Anthology presents “old tradition” of paleoconservatism to a new audience

“The most obvious candidate for worst decision by the [Supreme] Court is Roe v. Wade,” remarks Stephen Presser in his contribution to A Paleoconservative Anthology: New Voices for an Old Tradition.

Obvious indeed, yet according to Presser, we should not let the murderousness of the Court’s ruling overshadow the fact that such a top-down, nationalized pro-abortion policy was also grotesquely unconstitutional. The legalization of abortion was not so much a cause as a symptom; Roe v. Wade came about due to longstanding disregard of the Constitution at law schools and universities, and such disregard has set the stage for a legion of other pathologies as well. America was intended to operate by the principles of federalism, contends Presser, and in a regime where ends have long been pushed via unconstitutional means, we should not be surprised to observe a degraded, anarchic national character.

As Presser notes, everyone who ever took social studies is familiar with the idea of “checks and balances,” whereby the President, Congress, and Supreme Court are supposed to keep each other from overreaching. In practice, however, the tripartite government has not prevented the U.S. federal government as a whole from becoming bloated beyond anything the Founders could have imagined. While they may squabble among themselves over which branch should be in the driver’s seat, the inhabitants of the Beltway typically agree that power should remain … in the Beltway.

What people forget, argues Presser, is that the Founders established a

second set of checks and balances secured by the American principle of ‘Federalism,’ which allocated powers and responsibilities between two different governments, the state and the federal. The paleoconservative, then, believes that the federal government is one of limited and enumerated powers and that, as the Tenth Amendment clearly provides, the powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states, or the people themselves.

As another contributor to the anthology points out, there is much more historical support for paleoconservative jurisprudence than is commonly realized. Even in The Federalist Papers themselves, James Madison had explained how “the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined,” while “those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson had characterized the Tenth Amendment as “the Foundation of the Constitution.” At the very least, suggests William Watkins in “Jeffersonian Constitutionalism,” there is something profoundly disingenuous in a conservative establishment which hails Madison and Jefferson as all-American demigods, even as it pointedly ignores their consistent hostility toward what they called “consolidated government.”

As for the odd term paleoconservative, perhaps it may be defined by opposing it to what it most definitely is not–neoconservatism.

The neoconservative/paleoconservative divide can be traced back to the late Cold War, as certain leftists became hostile toward the Soviet version of socialism, as well as disillusioned with the Democratic Party’s peacenik wing. These leftists migrated to the right while retaining a distinctively leftist devotion to egalitarianism, progress, and democratic liberation. For neoconservatives, America is not to be cherished as a tangible home with a particular history, but as a purely ideological state based upon human rights and transformative capitalism.

So “it would appear that neoconservatism is a form of radical leftism concealed in ill-fitting conservative guise,” concludes Keith Preston in “Revisiting the Clash Between Neoconservatives and Paleoconservatives,” another of the many provocative pieces in this book. Unlike genuine conservatives, Preston notices, the neoconservatives took little real interest in issues like border control, preserving prayer in public schools, or the rise of divorce, but they did and do “wish to exploit American military power and global influence on behalf of their own revolutionary creed.” Prominent neoconservative diehards include Dick and Liz Cheney, the late John McCain, and William Kristol; other neocons such as John Bolton have capitalized upon the MAGA movement.

As defenders of tradition, paleoconservatives are not only implacably opposed to the neoconservative project, but resent the mischaracterization of the latter as “conservative.” By definition, a conservative values stability and order, and sees war as at best a very last resort. Paleos are also suspicious of the Enlightenment’s idealization of democracy and equality, and often accuse neoconservatives of regarding America as a religion rather than a country.

Where neocons let on as if the modern era has been one of continual and unequivocal progress, paleoconservative luminaries like Paul Gottfried have long warned that “Western society is on a disastrous social and political course.”

That said, there is no paleoconservative party line regarding the root causes for America’s crisis: Some look askance at the centralization of power which followed the American Civil War, others dwell upon the cataclysmic French Revolution, and of course Catholic paleoconservatives usually have a thing or two to say about the principles of the Protestant Reformation. What all paleoconservatives are convinced of, Gottfried continues, is that “the social disintegration they lament is not of recent origin.”

Again, a contrast may be made with talk radio hosts, Republican marketers, and mainstream conservative celebrities, who have for decades tried to sell “The Myth of the Reagan Revolution,” to cite yet another provocative title from this anthology. We are always just one election away from setting things right and making it morning again in America, Republican careerists tell us.

Yet even back in the 1980s, the paleoconservatives were warning against such naïve optimism. There are no quick, painless fixes, and we could not outsource the job of caring for our country even if our politicians were trustworthy. (They aren’t.) Generations of reckless leadership, dishonesty, and irresponsibility got us into this mess, and it is delusional to think we can merely vote our way out of it.

A Paleoconservative Anthology: New Voices for an Old Tradition<.i>
Edited by Paul Gottfried. Contributions by Wayne Allensworth, David Azerrad, Mark G. Brennan, C. Jay Engel, Pedro Gonzalez, Grant Havers, Carl F. Horowitz, Stephen B. Presser, Keith Preston, Alexander Riley, Joseph Scotchie, William J. Watkins.
Lexington Books, 2023
Hardcover/Paperback, 210 pages