What is Paleoconservatism?
Paleoconservatism is a strand of American conservatism that claims to be the original one. The name uses the Greek for old, and it was picked in part to set the movement apart from the neoconservatives. Its followers care about inherited culture, religion, the family, regional loyalties and the small-scale republic they find in the founding era. They mistrust a big federal government, overseas wars and alliances, trade agreements and large-scale immigration.
Core beliefs
- A nation is held together by common customs, faith and memory, and not by ideas alone.
- Power belongs as close as possible to the states, the towns and the family.
- America should stay out of foreign wars and avoid rebuilding other countries.
- Tariffs and other policies should look after domestic workers and industry.
- Immigration should be held down so that communities stay cohesive.
- Time-tested moral codes and social roles keep society steady.
History
The movement looks back to the Old Right of the 1930s and 1940s, whose members fought the New Deal and opposed entering foreign wars. It also draws on the Southern Agrarians, who published I'll Take My Stand in 1930, and on traditionalists such as Richard Weaver, who wrote Ideas Have Consequences (1948), and Russell Kirk. The name itself arose in the 1980s. At that time, traditionalists felt crowded out as neoconservatives gained sway in the Republican Party and in Washington. Writers linked to the camp included the literary scholar M. E. Bradford and the columnist Samuel Francis, and the magazine Chronicles became a home for its views. When the Cold War ended, paleoconservatives called for pulling back from global commitments, and in the 1990s some of them ran insurgent campaigns built on tariffs and limits on immigration.
Variants
Some paleoconservatives are above all religious traditionalists, many of them Catholic or conservative Protestant. Others care most about regional identity, especially in the American South. Paleolibertarians share the dislike of intervention and central power but give far more weight to free markets. In recent years part of the movement has overlapped with national conservatism and right populism, though paleoconservatives usually remain more local in outlook and wary of a powerful central leader.
Criticisms
Critics on the left say paleoconservative views on immigration, race and culture shut out minorities and newcomers, and some scholars tie parts of the movement to nativism. Mainstream conservatives and neoconservatives say its foreign policy would weaken allies and leave the country less safe. Free-market economists say tariffs would push up prices and slow growth. Some liberals say defining the nation by ancestry or faith cannot be squared with equal citizenship. Paleoconservatives answer that rooted communities are the base of any lasting freedom.
In practice
Paleoconservatism has never been the guiding creed of a major American party. Still, its themes moved toward the mainstream of the right. Its opposition to the Iraq War of 2003, to trade deals and to high immigration was once a minority view and later became common. The movement keeps its own network of magazines, research groups and writers outside the party machines. On the 12 axes the profile is near the top on Morality, Religion, Culture, Technology and Trade, but on the Local side of Structure.