “that neos have been too quick to yell racism as I pointed out in my article”?
Phil Jackson
Dr. Jackson,
On review I should not have made the sentence about you having an axe to grind the lead sentence in the paragraph about the opportunistic use of the charge of racism by neos. I see how that could be misinterpreted to mean that I was accusing you of doing the same thing. I have no reason to think that because I don’t know enough about your work to necessarily identify you as a self-identifying neo. I have no reason not to believe you that you are not. For that I apologize. That sentence should have been separated from the rest of the paragraph, or I should have been clearer about what I meant.
What I meant by axe to grind is that you seem to have an emotional stake in the argument. There are the three essays that you cite, and you also brought the issue up on my first paleoconservative article. I went to IC to see if this article had been posted, and there was your comment #1 bringing up the issue again. I have to admit, I rolled my eyes. Here was a piece on paleoconservatism that could generate good discussion on any number of subjects, the War, trade, immigration, etc. But instead I have to deal with this.
I did not attempt to whitewash paleoconservatism or present half the story. I did not offer a pre-emptive denial of racism because I didn’t think one was warranted and pre-emptive denials serve the interests of the PC left.
Here is all I said about race in this article. “They especially focused on his [Mel Bradford] veneration of the South and his traditional Southern view of the merits or lack thereof of Lincoln. Of course accusations of racism were hurled, and this was an early harbinger of things to come. (Note the hysterical and hyperbolic reaction of the neocons to Trent Lott’s Strom Thurmond remark.) This incident among others confirmed to the traditionalists that their suspicions had been right from the beginning; the neocons really were a type of leftist instead of a type of conservative, since free and easy accusations of racism are too often the first recourse of the left.” I absolutely stand by that statement. The evidence to back up this claim is overwhelming. See Dinesh D’Souza’s book The End of Racism. He doesn’t so much pronounce the end of racism as he does finger paleos for being racists. See David Frum’s book Dead Right and his article “Unpatriotic Conservatives.” See David Horowitz’s book Uncivil Wars and any number of hit pieces he has run at his website, Front Page Mag. The charges of racism are often linked to the neocon’s vilification of the South and their veneration of Lincoln.
I do not think that conservatives charging other conservatives with racism plays into the hands of the left because it airs our dirty laundry. I think it plays into their hands because those making the charge implicitly accept the PC definition that racism means something other than just hate. The term racism has become a nearly meaningless political smear. It is used to demonize people and stop debate. I can think of no example where the charge contributed to enhancing the debate. Maybe here will be one exception.
So I am supposed to deal with the charge of racism that you raise as a result of your interaction with some people here on the net. How can I possibly be responsible for every guy with a computer? Do I ask you, as a war supporter, to answer for every knucklehead that says, “We should just nuke all them towel heads back to the stone age?” One of the respondents called you a “race-traitor” whatever that means. Well race-traitor is a no less meaningful word than is racist.
You lay the charge out there, and then I am apparently under some obligation to refute it. That is backwards. If you can find any evidence of a leading paleo saying anything that is overtly hateful toward another person based on race, then I will be glad to comment. (I will make it easier for you. The paleo most often accused of politically incorrect thought was the late Sam Francis.) You are more likely to find them saying hateful things about neocons or others in the conservative movement than you are them saying anything hateful about another race. Like I said before, you will find much that is politically incorrect. Paleos are almost by definition politically incorrect. But I refuse to accept the self serving leftist definition of racism as something less than hate, and you should as well.
This is likely all I am going to have to say on the subject. I have no desire for this to turn into one of those 50 reply wrestling matches, and I highly suspect that the administrators of IC don’t want that either.
I would ask that those who are reading this and are new to the subject of paleoconservatism keep an open mind. That includes Nevadamistermom. Charges of racism should never be accepted at face value. Whoever makes the allegation should back the charge up with overt evidence of hate, not failure to toe the PC line. Political correctness is the problem, not paleos.
The conservative movement takes credit for the defeat of Marxism abroad, but the biggest manifestation of Marxism in America was not classical class-based Marxism, it was Cultural Marxism. Not only did the conservative movement fail to defeat Cultural Marxism at home, they adopted much of it as their own.
Dan:
I accept your explanation about not intending to imply that I am a “neocon with an axe to grind,” and thus my comments should be dismissed as nothing more than that. However, you’ve now switched to diminishing my arguments by saying that I have an “emotional stake” in this discussion, which is another mischaracterization of what I’ve written about, and why I’ve written it.
You want to discuss paleoconservatism as an abstract principle. I look at how it is practiced by those who use it to support their positions and policies, which as I’ve amply demonstrated, are blatantly racist.
You want to end any discussion about paleo racism by elevating it to another academic debate about political correctness. The paleo bilge I’ve cited has nothing to do with political correctness. It’s blatant racism.
Before people jump on the palo bandwagon like Nevadamistermom was first inclined to do, and lend their support to this particular world view, I intend to caution people to look behind the curtain and see how these lofty principles are in fact translated into policies and actions. If you sincerely believe that paleoconservatism provides the best answers for society, then understand that a highly virulent strain of racism permeates its practical application. It’s not merely limited to its present day supporters, as I showed ad nausium through their own words, but it’s there in the beliefs and practices of some of the people you cite (such as Russell and Kirk).
You seem to want to sidestep this cancer and ignore or downplay it because others on the Left and Right use bogus PC-racist charges to tarnish conservative ideas. The hypocrisy of the PC crowd knows no bounds, but it’s not an excuse for drinking the paleo Kool aid. Paleoconservatism is not just a lofty, detached view of life; it’s also a pragmatic political movement. And it certainly appears that many of the soldiers, and some of its leaders, of that movement are a bunch of non-PC, real minority-hating racists.
That gives me, and any other thoughtful person wishing to advance Conservatism in general, pause before linking arms with the practitioners of paleoconservatism. To you, this is “emotionalism”. To me, it’s common sense.
I challenged you to show me that paleoconservatism is not the real-world thoughts and activities I illustrated through the words and deeds of these self-proclamed paleos. You say this is somehow forcing you to prove a negative. You are the one who said that “the neo/paleo debate from the beginning has been that neos have been too quick to yell racism”. I showed you by their own words that very real racism exists. You’ve yet to address this fact, other than to repeat your original opinion that downplays it.
There are many admirable principles in paleoconservatism, when considered abstractly. But it’s not enough for me — and hopefully others peering in on this debate — to just leave the analysis at that, and embrace paleoconservatism. Get rid of the racists who’ve adopted it as their rationale and purpose, and then we can talk. But as long as you dismiss this racism as a non-issue, or sweep it under the rug by saying that all charges of racism against paleos are just PC-based and therefore bogus, you are doing a greater disservice to the philosophy you seem to embrace than the PC police who attack it.
Mr. Jackson seems to overlook the fact that “racism” is a Marxist term for those who resist the reconstruction of the world. It is today used as a weapon to close debate. The mere accusation supposedly condemns its target, with no right to appeal. Both the term and those who utilize it should be ignored.
And no matter what they call themselves, there’s nothing conservative about “Neocons.” It’s a seductive term of political marketing rather than an apt description of belief.
mtuggle
You represent the worst kind of moral equivocation. Rather than acknowledge and therefore address the racist remarks that come from paleocons, you want to play word games. Since you object to the etymology of the word “racist” as being “Marxist”, you then simply ignore the issue.
Okay, instead of the word “racist”, we’ll call people who believe that paleoconservatism justifies white racial superiority as “gillywomps”. Having removed the Marxist-nexus that, to your mind, now renders my previous observations irrelevant, perhaps you’d care to expand upon the gillywomp observations about the smell certain minorities emit, and edify us all on the proper way to lynch a Negro in keeping with Mr. Weaver’s observations?
This, ladies and gentlemen, is another glittering example of why it is so important to understand paleos for who they are and how they act, not just the lofty principles they profess to represent. They are dishonest, disingenuous racists … er, I mean gillywomps.
Join them with full knowledge of who and what they are.
Dear Mr. Jackson,
Talk about equivocation. I made two points you seem to be afraid to address:
1 – “Racism” is a loaded term used by pseudo-intellectual bullies who think they can use it to silence others. Like most bullies, they squeal when someone hits them back.
2 – Neocons cannot claim to be conservatives. This point is even more pertinent to the arguments made by Mr. Phillips.
However, I’ll grant you some latitude. I assume you intend the “racist” charge to mean to hate other races. If that’s the case, them there are a number of liberals who have made “racist” remarks. Does that prove that everyone who calls themselves liberal are really racist?
Dear Messrs. Phillips and Jackson:
I will admit to only having skimmed the main article for no reason but the fact that the “history” of political ideas does not much interest me. Ideas most certainly do occupy me; but given the demonstrably false notion of historical ontology, it just seems to me to be a waste of time to attempt to historicize that which man should consider with Reason.
Now, for purposes of this note/comment, I will assume that much of what would pass as “debate” on such forums would not be necessary for you gentlemen.
What I found interesting was the comment thread on racism. Therefore, I am purposefully ignoring the main article and Mr. Jackson’s main critique. I take no position on either.
It seems to me though, Mr. Jackson, that your critique of “racism” falls short and that what Mr. Phillips seems to be saying, if I give him the benefit of the doubt (which is necessary not because he fails to articulate his position but because he explicitly avoids entering into a specific defense of racism per se), is decisive. Permit me to explain.
First, a cautionary note. I will not here or anywhere defend hatred or groups that may or may not espouse hatred. I am not defending paleo or neo or any such “ism” but rather examining the ideas attendant to the charge of racism. Mr. Phillips is quite clear that racism in and of itself, if by racism we mean that race matters or that we distinguish by race, should not be an indictable offense in the court of public opinion. One would suppose that his argument is based upon the notion that people are different and that race accounts for some difference. To prefer one’s own and to hold them superior in worth to others is human is it not? Without such notions there would be no families and no peoples or nations. But just as clearly, to wish away the human faculty to discriminate, what we once referred to as Reason and which accounts for our ability to rank, what the ancient Greeks referred to as Political Order, would surely result in the World State that I believe you would reject out of hand. And you would reject it because it is the reduction of what it is to be human to indistinguishable matter where the only meaningful distinction that one can know for certain is quantifiable and scientific.
But Mr. Jackson, your responses suggest, although I make no ultimate conclusion and have engaged in no detailed examination of your previous publications, that to distinguish by race and not by “self worth” would be demeaning. But can that be possibly true? Do not our children rank superior in worth to us because they are our children? Do we not suffer more from our family members than we’d be prepared to suffer others? How do we kill innocents abroad in a war to save our innocents if we have purposefully ignored their “self worth” in light of the threat to our national existence? Meaning, have we not ranked our own existence as superior to the others’? How could one sustain war but for such ranking? And, unless you are to take a Quaker’s position, which is the rejection of any ranking, including a distinction between innocent life and evil life, a view wholly rejected by the Judeo-Christian Western tradition, the notion that merit trumps kinship and fraternity doesn’t seem to be demonstrably true in all circumstances or possibly in most relative to political order.
Now, certainly “democracy” and the modern state which seems to have replaced economic order with political order, and in our case in the West, economic liberty, merit might indeed prevail. But that just doesn’t seem relevant to the comment thread to which I am now participating.
I might add one further query given your remark about self-worth. If a man were to rank peoples, nations, or races based upon “self-worth”, what we might loosely translate as “merit”, and I hope I have made it clear above that this is a different in kind from the ranking referenced above, would it be so blindly irrational or manifestly evil to conclude after taking stock of the nations, peoples and races of the world that race and/or peoplehood matters?
Probably enough said. I’d be interested to hear your views and Mr. Phillips’.
All the best,
David Yerushalmi
mtuggle
Read my Looney Liberal Chronicles and you’ll see that Liberals can indeed be racists too. [Is this really news?] I suspect they will object to being called racists too, so I’ll call liberal racists “gullywart” and paleo-racists “gillywomps” to satisfy both them and you.
Then maybe we can actually focus on the gillywompisms that come from defenders of paleoconservatism and acknowledge that they are gillywompish statements that pullute the practical applications of paleoconservatism.
Until they are acknowledged and repudiated by paleocons for the gillywompisms that they are — instead of dismissing them because Marxists made up a bad word to describe something — we should all look warily at joining the paleo-bandwagon.
Old Republic
Words and ideas do indeed matter, particularly when they are used to promote and defend gillywompism.
Once again, instead of looking at what Kirk and Weaver proposed as policy options to promote white racial superiority (see post 4, in particular), the paleo-brigade just wants to ignore it because they don’t like the word “racist” because of its origin.
Okay, I gave you a non-Marxist word to substitute. Will you now look at how paleoconservatism is in fact practiced? No. You just want to talk about the origins of a particular word again while ignoring the actions of the proponents of paleoconservative thought. I am not surprised.
David:
I always appreciate your point of view, and I’m glad to see you enter the discussion.
As I said at one point above, as an abstract philosophy paleoconservatism has many laudable notions — as any strain of conservatism would. Personally, I find the kith and kin tunnel vision a bit too much for my taste, but this doesn’t automatically condemn the philosophy.
What I do object to, and pointed out with repeated practical examples from both the intellectuals and foot-soldiers of the paleoconservative movement, is that far too many of them seem to use paleo thought as a rationale or excuse to support racism. But I can’t use that word, because the Marxists turned it PC. So I substituted another word for it (gillywompism) to be able to continue the discussion.
My point is simple: a political movement cannot be judged solely on its abstract philosophy. We need to look at its practical application as well. If we are forced to dismiss the charge that paleos too frequently practice real racism by simply saying that “racism” is a meaningless term, then that’s pure sophistry. Call it gillywompism or anything else you want, and then address the issue.
But the paleos who object to the word racism won’t do this. They simply want to ignore the practical application of this philosophy because the “wrong” word was used.
You asked, quite correctly, what is racism/gillywompism? You say: “Do not our children rank superior in worth to us because they are our children? Do we not suffer more from our family members than we’d be prepared to suffer others?”
Of course we do. That’s hardly racism or discrimination — unless, of course, you decide to make a national policy that elevates your children and family over others. I’ve taken Russell Kirk’s own words that I quoted in post #4 and substituted “David’s family” for “the White Community”: “David’s family is entitled [to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically], because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of David’s family over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”
THAT would be racist/gillywompish, not your original proposition that David loves his kid’s more than he does my kids.
You further asked “how do we kill innocents abroad in a war to save our innocents if we have purposefully ignored their ‘self worth’ in light of the threat to our national existence? Meaning, have we not ranked our own existence as superior to the others’? How could one sustain war but for such ranking? And, unless you are to take a Quaker’s position, which is the rejection of any ranking, including a distinction between innocent life and evil life, a view wholly rejected by the Judeo-Christian Western tradition, the notion that merit trumps kinship and fraternity doesn’t seem to be demonstrably true in all circumstances or possibly in most relative to political order.”
As it happens, I wrote a very long piece in the IC archives on this subject: “What kind of car would Jesus drive to take his girlfriend to an abortion clinic?” It deals with the issue of war, morality, and Islamo-fascisim, among other topics. I show you a very clear way to make these distinctions without being “racist” — i.e., in this example assigning life or death to people because of their skin color, ethnicity, religion, etc.
You further ask “If a man were to rank peoples, nations, or races based upon ‘self-worth’, what we might loosely translate as ‘merit’, and I hope I have made it clear above that this is a different in kind from the ranking referenced above, would it be so blindly irrational or manifestly evil to conclude after taking stock of the nations, peoples and races of the world that race and/or peoplehood matters?”
People categorize and classify many things for many reasons. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this — until one group decides that ITS classification system must be imposed on others.
If all paleoconservatism was, was the desire of people to live their own lives their own way, then who would care? Not me. If Joe Blow thinks his white skin makes him a superior human being, then fine. But this isn’t what paleoconservatism proposes. It advocates real world policies with real world consequences that make decisions about people’s life based on these self-anointed notions of superiority.
It’s not racist/gillywompish, or whatever word we need to use to oppose illegal immigration, for example. That’s simply wishing to uphold the laws as written in a Constitutional Republic. However, it’s pretty clear to me that saying “Just as the skunk cannot escape the stench of his own body and takes it with him wherever he goes, the Mexican cannot escape stench of his own culture and takes it with him wherever he goes” is something quite different. It’s also something quite different to say that “White race-traitor elites are selling out our futures, non-whites hate us, the only people white working folks can rely on are themselves and other like minded whites,” or “Listen, folks. A great race war is coming. Each race will fight for its own survival. Each race will fight bravely. But in the end, only one race will survive.” [See my above comments for the sources of these direct quotes]
The fact that the paleos who join this conversation can’t even bring themselves to repudiate this line of thinking — instead focusing on the etymology of the word “racist” — reaffirms my belief that we do a disservice to the topic of paleoconservative thought if we just focus on abstract pronouncements. After all, Dan Phillips did title his piece “What the Heck is a Paleoconservative and WHY YOU SHOULD CARE”.
This is why I care.
Best regards, Phil
David:
I have a post for you too, but it’s caught up in the filter. Every time I quote actual paleocon language (like those in my earlier posts) the filter snags it for manual review. Note: it isn’t words like “rights” or “free trade” that set off the warning bells.
Hopefully it will be freed soon.
Take care, Phil
Mr. Jackson,
You set an impossible standard for paleoconservatives. Because some paleos have made statements that you describe as “racist,” we are all obligated to repudiate “racism.” Problem is, it’s a flypaper word. People understand it to mean racial hatred — real hatred, such as Tutu vs. Hutu hatred. But the Southern Poverty Law Center tosses that charge at those who want to protect American borders. Noel Ignatiev says it’s racist for whites to resist the abolition of the white race — so wanting to live is racist. Where does it end? That’s why I object to the use of the term as an instrument of debate.
Do socialists have to apologize for the crimes of Stalin and Mao? Why not?
Many thanks to Old Republic and the paleo-gillywompers I quoted previously for making my point.
Consider Dan Phillip’s academic description of paleoconservatism as cited in his original article. [Again, I have no particular bone to pick with Dan, other than he was too abstract in discussing paleo philosophy]:
1. “Paleos generally reject the Enlightenment in whole or in part. They reject Lockean ‘contract theory’ and the concept of ‘natural rights’ out right.”
This doesn’t sound too bad, and some may even find comfort in this world view. Now have a look at the way Old Republic — a paleocon defender — describes the same thing:
2. “Paleos feel much more at home with a classical or pre-Enlighenment notion of Man. The nation is not a proposition, but rather the extension of a tribe, an extended network of ancestral relations. Obligation trumps individuals’ rights; hierarchies trump equality; and patriotism trumps nationalism. Many who say they are ‘conservatives’ are philosophically classical liberals in that they accept much of the baggage of the Enlightenment, and those cancers keep gnawing away at Western man’s core.”
So now we don’t just “reject” individual rights or notions of equality. We treat them as a CANCER. And what do you do with a cancer? Let’s have a look at another paleo-proponent who tackles this same matter in a less abstract way.
3. “Listen, folks. A great race war is coming. Each race will fight for its own survival. Each race will fight bravely. But in the end, only one race will survive.”
So we go from the academic, to the metaphorically-abstract, to the practical policy implications of paleo thought. Stop at #1 and you may feel inclined to drink the Kool aid. Proceed to #2 and you start to get a queasy feeling that paleoconservatism is a little bit more than you thought it was. Take a gander at #3 and you see what the paleo prescription is for dealing with the “cancer” of rights and equality.
This is why it matters to know what and who the paleos really are.
mtuggle —
Keep focusing on the etymology of the word “racist” to avoid the practical policy implications of the statements made by Kirk, Weaver, and the legions of paleos who defend paleo philosophy by asserting their inherent racial superiority.
I already told you I’m happy to substitute “gillywomp” to represent these words and actions, removing any Marxist baggage. And I already said that liberals can be racist gullywarts too (they will undoubtedly demand their own non-racist racist terminology), so paleos don’t have a lock on this world view. Liberals use the term as a weapon against paleos; paleos use the verbal slight of hand to deny “racism” exists to avoid facing the practical policy implications of exposing this insidious point of view.
We happen to be discussing paleo-gillywompism in this exchange, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll again list my previous articles addressing Liberal gullywartism: “The Looney Liberal Chronicles” (4 chapters so far — 6 more to come); “What kind of car would Jesus drive to take his girlfriend to an abortion clinic?”, and both articles in the Jackson-Carmine debate on a universal moral code.
No one is challenging anyone’s right to “feel superior”. If a person needs to believe that white people are better than non-white people because they are white people, I feel sorry for them — but the analysis ends there. But when these feelings translate themselves into policy prescriptions for race wars and removing the “cancer” of equal rights, then it becomes an entirely different issue. One that you morally equivocate about or avoid addressing all together.
And yes, Stalinists and Maoists should not only apologize for their crimes against humanity, they should be locked up for them. The fact that you even raise this as a seemingly relevant issue in this discussion is a little frightening.
Mr. Jackson,
Paleoconservatives do not advocate race wars.
Your funny little pretend words and your obsession with “racism” are totally off-subject. The original article was about what distinguishes paleoconservatism from Neoconism. It was you who brought up the charge of “racism” and we responded — and now you claim we’re trying to avoid the subject.
Show me where I’ve advocated either white supremacy and/or race wars, or shut up.
mtuggle
If you don’t like “gillywompism” to describe paleoconservative philosophy (as expressed by Kirk and Weaver, to name two and cited above) with regard to the inherent superiority of the white race and embrace of the aims and objectives of the KKK, please substitute your own word. You are the one who objected to calling racism racism.
All I asked of you, as a self-professed paleocon, was to distance yourself from these beliefs, And further, to distance yourself from the views expressed by other paleocons about this same subject. You won’t — perseverating instead on the origin of the word “racist”. You haven’t responded to the “charge of racism” I raised. You’ve ignored it.
I don’t know anything about your personal advocacy of white supremacy and/or race wars, and haven’t accused you of holding these particular views. I have pointed out that you won’t even acknowledge they exist, and further, that you won’t even condemn these comments that other paleos have made in defense of paleoconservatism, instead preferring to focus on the Marxist origins of the word “racism”.
That does tell me a lot about how paleoconservatism in general and paleoconservatives in particular really view the world. And it is relevant to Dan’s article, because it tells us all “Why we should care”.
To mtuggle, Old Republic and other Defenders of Paleoconservatism
If you think my assessment of the practical implications of paleocon philosophy is totally off the mark, can I get even ONE self-professed paleocon to at least distance him or her self from the following statements that purport to represent paleoconservatismat its best. It will at least be a start in my personal quest to find one paleocon who is willing to address the practical application of paleoconservative thought.
No discussions about whether a racist is a racist is a racist because he’s called a racist instead of another word, or discussions about how bad Stalin was. Just a simple answer. Are white people “entitled” to prevail as Kirk said, and did the KKK get it ‘right’ like Weaver said?
** Russell Kirk: “The White community is ENTITLED [to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically], because, for the time being, IT IS THE ADVANCED RACE. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but IT IS A FACT that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”
** Richard M. Weaver: “Some of the means, for example the Ku Klux Klan, were irregular, but essentially it was the political genius of Jefferson, of Washington, of Madison, and of Pinckney expressing itself in times of trouble and oppression.”
Phil:
You’ve confused me and your essays to which you referred me were just too long (and pardon me, too stream of consciousness) for me to get through.
I think it is a mistake generally for people to argue over titles and even political movements. I understand well the specific point you were making to Mr. Phillips but that is an argument I will be content to observe from a great distance and passively.
My interest is in the ideas that move men. I have made no great study of the men behind “paleo-ism” but will accept for present purposes they are what you say.
But as I have gone back and read some of your writings, I cannot for the life of me determine what exactly you mean. Clearly you are a passionate man with similarly passionate views. I am just trying to get a read on them to make a judgment if continuing this particular discussion makes sense. It might be that we will just speak past one another or that we do not understand the world in which we live in the same way. In either case, the reasons for further discussion dwindle rather dramatically. There are many things a man should discuss and ponder with his colleagues to be certain that his understandings and approach are fully vetted and tested by critique and criticism. That is one reason you and I both write publicly. There are other pedagogical and even political reasons to speak and write publicly, but my purpose for this discussion would be the former.
Let’s remove the word racism from the discussion. While your technique of a made up word had its purpose, let’s use the appropriate word discrimination. To discriminate includes of course racism but also much more. Discrimination based upon religious affiliation or national origin is not racism but given your response would be abhorrent to you nonetheless. Similarly, you suggest that a man may discriminate in favor of his family and you would find that to be acceptable.
But your response to the discrimination inherent in the family, and it might not always be based upon “love”, does not go to the point I meant to raise. The family unit, like the larger clan, like the yet larger tribe, and the even larger nation or people, are all “political” units. That is, they involve Political Order. There is a ranking or hierarchy. By ranking or hierarchy, we mean at the most basic level that without ranking there could be no such political unit. There would be no way to discriminate between one man’s family and another’s. Between one tribe and another.
But we are still left with the question: Why does a father get away with lavishing wealth and opportunity on his own children and not on another’s? You might suggest a theory of private property in contrast to a communal view of same, as a description of a legal or economic system. But one still must predicate “private property” on some philosophic notion that would allow even this level of discrimination.
The same query holds, with even greater import, at the national level, as you well suggested in your response. But you ignore the basis of national existence as the most extreme form of discrimination. Life and death consequences flow from the fortuity of a man’s place of birth or biological parents.
When men form a nation, and are prepared to fight over and defend to the death the territory they call their own, and prevent others from joining them without first imposing certain conditions, this is discrimination no less and no more than that which takes place in the family. While the discrimination in the family is more intimate and one might say even more natural, unless you deny that man is, as Aristotle suggested, a priori a political being, the broader social or national political orders are similarly natural.
Hobbes and the lesser Locke of course rejected this notion. Their state of nature, albeit driven by opposite passions, reduced man’s nature, even if only in the ideal, to a solitary being. Political order becomes a force majeure as it were. But even within this state of nature, men still had to discriminate in order to decide with which men they would organize their society.
So when you write that a father’s lavishness toward his own family is not discrimination, you confuse me. Of course it is. You might justify it or rationalize it or even excuse it, but it most certainly is an act of real political discrimination. So if we are still together on this point, on what basis do you find that discrimination acceptable?
Similarly, the very act of creating that Constitutional Republic you mention next is also, as noted above, a life and death act of discrimination. When the men, White Christians of mostly Western European descent, came to this country, they discriminated from day one to this very day. You suggest it is not discrimination to prevent a Mexican from immigrating, but your only defense of this discriminatory act is “the law”. But that would be a positivist position – whatever the law says is just and right – and you most certainly don’t believe that. Bad and immoral laws are passed by nations every day. And more importantly, I seek to understand from you the philosophical basis for one of the most basic acts of discrimination known to man – the creation of a nation. Even the “social contract” theory endures the discriminatory act when certain men decide that they wish to form a nation-state with only certain other men.
So, we return now to a discrimination imposed by a nation. You seem to see no problem in the base, or foundational discrimination that establishes who gets to vote or otherwise participate as a citizen. But, you don’t like other forms that might find men deciding that they wish to restrict the privileges of citizenship to not only those born on one particular side of the Rio Grande, but also on skin color or religion. But why? If a man has no affinity (this does not imply hatred of any kind) for men of another race or religion, and we certainly could understand that in the same way family members have affinity for cousins but not for their next door neighbor, what happens to the act of discrimination in the latter instances such that it is in a category of opprobrium and not one of Reason? In other words, a man is birth place is an acceptable act of discrimination; his religious preference is not. It would seem to me that given the danger inherent in certain religions, we might be better off reversing our priorities.
Now, because so much of the discussion in the comment thread to this essay and indeed all over the web reduces these matters to a kind of racial hatred or supremacy, and that seems to be your original point about the “paleos” and their more practical political designs, let me take a moment to clarify some matters. I, who grew up an observant Jew in the South, one of a very few, experienced first hand this kind of hatred. First I was hated and beaten by Klansmen and then by the Blacks for being a Hymie. Irrational and unreasonable hatred is ugly. Period.
Discrimination to form a nation and to defend that nation from its enemies is not and need not be driven by the notion that the nation or peoplehood of the nation is Supreme or better at something or more civilized, although it may be true. The claim that the white Aryan race is supreme, for an example, is an empirical one that is likely only true if you narrow the band of performance being tested.
But the discrimination we speak of here, and certainly the one underpinning any nation which takes its own national existence seriously is one of superior worth. Men, whether in families or in nations, even when they deny it, discriminate on the basis that a thing designated as Ours has superior value or worth to US than that which belongs to the Others. If that simple observation were not true, how do you sustain families, establish a nation, boundaries, citizenship, etc.?
All the best,
David
David:
Let me summarize my point this way.
It’s one thing to believe that my family is better than your family (better looking, more intelligent, has more intrinsic worthiness, etc.) That’s certainly a form of benign discrimination. There is nothing inherently wrong with “discrimination” if just a synonym for making personal distinctions, choices and differentiations, which are all a part of life.
But this isn’t what I’ve been talking about. I’ve been talking about “discrimination” in the making of public policy. Believing that my family is racially superior to yours makes me a fool. Advocating policies that enshrine this belief in law, or urges people to collectively act in support of that belief, makes me dangerous.
This is my problem with those focusing exclusively on the abstract, intellectual foundations of paleo thought. Once you move away from the lofty pronouncements, it’s been my experience that you find it being used to justify a lot of really odious policies that have, at its core, the notion of racial superiority. I’ve cited their remarks ad nausium. What I get in return from the paleos is a debate about the etymology of words. It’s the same kind of self-serving logic we get from the Left about racism. A minority cannot discriminate because they lack institutional power; and only those in power can discriminate. Thus, like the paleo-logic about racism, any commentary about their actions simply fades away. The wrong word is used in the minds of those performing the action, so the action either doesn’t exist, or can’t be rebuked.
In a Constitutional Republic the people form a union and pass laws. Some of these laws regulate the actions of its citizens. As long as the basis for the law isn’t the Kirkian notion that one race is superior to another and must therefore “prevail”, there’s no inherent problem. Correspondingly, the nation — through its representatives — pass laws about immigration and undertake foreign pursuits. Invading Iraq to look for WMD in a post-911 era may have been a good policy, or it may have been a bad policy. But it wasn’t a policy based on white supremacy, where its purpose was to “prevail” over people of another race or religion.
When the discussion is grounded solely in abstract principles, we end up debating whether a nation acting within its Constitutional limits is “discriminatory” for passing immigration legislation. This is one of the reasons I find fault with leaving a discussion of the real world at this level. People can get so caught up in hyper-defining “discrimination”, “racism”, etc. that it bears no real resemblance to the daily actions of the people of the nation.
The Marxist hijacking of the term “racism” is a perfect illustration of this on the Left. So-called intellectuals have attempted to define the term in a way that simply holding traditional conservative beliefs are somehow odious. We can either force the term to be re-defined to mean-what-it-says and recognize the racism of the Left as well (which, by coincidence, I’ve done in my most recent installment of The Looney Liberal Chronicles), or we can invent a new word to describe these actions.
My bone to pick with the paleos is that they duck this debate by decrying the Marxist origin of the term, but refuse to look at the practical policy implications of paleo thought which has led to prescriptions for race-based laws and actions. I cited these endlessly above. They simply want to talk about whether the Enlightenment was a good or bad thing, as if there is no other issue than that.
My focus, because of my own education and practical experience, is on policy making, so I always look behind the words to see the actions. Paleoconservatism isn’t just an abstract theory, it’s a prescription for real world action. Until paleos rid themselves of the neo-Nazis that infest their movement, I find it dangerous to just sit back and debate abstract notions of kith and kin, the works of Aristotle, Hobbs, Locke, etc., as if that’s all there is to the subject of paleoconservatism.
You are correct that I am making an “argument”, not debating philosophy. When a philosophy is used to promote specific actions, it’s time to examine the actions themselves, not just the historical and intellectual underpinnings of that philosophy.
In this regard you said that “Irrational and unreasonable hatred is ugly. Period.” I agree. Just hating for hating’s sake makes no sense. But the bilge I documented above wasn’t “irrational or unreasonable” in the sense you describe. It was a perfectly rational and reasonable extension of paleo philosophy, and will remain so until the paleos clean up their act.
Let me end my discussion on two points. First, please forgive the “Mr. Rogers” writing style in some of my paragraphs in this response. I’m not trying to be patronizing to you or anyone else, just laying out my position as directly as I can.
Second, we’ve all been having a bit of a parallel conversation here in that I’ve deliberately interjected practical policy outcomes into an essay about the origins of paleo thought. I know this wasn’t what Dan Philips intended, but I thought it was an important issue to raise, and I’ve never been shy about voicing my opinions.
I’ll end my posts to this essay, since if I haven’t made my motives and point of view clear enough by now, there’s nothing else for me to do. Again, I found Dan Phillip’s essay quite thorough and interesting — as far as it went. And I always find your essays very worthwhile David. I write about the practice of policy, not the philosophy behind it, which is why my focus and writing style tends to differ from others. And it’s why I felt compelled to raise the issues I did about paleoconservatism as it has been revealed to me.
Take care, Phil
David —
It looks like one of the paragraphs in my post to you got caught in the filter and removed, which happens occasionally when I quote paleos using their language. So here it is rewritten without reference to their words:
Your comments about discrimination in regard to deciding who one wishes to associate with in their personal life don’t rise to the matter of public policy until one group legislates inferior status for another. I have problems with the way Civil Rights laws are defined and implemented in this country, but not with the underlying notion that in a Constitutional Republic race (or religion) is not an inappropriate reason to create human castes or classes. Also, having pride in one’s country and believing that our system is the best in the world is not the same thing as saying because we’re white/Christian/from XYZ county/can trace our lineage back to the 14th century, etc. everyone else is inferior — and should be treated by law and collective action as inferior. Agree or disagree with US actions in the Middle East, for example, but recognize that the policies that produced it were not based on forcing “superior” Christianity on “inferior” Islam, or invading Iraq simply because its people weren’t the correct shade of white
Regards, Phil
David: One more time …
“not an inappropriate reason” should be “not an appropriate reason”. When I removed the quote the it changed the sentence structure. Sorry for the confusion. Phil
Phil: thank you. You are of course correct that philosophies — even innocent sounding ones — can be quite destructive in practice. That is the point of my web journal SANE Works for US.
The problem of course you recognize with your argument about the importance of policy (i.e., praxis) over philosophy (i.e., theory) is that praxis without theory is, well, silly.
So I still am left with the question. When men get together to form nation-states, as we did here a few centuries ago, and others have done far more recently, they decide on a theory of nationhood. The American founders had one of course and decided that it extended only to Whites, and its privileges of political franchise only to men, typically landowners. In many states, there were religious parameters for holding public office. Now granted this has changed entirely, at inception and for over a hundred years the basis for Peoplehood was clearly limited to a select group of people who found themselves in the continental United States.
And, these decisions, these laws and policies, some of which were memorialized in the constitution, were based upon notions of who was considered part of the People — a theory.
Even today, with the dominance of a radical democratization or Open Society, we still use theories to enact very discriminatory laws and policies. I return to the example I provided in my earlier comments:
If you are born “on the wrong side of the tracks” — outside of our border — you are not part of us (assuming your parents are not part of us). Now, that doesn’t have to be. Many nations grant automatic citizenship to individuals of the same ethnicity, some do so based upon on religious affiliation, even though these individuals and their parents and grandparents have never been to the country. Israel and Germany are both examples. There are others.
Today, if X is born to non-US citizens, outside of the US, he is not a citizen. If X is wealthy, his opportunity to become a citizen is much greater. If he even knows someone in the US or has distant relatives, his chances are better. Why? Why are these lines of discrimination less odious than say race or religion?
We now know as fact that Islamic law, the Shari’a, calls for the conversion, enslavement or death of an infidel. No Muslim who is a believing and faithful Muslim — meaning one who follows any of the 5 leading jurisprudential schools of thought accepted as traditional Islam (these schools include the four authoritative Sunni schools and one Shia) would contest this sincerely (although they might not practice it) because to do so would mean by definition that he is not faithful to tradition. If the US decided to bar citizenship to any “faithful” Muslim, would you oppose this? This would mean of course that a vast majority of the 1.3+ billion Muslims worldwide, including many US citizens, would be discriminated against.
But what would be more irrationally discriminatory: denying citizenship to someone born two feet to the left or right of a line drawn in the sand or to someone whose basic religious tenets would lead to this country’s demise?
Take another example. Let’s say that the US decides to allow as citizens 100,000 new applicants a year. Let’s say the Chinese government decides to lighten its census burden and allow emigration. Immediately, 200 million Chinese wish to apply this year. But we have the typical thousands applying from Mexico, Africa, etc. We place a quota, as we have in the past, so that the Chinese numbers don’t overwhelm all others. But is that not an odious discrimination?
The point of these examples and many more that we both could devise is to suggest that to say that a country ought not to enact laws and carry out policies that are discriminatory is literally impossible.
I believe again that the problem you have with the “Paleos” is that you believe their theories are based upon some kind of empirical claim of superiority.
But discrimination, law-based, policy-based discrimination used by nations every day to protect their citizenship, indeed to create the citizenship in the first instance, is primarily an ontological ordering. Meaning again that we say by our laws that a baby born north of the Rio Grande has far greater worth to us as Americans than a baby born south of that river. The laws are clear about that. America as a nation stands by while the baby south of the border starves to death. That could never happen to the other child, certainly not without a firestorm. But that superior worth to US is based upon no empirical claim of worth but on an ontological claim that because that baby belongs to the US, to US as a people, it has a higher worth. And, we decided quite discriminatorily what would make that baby one of US.
As you said, we’ve fairly well exhausted the opportunity to make our points here. Thank you for the opportunity.
David Y
Old Republic:
It’s hard to make the case that I’m misrepresenting Kirk and Weaver when the only quotes I’ve used have been from Paleos who were “educating” me on the meaning of “True Conservatism” as defined by Kirk and Weaver.
This all began a couple of months ago when I made the statement that I’d rather judge a person’s worth by his deeds and actions than the color of his skin. To which the paleos descended in swarms to tell me that I was a “race traitor”. [See “Off to the Races” and the two essays that followed.]
I ask you to tell me that statements about the inherent superiority of the white race are wrong, and that the KKK wasn’t just Thomas Jefferson in a hood. You respond with the “Perhaps unlike you, I do not support the complete annihilation of the white race.”
But like you say, you’re not a racist, and don’t see the world through a racial prism of white superiority. You’re just protecting the interests of your European “tribe”. To which I’d simply respond, in a world where you can fly from the US to Europe in less than 6 hours, where people no longer marry other people who were born, raised and died within a mile of one another, does the notion of “tribe” really mean anything like it did 2000 years ago, or is it just a convenient way to mask one’s real motives?
It’s time for this conversation to come to a close as well. You’re not going to convince me that associating with others outside my “tribe”, and opposing policies that advance the interests of my “tribe” over all others, will lead to the annihilation of the white race. And I’m not going to convince you that Kirk’s own words — “The White community is ENTITLED [to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically], because, for the time being, IT IS THE ADVANCED RACE. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but IT IS A FACT that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists,” — is a tad bit racist.
Racism doesn’t exist, I’ve finally come to understand, because I’m using the wrong word to discuss odious beliefs in white racial superiority; therefore the odious beliefs do not exist. [I guess it’s kind of like “calories don’t count” if you’re eating birthday cake. If it wasn’t your birthday they would, and you’d get fat. But because a different word is used to describe the day, the calories --- and their effects --- magically vanish].
So write back one last time and denounce me as the race traitor I am, and I’ll let you have the last word without further comment. Please make it a good one, though. I’m in a discussion with another paleo who thinks I’m an “enemy of freedom” because I proposed a constitutional convention to overturn political manipulations of the Constitution’s original intent. Unlike you, he thinks the members of your “tribe” are too ignorant to have a meaningful convention and thus act for their common good.
Come to think of it, you guys might want to hold a convention of your own one day to decide whether white people should act — or not act — to avoid annihilation by race traitors like me who think it’s what you do and say that matters most, not where you were born or how easily your skin tans.
Mr. Jackson,
You continue to use the charge of “racism” the same way the leftist multicults use it, as a flypaper word. If one is loyal to his own people, then he’s a “racist,” and like flypaper, you get stuck in all the rest of it the more you try to get away from it. In this case, showing special affection for one’s own is supposed to prove that you also hate and want to murder other groups — which simply is not true. Yet you persist in it without proof. Why? My only guess is that you either want to pick a fight pretending to be conservative, or you cannot perceive the difference.
I tried reading your “Looney Liberal Chronicles” screed, but gave up when my eyes glazed over about a third of the way through. I made it through almost half of the Unibomber Manifesto before I abandoned it as disconnected, rambling, and painfully endless.
I’ve been reading the back and forth on this for the past week or so, and I can’t resist any longer.
This question has been asked in a dozen different ways, but never answered: “Do paleoconservatives believe that the white race is superior to other races?” A simple yes or no will suffice.
It has been amazing to watch these defenders of “true conservatism” engage in verbal gymnastices as they try to divert, misdirect, mischaracterize, or redefine the debate. So, rather than a thousand word response about neo-marxist terminology and tribalism, just reply with one word, either yes or no.
I think that there are many that are dying to know your answer.
mtuggle
Sorry you found the Looney Liberal Chronicles too complicated to understand.
I’ll try to use smaller words and shorter sentences in future chapters.
Hope that helps.
Phil
Dear Mountain Man,
Your question is a perfect example of what I’ve been talking about:
“Do paleoconservatives believe that the white race is superior to other races?”
Your attitude is that we’re guilty until we prove ourselves innocent — and I truly doubt there’s any way we could ever prove innocence in your eyes.
That’s my objection to the charge of “racism” — it’s incorporates too many meanings. In this politically correct time we’re in, it is taboo to notice that racial differences exist, or that you object to forced busing, open borders, or affirmative action. If you express any racial heresy, then you are lumped in with Nazis.
The use of Southern Poverty Law Center tactics, as well as the sloppy logic behind such a stance, is anything but conservative.
Now, I ask again: what have we said or done that makes you even ask if we’re “racist”? And if Mr. Jackson has not abandoned this site to attend the latest “antifa” rally, maybe he could explain what on earth would motivate him to ask us to “edify us all on the proper way to lynch a Negro”? If you make the accusation, you have to prove the case, and the multicults on this board have failed to do that.
And why do you post on a “conservative” site?
Mountain Man:
You asked mtuggle if he thinks that white people are superior. You didn’t ask about busing, open borders, or affirmative action. You asked a simple question, which mtuggle will not answer. That is an answer in itself.
mtuggle:
You asked “what have we said or done that makes you even ask if we’re ‘racist’?” Oh, gee, I don’t know. Maybe it’s all those paleo comments I cited about the smell of non-whites, the support for segregation, and the talk about race wars and racial annihilation. That would be my first clue. Reading American Renaissance and Vanguard News Network, which has as its slogan “No Jews, Just Right — was the second clue. Just have a glance at their article commenting on my position: “Experts Agree: Ni**ers Greater Problem Than Racism”, which reacted in horror at the incredible statement I made that we should judge people for what they actually do, rather than classify them by the color of their skin http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/index.php?s=phillip+ellis+jackson
And then you ask “what on earth would motivate [Jackson] to ask us to ‘edify us all on the proper way to lynch a Negro’?” I realize that you have difficulty with your comprehension skills as you indicated in comment 39 (to which I replied in comment 41), so I’ll type my response slowly.
Repeating what I said earlier, I quoted your hero Richard M. Weaver: “Some of the means, for example the Ku Klux Klan, were irregular, but essentially it was the political genius of Jefferson, of Washington, of Madison, and of Pinckney expressing itself in times of trouble and oppression.”
So according to the paleos, Kirk and Weaver are “correct” about segregation because white skin color is a clear-cut sign of racial superiority; (a determination made, coincidently, by white skinned people based on the criteria established by white skinned people.) Moreover, the only problem with the KKK is that some of their methods were “irregular” (not “wrong”). What, then, was the “regular” way to lynch a man simply because he had the wrong color skin?
The KKK is not Thomas Jefferson in a hood. I post on a conservative website because I am a conservative, not some racist fool who feels perfectly at home on the Vanguard News Network.
Thanks for an excellent, judicious discussion, Mr. Phillips. But of course, Philip Ellis Jackson had to hijack the comments section – as usual.
For the uninitiated, who wish to actually read general comments, particularly those from the author, Dan Philips, rather than be inundated by Jackson’s pre-recorded megaphone rants, I have developed a reading method. (It is a descendant of the method for dealing with the endless sentences of many philosophy professors that I developed as a German university student. I would first read only the initial and the last clause of a sentence, before reading the countless dependent clauses coming between them.) Read Jackson’s first statement, which is a cut-and-paste that he copies into every thread touching on paleoconservatism, which is why he can “respond” so quickly. Thereafter, however, read only the statements by other commenters, even those who are responding to Jackson. I guarantee you, you won’t miss a thing.
This method has been scientifically developed over months of reading Jackson hijack threads with his own method, whereby he combines old comments he has simply cut and paste into new threads, identifies paleoconservatism and Nazism, and endlessly repeats his demand that any self-identified conservative resisting him prove his anti-racist bona fides.
You would think that by reading responses to Jackson’s later diatribes without reading the diatribes, you would not be able to follow the thread, but in fact, this method works better than does actually reading all of his endless entries, since your mind will remain fresh. By contrast, reading all of Jackson’s rants will leave you exhausted, not to mention embittered for having let him waste so much of your time.
I will respond, however, to one specific demand of Jackson’s: That paleoconservatives say whether they consider the white race superior to the other races. While I do not presume to speak on paleos’ behalf, they would be fools not to consider the white race superior. Blacks consider the black race superior; Asians consider the Asian race superior; whites consider their own race superior. Public pronunciamentos and private euphemisms notwithstanding, I have never met a white leftist or neo-conservative who in private conversation did not imply that he took white racial superiority for granted.
Many thanks to Nick Stix for having the courage to say what Mike Tuggle wouldn’t: “While I do not presume to speak on paleos’ behalf, they would be fools not to consider the white race superior.” Of course, you DO presume to speak for all Asians and Blacks when you make the blanket statement “Blacks consider the black race superior; Asians consider the Asian race superior”. Since you now presume to speak on behalf of all non-whites, maybe you could answer another question for me. Do all racists look alike?
I’m not at all surprised that you look to Germany to develop a method for analyzing racial issues. They pretty much led the way on this in the 1930s. As for your concern that I keep repeating paleo-racist pronouncements to illustrate my points that mtuggle and others tried to ignore, I would simply point out again that these are the paleo’s OWN WORDS. Sorry if they offend you. They certainly offend me.
As for your final comment “Public pronunciamentos and private euphemisms notwithstanding, I have never met a white leftist or neo-conservative who in private conversation did not imply that he took white racial superiority for granted,” perhaps you should get out more. According to paleo-logic I’m both. The fact that you, mtuggle and others are white and write the things you do is evidence enough that the inherent claim for white superiority cannot be met.
By the way, I had a comment for mtuggle that preceded this that has yet to appear. Every time I quote the paleos own words the racism filter snags the post for review. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. It will eventually get freed once the IC editors understand that I’m not actually associating myself with that thought process, but distancing myself from it.
It’s just a simple question, mtuggle. This is a discussion thread, not a court of law. Dr. Jackson suggested that paleoconservatives are racist and quoted some of their proponents. You can define the word racist or trace its origins all you want, but I just want my question answered.
As I said, I’m not interested in more obfuscation. You can tell me if you think the white race is superior to other races, and I will decide for myself if I think your position is racist, unchristian, unwarranted, hateful, or whatever. I decide for myself the validity of your opinion.
Mr. Stix has weighed in. However, he makes broad generalizations, and such things are rarely accurate. I am white, and I do not consider my race superior (or inferior for that matter). I do not know anyone that considers themselves superior to other races
My thinking is not governed by skin pigment. My faith informs me that all men are equal in God’s sight, and all men are valuable. My country affirms this in the founding documents. My common sense tell me that there is no value in asserting my supposed superiority.
In fact, I would rather think of others as superior to me. Thinking one’s self as superior is a manifestation of pride and arrogance. Such characteristics are without merit.
Mountain man
Your comments are elegant, wise and profound. You summarized the issue beautifully.
I’m proud to be associated with your comments, rather than the “racial annihilation” of mtuggle, or the “racial superiority” of Nick Stix. We are known by the company we keep, and the enemies we make. I feel fortunate on both counts.
Conservatism cannot let racial supremacists define our philosophy. They are an aberration and an abomination, and I’m happy to have helped reveal them for what they are simply by letting them articulate their own position.
My hope is that Nick Stix, Mike Tuggle, Old Republic and the other Vanguard News alumni get together and supplement Dan Phillips’ essay with one of their own telling us all about their white superiority (using that term, and applying that concept to their paleo policy objectives), since this non-racist racist notion is clearly a central core of paleoconservative thought as it is practiced by its proponents.
It would be a wonderful extension of Dan’s original, academic view of the so-called paleoconservative movement, which is now completely on display for everyone to see.
Mr. Jackson,
There you go again.
Apparently, Mr. Stix has you pegged. Your faux conservatism complements your faux debating. At least you’re consistent.
Again, you pronounce conservatives as “racist” without a shred of evidence, which confirms what I said earlier about the attitude of those who use the term — they want to silence critics, rather than have a genuine debate.
If you think conservatism is about ideas, rather than tradition, then you are a Neocon, not a real conservative. The cultural traditions that make our people distinctive are what we seek to preserve, not some sterile ideological purity. Those traditions are durable and adaptive, but, like any other living thing, need a physical space to call their own, which is what a sovereign nation is for. One of the legitimate functions of government is to protect its people from invasion, a duty the Neocons have not only failed to uphold, but actively betrayed by encouraging a Third-World floodtide to colonize our nation. That’s not governance, that’s vandalism.
I do not imagine that my comments will convince you or Mr. Man — both of you have shown yourself impervious to facts or argument, preferring instead the comforting ideological bubble of your radical egalitarianism, which you show off as halos of tolerance. (I was especially touched by Mr. Man’s rejection of “superiority” with his state ment that, “In fact, I would rather think of others as superior to me.” I’m inclined to agree.)
But this little thread does have value — it will show others the crucial difference between the multicult Neocons and conservatives. If you truly want to live in a regime where our traditional rights, including habeas corpus, are erased in the name of a universal crusade for democracy, and leftist standards of “diversity” trump all others, then do so, but at least have the decency to call such an agenda what it is. It is not conservatism.
Thank you for your efforts in demonstrating this.
mtuggle. DO YOU THINK WHITES ARE SUPERIOR TO OTHER RACES?
Dear Man,
Have you stopped beating your wife?
I suppose you think that refusing to fall for a loaded question is “obfuscation.” But here’s my response.
Obviously, the white race is not “superior” in the Margaret Sanger/eugenics sense, which was defined from the “progessivist” viewpoint of continuous improvement of both individuals and society. Jesse Owens comes to mind.
I prefer my family to yours. Not that I hate your family, but I will sacrifice for mine, and work for its well-being rather than yours. It’s the same with one’s extended family, which is what a race is. As Mr. Stix pointed out, all peoples prefer their own. He wasn’t speaking for these other peoples, he was only observing human behavior. Contrary to the pronouncements of the Southern Poverty Law Center, having special affection for your own is not hate. My attitude toward other races is more like benign neglect. Their choices as a people should be respected.
And I have a special affection for the values and practices of my people, including its political values as defined by generations of experience as a coherent culture. That is genuine conservatism, first enunciated by Edmund Burke, who preceded Leo Strauss and Irving Kristol by a good two hundred years. So it’s Neocons who are “an aberration and an abomination” rather than paleocons, contra Mr. Jackson.
Those of you who love big government, want to continue the self-destructive global crusade for democracy, and practice “creative destruction” of traditional cultures so you can re-engineer the world into a globalist utopia can go right ahead. But calling such an agenda “conservative” is deceptive and dishonest.
Now, please respond in kind: why do you call yourself conservative when you’re actually promoting the leftist/multicult agenda?
This is why you can’t have an honest conversation with a paleocon.
Here’s Mike Tuggle’s benign characterization of Nick Stix white supremacy comments: “As Mr. Stix pointed out, ALL PEOPLES PREFER THEIR OWN. He wasn’t speaking for these other peoples, he was only observing human behavior.”
Here’s Nick Stix’s actual words: “While I do not presume to speak on paleos’ behalf, THEY WOULD BE FOOLS NOT TO CONSIDER THE WHITE RACE SUPERIOR. Blacks consider the black race superior; Asians consider the Asian race superior; whites consider their own race superior. Public pronunciamentos and private euphemisms notwithstanding, I have never met a white leftist or neo-conservative who in private conversation did not imply that he took WHITE RACIAL SUPERIORITY for granted.”
The more we let these people talk, the more they expose themselves for who and what they really are.
mtuggle,
Your creative redefining of terms and endless verbiage about things no one asked you about is getting tiresome. It took you 818 words and three posts to render an answer to a yes-or-no question. And rather than asking me similar questions about my perspectives regarding – - big government, wanting to continue the self-destructive global crusade for democracy, and practicing “creative destruction” of traditional cultures so I can re-engineer the world into a globalist utopia – - , you simply let loose a tirade. At least Dr. Jackson quoted other paleos and asked if you were of like mind.
I wonder, do you feel better in suggesting that I was inferior?
For the record, I am not interested in big government. I think government ought to be returned to its constitutional limits and its wealth redistribution programs discontinued. I am not interested in democracy, for America was not conceived as a democracy. I am not interested in destroying traditional cultures, nor do I think traditional cultures have any particular feature that obligates me to preserve them. I am not interested in a globalist utopia, for such a thing is not achievable with sinful man.
You ask, “Now, please respond in kind: why do you call yourself conservative when you’re actually promoting the leftist/multicult agenda?” I wonder how you determined this about me, since I did not even enter the thread until post #40, and only then to pry loose an answer from you or other paleos regarding a legitimate question asked by another poster.
Nevertheless, I will not respond with 818 words to answer your question. My answer is this: I do not promote the leftist/multicult agenda.
You paleos seem to want to impose some sort of orthodoxy regarding what “true” conservatism is, and slap down those who deviate. That is a technique of the left, sir.
If a person believes in constitutionally limited government, liberty exercised in a biblically moral context, and free market capitalism, then they have exhibited sufficient credentials for me to consider them a conservative. All the rest is pretty much just nit-picking.
Mountain man —
But you didn’t answer Mike Tuggle’s most important question of all when he counter-responded to the issues you raised about paleoconservatism and white supremacy. “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Somehow this is important to his political philosophy, and inquiring minds need to know! [And these people want to be taken seriously?!?]
Take care,
Phil
I beat my wife to the TV remote last night, so the answer is no.