Paleoconservatism (sometimes shortened to
paleocon) is a predominantly United States-based
conservative political philosophy which stresses
traditionalism, limited government, Judeo-Christian
ethics, regionalism, nationalism and European
identity.Paleoconservativism's concerns overlap
those of the Old Right that opposed the New
Deal in the 1930s and 1940s as well as American
social conservatism of the late 20th century.
According to the international relations scholar
Michael Foley, "paleoconservatives press for
restrictions on immigration, a rollback of
multicultural programmes, the decentralization
of federal policy, the restoration of controls
upon free trade, a greater emphasis upon economic
nationalism and non-interventionism in the
conduct of American foreign policy, and a
generally revanchist outlook upon a social
order in need of recovering old lines of distinction
and in particular the assignment of roles
in accordance with traditional categories
of gender, ethnicity, and race".Political
theorist Paul Gottfried is credited with coining
the term in the 1980s. He says the term originally
referred to various Americans, such as conservative
and traditionalist Catholics and agrarian
Southerners, who turned to anti-communism
during the Cold War.
== Core beliefs ==
=== 
Name ===
The prefix "paleo" derives from the Greek
root παλαιός, meaning "ancient" or
"old". It is somewhat tongue-in-cheek and
refers to the paleoconservatives' claim to
represent a more historic, authentic conservative
tradition than that found in neoconservatism.
Adherents of paleoconservatism often describe
themselves simply as "paleo". Neoconservative
Rich Lowry of National Review claims the prefix
"is designed to obscure the fact that it is
a recent ideological creation of post–Cold
War politics".The paleoconservatives use the
term "conservative" somewhat differently from
some American opponents of leftism. Paleoconservatives
may reject attempts by Rush Limbaugh and others
to graft short-term policy goals—such as
school choice, enterprise zone and faith-based
initiatives—into the core of conservatism.
This is mainly due to the paleoconservatives'
desire to see these incorporated as long-term
institutional goals, rather than short-term
victories for the movement itself. In this
way, paleoconservatives are generally regarded
as taking the "long view" toward American
conservatism, willing to suffer temporary
setbacks while never taking their aim off
the goal of establishing the primacy of conservative
thought into American politics.
Moreover, Samuel T. Francis, Thomas Fleming
and some other paleoconservatives de-emphasized
the "conservative" part of the "paleoconservative"
label, saying that they do not want the status
quo preserved. Fleming and Paul Gottfried
called such thinking "stupid tenacity" and
described it as "a series of trenches dug
in defense of last year's revolution". Francis
defined authentic conservatism as "the survival
and enhancement of a particular people and
its institutionalized cultural expressions".
He said of the paleoconservative movement:
What paleoconservatism tries to tell Americans
is that the dominant forces in their society
are no longer committed to conserving the
traditions, institutions, and values that
created and formed it, and, therefore, that
those who are really conservative in any serious
sense and wish to live under those traditions,
institutions, and values need to oppose the
dominant forces and form new ones.
The earliest mention of the word "paleoconservative"
listed in Nexis is an article by J. Patrick
Lewis in the October 20, 1984 issue of The
Nation, referring to academic economists who
allegedly work to redefine poverty. The fourth
edition of the American Heritage Dictionary
lists a generic, informal use of the term,
meaning "extremely or stubbornly conservative
in political matters". Outside of the United
States, the word is sometimes spelled "palaeoconservative".
=== Conservative heritage ===
Many paleoconservatives identify themselves
as classical conservatives and trace their
philosophy to the Old Right Republicans of
the interwar period which influenced the United
States not to join the League of Nations,
reduce immigration with the passage of the
Immigration Act of 1924 and oppose Franklin
D. Roosevelt. They often look back even further,
to Edmund Burke as well as the anti-federalist
movement that stretched from the days of Thomas
Jefferson to John C. Calhoun.Paleoconservativism
is opposed to open immigration by non-Europeans,
and disapproves of United States intervention
overseas.Paleoconservatism is strongly critical
of neoconservatism in print media, talk radio
and cable TV news. Paleoconservatives may
say they are not conservatives in the sense
that they wish to preserve existing institutions
or seek to slow the growth of modern big-government
conservatism. Rather, they promote Republicanism
as a feature of Western heritage and customs.
Paleoconservatives see neoconservatives as
empire-builders and themselves as defenders
of the republic.As with other conservatives,
paleoconservatives tend to oppose abortion
on demand and gay marriage while supporting
handgun ownership.
=== Human nature, tradition and reason ===
Paleoconservatives argue that since human
nature is limited and finite, any attempt
to create a man-made utopia is headed for
disaster and potential carnage. Instead, they
lean toward tradition, family, customs, religious
institutions and classical learning to provide
wisdom and guidance.Fleming stated this opposition
to abstract ideals in a way that critic David
Brooks called a "startling crescendo":
Among the most dangerous of our theoretical
illusions are the political fantasies that
can be summed up in words like democracy;
equality, and natural rights; the principle
of one man, one vote and the American tradition
of self-government. No one who lives in the
world with his eyes open can actually believe
in any of this.
The political scientist W. Wesley McDonald
explains the opposition to ideology this way:
In a humane social order, a community of spirit
is fostered in which generations are bound
together. According to [Russell] Kirk, this
link is achieved through moral and social
norms that transcend the particularities of
time and place and, because they form the
basis of genuine civilized existence, can
only be neglected at great peril. These norms,
reflected in religious dogmas, traditions,
humane letters, social habit and custom, and
prescriptive institutions, create the sources
of the true community that is the final end
of politics.
Along these lines, Joseph Sobran argues in
his Pensees that Western civilization relies
on civility at the center of the society:
Civility is the relationship among citizens
in a republic. It corresponds to the condition
we call "freedom," which is not just an absence
of restraint or coercion, but the security
of living under commonly recognized rules
of conduct. Not all these rules are enforced
by the state; legal institutions of civility
depend on the ethical substratum and collapse
when it is absent. And in fact the colloquial
sense of civility as good manners is relevant
to its political meaning: citizens typically
deal with each other by consent, and they
have to say "please" and "thank you" to each
other.
Certain paleoconservatives say that tradition
is a better guide than reason. For example,
Mel Bradford wrote that certain questions
are settled before any serious deliberation
concerning a preferred course of conduct may
begin. This ethic is based in a "culture of
families, linked by friendship, common enemies,
and common projects". So a good conservative
keeps "a clear sense of what Southern grandmothers
have always meant in admonishing children,
'we don't do that'".
Fleming calls tradition "a body of wisdom
and truth and a set of attitudes and behavior
handed down from one generation to another.
It is our parents' respect for their grandfathers
that we reflect when we refuse to think ourselves
wiser than our ancestors and do not presume
to condemn their shortcomings". By following
tradition, Sobran said that society can maintain
continuity with the past through words, rituals,
records, commemorations and laws: There is
no question of "resisting change." The only
question is what can and should be salvaged
from "devouring time." Conservation is a labor,
not indolence, and it takes discrimination
to identify and save a few strands of tradition
in the incessant flow of mutability. In fact
conservation is so hard that it could never
be achieved by sheer conscious effort. Most
of it has to be done by habit, as when we
speak in such a way as to make ourselves understood
by others without their having to consult
a dictionary, and thereby give a little permanence
to the kind of tradition that is a language.
Furthermore, James Kalb argues that tradition
succeeds where ideology fails because it includes
habits and attitudes about things that are
hard to articulate rationally. Many aspects
of social life resist clear definition, so
technocratic approaches to social policy deserve
suspicion: Our knowledge is partial and attained
with difficulty. The effects of political
proposals are difficult to predict and as
the proposals become more ambitious their
effects become incalculable. We can't evaluate
political ideas without accepting far more
beliefs, presumptions and attitudes than we
could possibly judge critically.
=== Concrete roots ===
Many paleoconservatives also say that Westerners
have lost touch with their classical and European
heritage, to the point that they are in danger
of losing their civilization. Fleming wrote:
The decadence of a civilization by loss of
faith and vigour can be observed more than
once in history. What is extraordinary about
the American situation is the stupidity. The
Romans, such is my impression, did not become
stupid and incompetent with their decadence.
Americans have not lost faith in their cultural
inheritance—they have been entirely separated
from it. How this happened is one of the few
topics still worth exploring in this Twilight.
Paleoconservatives tend to dislike abstract
principles presented without connection to
concrete roots, like religion, heritage, or
traditional institutions. This distaste for
universalism includes the doctrinal conclusions
by socialists, neo-Thomists and Straussians.
For example, Bradford wrote in A Better Guide
Than Reason (citing Michael Oakeshott): The
only freedom which can last is a freedom embodied
somewhere, rooted in a history, located in
space, sanctioned by genealogy, and blessed
by a religious establishment. The only equality
which abstract rights, insisted upon outside
the context of politics, are likely to provide
is the equality of universal slavery. It is
a lesson which Western man is only now beginning
to learn.
Some paleoconservatives also profess a conservative
value-centered historicism, which Gottfried
defines as "the belief that historical circumstances
set values". This is distinguished from nihilism,
postmodernism, and moral relativism. Francis
argued that this position is a "Burkean appeal
to tradition". For example, Edmund Burke wrote
in his Reflections on the Revolution in France:
I cannot stand forward, and give praise or
blame to anything which relates to human actions,
and human concerns, on a simple view of the
object, as it stands stripped of every relation,
in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical
abstraction. Circumstances (which with some
gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality
to every political principle its distinguishing
colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances
are what render every civil and political
scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
Claes G. Ryn says that life has "an enduring
purpose, but one that manifests itself differently
as individuals and circumstances are different".
He writes: For the conservative, the universal
imperative that binds human beings does not
announce its purpose in simple, declaratory
statements. How, then, does one discern its
demands? Sometimes only with difficulty. Only
through effort can the good or true or beautiful
be discovered, and they must be realized differently
in different historical circumstances. The
same universal values have diverse manifestations.
Some of the concrete instantiations of universality
take us by surprise. Because there is no simple
roadmap to good, human beings need freedom
and imagination to find it. Universality has
nothing to do with uniformity.
=== Anti-federalism ===
Anti-federalism (see the American anti-Federalist
movement) is another key aspect of paleoconservatism,
which adherents see as an antitype to the
managerial state. The paleoconservative flavor
urges honoring the principle of subsidiarity,
that is decentralized government, local rule,
private property and minimal bureaucracy.
In an international context, this view would
be known as federalism and paleoconservatives
often look to John C. Calhoun for inspiration.
As to the role of statecraft in society, Fleming
says it should not be confused with soulcraft.
He gives his summary of the paleoconservative
position:Our basic position on the state has
always been twofold: 1) a recognition that
man is a social and political animal who cannot
be treated as an "individual" without doing
damage to human nature. In this sense libertarian
theory is as wrong and as potentially harmful
as communism. The commonwealth is therefore
a natural and necessary expression of human
nature that provides for the fulfillment of
human needs, and 2) the modern state is a
cancerous form of polity that has metastasized
and poisoned the natural institutions from
which the state derives all legitimacy—family,
church, corporation (in the broadest sense),
and neighborhood. Thus, it is almost always
a mistake to try to use the modern state to
accomplish moral or social ends.For example,
Russell Kirk argued that most government tasks
should be performed at the local or state
level. This is intended to ward off centralization
and protect community sentiment by putting
the decision-making power closer to the populace.
He rooted this in the Christian notion of
original sin as since humanity is flawed,
society should not put too much power in a
few hands. Gerald J. Russello concluded that
this involved "a different way of thinking
about government, one based on an understanding
of political society as beginning in place
and sentiment, which in turn supports written
laws".
This anti-federalism extends to culture too.
In general, this means that different regional
groups should be able to maintain their own
distinct identity. For example, Fleming and
Michael Hill argue that the American South
and every other region have the right to "preserve
their authentic cultural traditions and demand
the same respect from others". In the Southern
context, they call on citizens to "take control
of their own governments, their own institutions,
their own culture, their own communities and
their own lives" and "wean themselves from
dependence on federal largesse". They say:A
concern for states' rights, local self-government
and regional identity used to be taken for
granted everywhere in America. But the United
States is no longer, as it once was, a federal
union of diverse states and regions. National
uniformity is being imposed by the political
class that runs Washington, the economic class
that owns Wall Street and the cultural class
in charge of Hollywood and the Ivy League.In
a similar fashion, Pat Buchanan argued during
the 1996 campaign that the social welfare
should be left to the control of individual
states. He also called for abolishing the
Department of Education and handing decision-making
over to parents, teachers and districts. Controversies
such as evolution, busing and curriculum standards
would be settled on a local basis. In addition,
he opposed a 1998 Puerto Rican statehood plan
on the grounds that the island would be ripped
from its cultural and linguistic roots: "Let
Puerto Rico remain Puerto Rico, and let the
United States remain the United States and
not try to absorb, assimilate and Americanize
a people whose hearts will forever belong
to that island".
=== Family ===
Paleoconservatives often argue that modern
managerial society is a threat to stable families.
Allan C. Carlson, former president of the
Rockford Institute, argues: The family is
the natural and fundamental social unit, inscribed
in our nature as human beings, rooted in marriage,
rooted in the commitment to bring new life
into the world, and rooted in a deep respect
for both ancestors and posterity.
He calls this a universal rule of human nature,
true for Westerners and non-Westerners alike.
He also argues that happiness "comes through
natural family bonds" and that "the future
of any nation shall be by way of the family".
He defines family as "a man and a woman living
in a socially sanctioned bond called marriage
for the purposes of propagating and rearing
children, sharing intimacy and resources,
and conserving lineage, property, and tradition".
To be human is to be familial. Any significant
departure from the family rooted in stable
marriage, the welcoming of children, and respect
for ancestors and posterity—any deviation
from this social structure makes us in a way
less "human": that is, I think it fair to
say, the true message of modern science.
Sobran picks up this same theme, saying that
heterosexual marriage is hard-coded into human
nature: [Even] the Pope can’t change the
nature of marriage. It existed, by necessity
of human nature, long before Jesus or even
Abraham... This has nothing to do with mere
disapproval of sodomy. Even societies that
were indifferent to sodomy saw no reason to
treat same-sex domestic partnerships as marriages.
Why not? Because such unions don’t produce
children... To put it as unromantically as
possible, people who have children should
be stuck with each other, sharing the responsibility.
Paleoconservatives also question the validity
of gender feminism in similar ways, some questioning
feminism in both its radical and moderate
forms. They say that the push for total gender
equality dehumanizes both men and women, damaging
the nuclear family and sacralizing abortion.
Certain attitudes toward feminism also create
room for the managerial state to try engineering
sexual equality. Gottfried described this
position, which was influenced by scholar
Allan Carlson, thus: The change of women's
role, from being primarily mothers to self-defined
professionals, has been a social disaster
that continues to take its toll on the family.
Rather than being the culminating point of
Western Christian gentility, the movement
of women into commerce and politics may be
seen as exactly the opposite, the descent
by increasingly disconnected individuals into
social chaos.
==== Post-family order ====
Allan C. Carlson says that we live in a "post-family
order", in which elites no longer accept the
centrality of family life. In response, he
calls for a pro-active social conservatism
that seeks "real alternatives to the centralized
‘corporate state’ that are compatible
with liberty and family life". He argues that
there is a permanent tension between the family
and "individualist, industrialized society".
He says the modern "abstract state" too often
sees the family as "its principal rival" and
tries to suppress it. It can also hurt family
living by the unintended consequences of public
policy with good intentions. He also chides
American Republicans "for consistently favoring
Wall Street over Main Street".
As an alternative to the "abstract state",
Carlson argues the state must recognize that
men and women "are different in reproductive,
economic, and social functions", even though
they share political and property rights.
He says that churches and other religious
bodies must step in and help rebuild "family-centered
communities". As for common people, he says:
Men and women are both called home to rebuild
families with an inner sanctity, to relearn
the authentic meanings of the ancient words
husbandry and housewifery, and to exercise
the natural family functions of education,
the care of the weak, charity, and a common
economic life.
Carlson argues that the family's greatest
challenge in the early 21st century comes
from what he calls "soft totalitarianisms",
which are "packaged around a militant secular
individualism, but still seeking to build
a marriage-free, post-family order". This
includes same-sex marriage, the left's association
of family values with abortion and "equity
feminism". Francis uses similar ideas to argue
that society should regulate sexual behavior,
specifically laws against sodomy and gays
in the military.
== Polemics ==
Other contemporary luminaries include Donald
Livingston, a Professor of Philosophy at Emory
and corresponding editor for Chronicles; Paul
Craig Roberts, an attorney and former Reagan
administration Treasury official; Joseph Sobran,
a columnist and contributing editor for Chronicles;
the novelist and essayist Chilton Williamson,
senior editor for books at Chronicles; and
the historian Clyde N. Wilson, long-time contributing
editor for Chronicles. Another prominent paleoconservative,
Theodore Pappas, is the current executive
editor of Encyclopædia Britannica.The movement
combines disparate people and ideas that might
seem incompatible in another context. Such
diversity of thought echoes the paleo opposition
to ideology and political rationalism, reflecting
the influence of thinkers like Russell Kirk
and Michael Oakeshott.Pat Buchanan argues
that a good politician must "defend the moral
order rooted in the Old and New Testament
and Natural Law"—and that "the deepest problems
in our society are not economic or political,
but moral". On the other hand, Samuel T. Francis
complained that the Christian right focuses
on certain social issues and neglects other
civilizational crises.
=== Kirkian legacy ===
Russell Kirk (1914–1994) is a key figure
in paleoconservatism, in that several of his
books present an outline of a pervasive Anglo-American
conservative tradition that exists despite
many other distinctions. His own career stretched
long enough to for him to defend Robert A.
Taft in the 1950s, write for National Review
during the Cold War, criticize neoconservatism
in the 1980s and give speeches supporting
Buchanan in 1992. One neoconservative writer,
Dan Himmelfarb, even refers to Kirk's The
Conservative Mind as "the seminal work of
paleoconservatism", even though it was first
published in 1953.Kirk developed six "canons"
of conservatism. Gerald J. Russello described
them thus:
(1) a belief in a transcendent order, which
Kirk described variously as based in tradition,
divine revelation, or natural law; (2) an
affection for the "variety and mystery" of
human existence; (3) a conviction that society
requires orders and classes that emphasize
"natural distinctions;" (4) a belief that
property and freedom are closely linked; (5)
a faith in custom, convention and prescription;
and (6) a recognition that innovation must
be tied to existing traditions and customs,
which is a respect for the political value
of prudence.
In addition, Kirk said that "all culture arises
out of religion. When religious faith decays,
culture must decline, though often seeming
to flourish for a space after the religion
which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief".Kirk
called libertarians "chirping sectaries" by
quoting T. S. Eliot and said that they and
conservatives have nothing in common apart
from their opposition to collectivism. He
called the movement "an ideological clique
forever splitting into sects still smaller
and odder, but rarely conjugating". He said
a line of division exists between believers
in "some sort of transcendent moral order"
and "utilitarians admitting no transcendent
sanctions for conduct", libertarians being
in the latter category.Kirk also popularized
the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke as
the prototypical conservative—and many paleoconservatives
consider him a hallowed ancestor. For them,
he represents a vital link between the American
right and the greater tradition of British
customs and common law. As such, his ideas
are a touchstone for a conservatism that respects
tradition, while rejecting authoritarianism.Unlike
paleoconservatives, Kirk was not particularly
influenced by the social sciences and other
"modernist disciplines".
=== Precursors ===
In the United States, the Southern Agrarians,
John T. Flynn, Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett,
Robert R. McCormick, Felix Morley and Richard
M. Weaver, among others, articulated positions
that have influenced contemporary paleoconservatives.
Some paleoconservatives embrace the decentralizing
tenets of the Anti-Federalists, such as John
Dickinson and George Mason. Neoconservative
critic David Brooks lists William Jennings
Bryan, T. S. Eliot, Allen Tate, John Crowe
Ransom, Cleanth Brooks and Walker Percy as
major paleo influences.Counter-revolutionary
(Roman Catholic) European precursors to the
paleoconservatives include Joseph de Maistre,
Charles Maurras, Juan Donoso Cortés, Klemens
Wenzel von Metternich and Pope Pius IX, specifically
in the Roman Catholic traditionalist subset
of paleoconservatism. G. K. Chesterton and
Hilaire Belloc also influence paleo thought.
Regarding Chesterton and Belloc, Sobran said:
This new, paganized Western society under
the comprehensive state would have come as
much less of a surprise to us if we'd paid
more attention to the two great English Catholic
writers of the pre-Bolshevik period. Hilaire
Belloc and G.K. Chesterton saw it coming.
In 1912, Belloc predicted the rise of a new
form of tyranny, which he called "the Servile
State," neither capitalist nor socialist,
in which one part of the population would
be forced to support the other. He was not
always accurate in detail, but he was right
in principle. He saw that the cellular structure
of Christian society was under assault.
Chesterton agreed. Together both men resisted
modernity in religion, morality, politics,
economics, and art. They celebrated the Middle
Ages, small private property, and above all
Catholicism. In a famous epigram, typically
defiant in its simplicity, Belloc proclaimed:
"Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe."
Other historical sources referenced by paleoconservatives
include Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes
and Antonio Gramsci. Contrarian leftists such
as Eugene Genovese, Christopher Lasch and
Paul Piccone have also influenced the movement.
Modern European continental conservatives
Jacques Barzun, Alain de Benoist and René
Girard have also been praised by paleoconservatives.
=== Southern traditionalism ===
According to historian Paul V. Murphy, paleoconservatives
developed a focus on "states' rights" and
political localism. From the mid-1980s onward,
Chronicles promoted a Southern traditionalist
worldview focused on national identity, regional
particularity, and skepticism of abstract
theory and centralized power. According to
Hague, Beirich, and Sebesta (2009), the antimodernism
of the paleoconservative movement defined
the neo-confederate movement of the 1980s
and 1990s. During this time, notable paleoconservative
argued that desegregation, welfare, tolerance
of gay rights, and church-state separation
had been damaging to local communities, and
that these issues had been imposed by federal
legislatures and think tanks. Paleoconservatives
also claimed the Southern Agrarians as forebearers
in this regard.
=== Fusionism ===
Many first-generation paleoconservatives were
National Review supporters, but drifted away
as the magazine was seen as becoming neoconservative
starting in the 1970s. Chronicles founder
Leopold Tyrmand complained that the movement
gave political solutions to cultural problems.Open
hostility broke out in the mid-1980s and was
never resolved. Some paleoconservatives argued
that fusionism failed and suggested a new
alliance on the right to stand outside the
neoconservative consensus. Buchanan stated
that "We are old church and old right, anti-imperialist
and anti-interventionist, disbelievers in
Pax Americana".The Intercollegiate Studies
Institute (ISI) still follows the old fusionism.
It showcases both neoconservative and Old
Right ideas, such as anti-interventionism,
limited government and cultural regionalism,
in its publications and conferences. While
it favors free-market solutions it tends to
recognize the limitations of the market, or
as economist Wilhelm Röpke says, "the market
is not everything". ISI scholarship includes
analysis of agrarian and distributist works,
along with the idea of an "humane economy".One
fusionist, James Burnham, influenced paleocons,
especially Francis. Gottfried said that the
two men believed that social forces create
ideologies—and that "moral visions are the
mere accompaniments of the process by which
classes make themselves economically dominant
and try to control other groups".
=== International parallels ===
As paleoconservatism germinated as a reaction
to neoconservatism, most of its development
as a distinct political tendency under that
name has been in the United States, although
there are parallels in the traditional Old
Right of other Western nations. French conservatives
such as Jean Raspail and British conservatives
such as Enoch Powell, Peter Hitchens, Antony
Flew (whom the Rockford Institute awarded
the Ingersoll Prize), Sir John Betjeman, and
Sir Roger Scruton as well as Scruton's Salisbury
Review and Derek Turner's Quarterly Review,
along with Australia's Sydney Traditionalist
Forum and Edmund Burke's Club all emphasize
skepticism, stability and the Burkean inheritance
and may be considered broadly sympathetic
to paleoconservative values. For example,
Hitchens wrote in opposition to the Iraq War:
There is nothing conservative about war. For
at least the last century war has been the
herald and handmaid of socialism and state
control. It is the excuse for censorship,
organized lying, regulation and taxation.
It is paradise for the busybody and the nark.
It damages family life and wounds the Church.
It is, in short, the ally of everything summed
up by the ugly word "progress".
Note the One Nation movement in 1990s Australia,
Germany's Junge Freiheit and Italy's Lega
Nord and compare the Russian dissidents Andrei
Navrozov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
== Neoconservatism ==
Pat Buchanan calls neoconservatism "a globalist,
interventionist, open-borders ideology". The
paleoconservatives argue that the "neocons"
are illegitimate interlopers in the conservative
movement. In 1986, the historian Stephen Tonsor,
who rejects the label "paleoconservative",
said: It has always struck me as odd, even
perverse, that former Marxists have been permitted,
yes invited, to play such a leading role in
the Conservative movement of the twentieth
century. It is splendid when the town whore
gets religion and joins the church. Now and
then she makes a good choir director, but
when she begins to tell the minister what
he ought to say in his Sunday sermons, matters
have been carried too far.
== Prominent people ==
=== 
Politicians ===
Donald Trump (born 1946), former CEO of the
Trump Organization and current President of
the United States (2017–)
Steve Bannon (born 1953), former White House
Chief Strategist (2017)
Pat Buchanan (born 1938), White House Communications
Director (1985–1987), 1992 and 1996 Republican
presidential candidate, 2000 Reform Party
presidential nominee
Jimmy Duncan (born 1947), Representative for
Tennessee's 2nd congressional district (1988–2019)
Virgil Goode (born 1946), Representative for
Virginia's 5th congressional district (1997–2009),
2012 Constitution Party presidential nominee
John Hostettler (born 1961), Representative
for Indiana's 8th congressional district (1997–2007)
Walter B. Jones, Jr. (born 1943), Representative
for North Carolina's 3rd congressional district
(1995–)
Stephen Miller (born 1985), Senior Advisor
to the President of the United States (2017–)
Tom Tancredo (born 1945), representative for
Colorado's 6th congressional district (1999–2009),
2008 Republican presidential candidate, 2010
Constitution Party Colorado gubernatorial
nominee
=== 
Philosophers and scholars ===
Virginia Abernethy (born 1934)
Mel Bradford (1934–1993)
John Derbyshire (born 1945)
Paul Gottfried (born 1941)
Russell Kirk (1918–1994)
E. Christian Kopff (born 1946)
William S. Lind (born 1947)
Donald W. Livingston (born 1938)
Claes G. Ryn (born 1943)
Sir Roger Scruton (born 1944)
Clyde N. Wilson (born 1941)
=== Journalists ===
Samuel T. Francis (1947–2005)
Robert Novak (1931–2009)
Steve Sailer (born 1958)
Joseph Sobran (1946–2010)
Tucker Carlson (born 1969)
Laura Ingraham (born 1963)
Ann Coulter (born 1961)
=== Other ===
Bob Conley (born 1965)
Thomas Fleming (born 1945)
Alex Jones (born 1974)
James Allsup (born 1995)
== Notable organizations and outlets ==
=== 
Organizations ===
Abbeville Institute
Constitution Party
Council of Conservative Citizens
Institute on the Constitution
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
John Birch Society
Robert A. Taft Club
Rockford Institute
=== 
Periodicals and websites ===
The American Conservative
American Renaissance
Chronicles (magazine)
Intercollegiate Review
The New American
Taki's Magazine
=== 
Radio shows ===
The American View
Chuck Baldwin Live
Ron Smith Show
== 
See also ==
Alt-right
American nationalism
Anti-globalization movement
Criticism of multiculturalism
Cultural conservatism
Liberal conservatism
Libertarian conservatism
National conservatism
National liberalism
Old Right
Paleolibertarianism
Radical right
Reactionary
Traditionalist conservatism in the United
States
== Notes
