Wall the border. Abolish the income tax. Withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan and, while we’re at it, the UN and NATO, too. Abolish NAFTA to protect American jobs. Who believes in these kinds of things? The paleoconservatives, that’s who.
It may sound like something related to dinosaurs and its critics would contend that it is in fact a group of near-extinct political dinosaurs.
I’m here to explain why intelligent people are paleoconservatives and why you should engage their ideas rather than dismiss them. Maybe even you can learn to think like a paleocon.
It’s not a political message that resonates at Whitman. It’s probably not even a message most Whitties have ever actually heard advocated. However, paleocons are part of a serious debate over the meaning of conservatism and, even more essentially, the meaning of America.
So yes, you should care.
Not all conservatives are paleoconservatives, not even close. In fact, the paleocons make up just a fraction of what we could term the “conservative movement.”
Paleoconservatism’s best-known representative is Pat Buchanan. If you go to Whitman, you have probably heard nothing about the man except that he is a racist and a xenophobe. Indeed, Buchanan has many sound bites that may be described as offensive at best.
But there is deep thought behind the paleoconservative position.
Paleoconservatives, unlike almost every other American political ideology today, are not Lockeans. That means that they don’t see America merely as a “contractual” agreement between autonomous individuals about rights and liberties. They also don’t see America as simply a group of self-interested “market forces.”
They reject the Hobbesian idea of a “state of nature” existing before society. Society has always existed and every individual is born, not contracted, into a family and a society.
America is a nation forged of shared culture, history, language, religion and geography. It is the incarnation of our motto: Out of many, one. A paleocon would not blush to say in Burkean fashion that America is the spiritual connection between our ancestors, ourselves and our children.
Paleoconservatives are old-school, drawing mostly on pre- or anti-Enlightenment thought. Hence their prefix paleo, which means ancient. Paleocons are inspired by such thinkers as Burke, Maistre and de Tocqueville for their critique of social contracts and arguments for tradition, religion and culture.
Paleocons argue that before the state there is the nation and before politics there is culture.
In American terms, that means that what’s most important about America isn’t its external political institutions alone, but the political culture that under-girds them.
The rights in our constitution and common law are rights derived from centuries of British political and legal experience, not divine, innovative or contractual. If the culture that produced them dies, then indeed they will die despite the existence of words on old parchment.
The most perceptive observer of American politics, de Tocqueville, thought that what was so exceptional about America was not its system of institutional checks and balances or a written constitution (easily imitated with disparate results) but rather its political culture and spirit that make such a system work.
So on the issue of immigration, for instance, paleoconservatives are cautious about allowing massive amounts of immigrants from areas that do not have the same political or cultural customs as the European-British-American traditions.
It’s not that they don’t like other races or cultures, or object to the fact that America is “a nation of immigrants”: Patrick Buchanan is as Irish and Catholic as they come. Rather, they argue merely that for a state to survive it must have a relatively assimilated population with similar cultural norms and assumptions upon which to form itself.
Similarly, from economics to social issues, the question for paleoconservatives is whether an action strengthens the fundamental units of our society, namely our families, small businesses, family farms, churches and local communities. Indeed, there is much within the scope of paleoconservative values that liberals will find compelling.
With their heavy emphasis on culture, paleoconservatives are not a “normal” political movement. One of their key publications, Chronicles, calls itself “A Magazine of American Culture” and is as likely to discuss theology as immigration reform.
Personally, I prefer the more explicitly political The American Conservative Magazine for my dose of paleoconservative analysis.
Hopefully this painfully brief introduction to the deep intellectual critique of America-as-usual by paleoconservatives will lead to more questions and more understanding among mutually incomprehensible segments of our society.
