Turpentine in Old Wineskins
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Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, Feb. 2008
Paul Gottfried, Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 189 pp., (hardcover), $39.95.
It would be hard to think of a scholar more essential to American conservatism—real conservatism—than Paul Gottfried. Perhaps no one else writing today combines such deep erudition and keen insight with a real sympathy for conservative thought. Building on his previous work in The Conservative Movement, After Liberalism, and Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt (reviewed in AR, Jan. 2003), Professor Gottfried’s latest book authoritatively recounts “the evolution of the American conservative movement from the 1950s to the present.”
This is not a primer; Prof. Gottfried does not write for beginners. But for those prepared to follow its concise arguments, this is a vastly rewarding account of how the American Right was invaded and denatured by ex-liberals and ex-Communists who have stripped the word “conservative” of virtually all meaning.
Prof. Gottfried begins by pointing out that the United States does not have a conservative movement in the proper, European sense. The fathers of conservatism, Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre, wrote in reaction to the French revolution and in defense of monarchy, tradition, aristocracy, social deference, and the established church. They defended specific societies and traditions they loved and hoped would endure. The closest American parallel would be Southern secessionists and anti-abolitionists, but they were practical men, not philosophers.
American conservatism today does not defend a distinct way of life. Instead, it promotes “values.” A conservative therefore need not be of a particular nation, race, class or religion; if he checks the right boxes on the political equivalent of a Cosmo-girl quiz, he can call himself a conservative. Prof. Gottfried notes that this is more akin to an ideological Right, which need not be rooted in class or tradition and that stands for a particular set of ideas, but that this is not the same as traditional, organically rooted European conservatism. Today, American “conservatism” therefore means opposition to the Left, but its current standard bearers may be the most accommodating opposition the Left has ever met.
At the same time, our conservatives have an almost comic blindness to their own ineffectiveness. Prof. Gottfried writes: “Despite the patent fact that the political landscape has been moving generally leftward since the fifties, conservatives celebrate a ‘Reagan revolution’ while turning out books that hail their imagined transformation of American society.”
National Review
It is common to pretend there was no American Right until William F. Buckley established National Review in 1955, but Prof. Gottfried reminds us there was vigorous opposition to the New Deal and even to our entry into the Second World War. Men such as Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn, Col. Robert McCormick, Henry Hazlitt, John Chamberlain and H.L. Mencken despised Franklin Roosevelt, believed in war only in defense of vital interests, and hated the specter of intrusive government. They did not call themselves “conservatives,” however. Some called themselves “Jeffersonians,” and could have correctly been called “constitutionalists” or “classical liberals.” It was only after the Second World War that the term “conservative” became common, and Mr. Buckley strongly promoted it. Prof. Gottfried suggests that Russell Kirk gave the new name a big push in his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, in which he tried to give the American Right artificial roots in Edmund Burke’s traditional conservatism.
In the beginning, National Review really did defend a traditional view of the American republic. As James Lubinskas has shown in a comprehensive AR article (“The Decline of National Review,” Sept. 2000), the magazine took racial differences in IQ for granted, scorned Martin Luther King, supported South African apartheid, and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took equally traditional positions on welfare and government meddling, although it was prepared to overlook federal excesses in support of the big military organization Mr. Buckley thought necessary for defeating Communism. Once he even famously warned that conservatives should accept “totalitarianism on these shores” if that was what it took to rout the Commies. “Conservatism” itself was already becoming a tool for the accumulation of government power.
It was the neoconservatives who finally neutered Mr. Buckley’s “conservatism,” but his magazine was already backpedaling by the 1960s and 1970s, honing the uniquely conservative talent for “treating a general retreat from its original positions as a progression of victories.” Some of this came from a craving for respectability, which meant turfing out comrades from the early days who refused to trim their sails. As Prof. Gottfried notes, “conservative leaders have marginalized their own right wing more than once as they have presented their movement as suitable for a dialogue with ‘moderates’ on the other side.” They have long been willing to shed principles if that was what it took to get a share of the public spotlight.
As for the ex-lefties who were to become neocons, their break with Communism did not send them immediately into the conservative camp. When they first began to emerge as a school of thought they resisted the name of conservative, associating it with racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism, and they did not hesitate to accuse National Review of these crimes. They submitted to being called “conservative” only after they took over most of the Buckley movement, and emptied it of anything left that deserved the name.
At that point they also began to treat Mr. Buckley as if he had been one of their own all along. As Prof. Gottfried writes of Mr. Buckley, “By the 1980s, he and his magazine had moved into a predominantly Jewish-Zionist and, from all appearances, Teutonophobic neoconservative camp, which graciously allowed him to revise both his past, and, by implication, that of his movement.” Unlike AR, National Review’s on-line archives go back only to 2003. The early material—now moldering only in libraries—would be embarrassing.
There is no question that neoconservatism conquered its rivals on the right, but how? How did people like Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Midge Decter, and Gertrude Himmelfarb manage to gain a following for a movement that was predominantly Jewish and ex-Communist? First, the entire country had moved leftward, and compliant, ingratiating “conservatives” made a much better showing in the TV age than men with backbone, in the mold of Col. McCormick or H. L. Mencken. At the same time, as Prof. Gottfried explains, neoconservatives were “relentless, methodical empire builders.” As they took over the old institutions and publications of the Right and started their own, they were able to offer jobs and prominent positions to followers. Once they had annexed much of the Republican Party, even plum administration jobs came within their gift. And as the state became both a tool for pet policies and a source of jobs, they lost whatever faint impulses they might once have had to reduce the size of government.
Neocons also consolidated their status as official opposition by savagely purging the Old Right, making it virtually impossible for long-standing opponents of welfare, Martin Luther King, or overseas adventuring to get a hearing. Neocons never lost the old Communist habit of calling their opponents “fascists,” and this is still their favorite word for anyone to their right. Prof. Gottfried scoffs at this fraudulent name calling, pointing out that Fascism was a distinctively European inter-war phenomenon that arose in reaction to Soviet Communism. “It is hard to imagine,” he writes, “what, if anything, fascism would look like in today’s society. Equating fascists with European or American critics of Third World immigration is a propagandistic ploy, when it is not simply an anachronistic exercise.”
Prof. Gottfried is familiar with the racially-oriented paleoconservative Right, and he is thinking of American Renaissance and The Occidental Quarterly when we writes, “it is hard to find groups on the present American Right calling for a Mussolinian state or who, in contrast to the neoconservatives, associate ‘national greatness’ with an expanded central government.” He points out, correctly, that racially conscious whites tend to be libertarians, and would love to get the government out of their lives. When neoconservatives shout about “fascism” they are completely missing the mark. They keep doing it because, in a movement that Prof. Gottfried describes as having “declined into robot-like conformity,” demonization works.
Once they had cast what was left of the genuine Right into outer darkness, neoconservatives became the perfect foil for Democrats. As Prof. Gottfried explains, they “stand closer ideologically and sociologically to the Center-Left than any other group identified with the ‘conservative’ side.” As the official lap-dog opposition, they now merely compete with the Center-Left on how to interpret positions that are broadly accepted by the Left.
What do today’s neoconservatives actually stand for? They prate constantly about “permanent values,” but Prof. Gottfried notes that this is largely a charade designed to give the appearance of a moral and philosophical pedigree. Their so-called values are mostly mush. Prof. Gottfried quotes neoconservative Jonah Goldberg as saying that what unites conservatives is a belief in “human rights” and “universal values.” By this standard Trotsky and Ted Kennedy are “conservatives.”
The “permanent value” with which neocons justify their foreign wars is “global democracy.” They have decided that welfare-with-elections is the only acceptable way to run a country, and are prepared to kill people if that is what it takes to get them into voting booths. Prof. Gottfried notes that this neo-Wilsonian war-mongering is an essential aspect of neoconservative support for Israel.
“Values” are also a conveniently fluid way to give ground. Prof. Gottfried cites David Brooks of the New York Times, who explained that his support for homosexual marriage grew out of his conservative support for “family values”! Of course, the Left, too, whoops so much about “values” and its “moral compass” that the squabble over virtuousness has left many Americans politically dyslexic: A February 2005 poll found that one third of Hillary Clinton’s supporters called themselves “conservative.” The “values” game has so blurred political boundaries that neoconservatives get away with promoting a concept that would have left the Old Right gasping: “big-government conservatism.”
More insidiously, “values” detach “conservatism” from any association with place, tribe, or nation. It doesn’t matter if America is flooded with Hmong, Haitians, and Somali Bantus. Once Jonah Goldberg has taught them “human rights” and “universal values” they will be flawless conservatives.
Needless to say, if conservatism is to conserve anything, it must start with the biological and cultural patrimony of a people. When neoconservatives promote mass immigration from anywhere and everywhere—though with some signs of skepticism about Muslims—they are destroying the country as surely as are the worst liberals. It is partly to prove their indifference to race and peoplehood that neocons trumpet their support of Martin Luther King, whom they hold up as the champion of pure race unconsciousness and equal opportunity. Of course, King would almost certainly have whinnied with happiness if he had lived long enough to see race preferences.
Prof. Gottfried writes that it is possible to imagine a different and more authentic conservatism, one that never lost its hatred of big government or of overseas adventures—but that it is possible only to imagine it. This would be a Right that would be far more difficult for the regnant liberals to co-opt or refute, but Prof. Gottfried says such a Right shows no sign of emerging. What remains of the Old Right opposition to neoconservatism “is now battered and without friends in high places.”
Prof. Gottfried has inhabited the Right for a long time and knows what he is talking about. And yet, there are signs of hope. Ron Paul’s startling success as a fundraiser is proof that many people admire the one politician who actually reads the Constitution. The massive outrage that smashed the recent plan to grant amnesty to millions of illegal Mexicans shows how few people have swallowed neoconservative rubbish about America as a “universal nation.”
There is still good sense deep in the bones of the people. That it is why it is increasingly only real conservatives who want to circumvent legislative sausage-making and submit as many questions as possible directly to voters. Traditionalists have always held government in deep suspicion (though they also worried about the people running off in wild directions if they had unchecked power). Today, thanks in no small part to the fakes who call themselves “conservatives,” there is no question that the establishment threatens our nation and way of life far more than would the blunt instincts of ordinary Americans.
(Posted on October 31, 2008)
Comments
‘Fiscal conservatives’ run the show, taking social conservatives (like me) for granted. Monetary conservatism may be the only route to popular appeal, in such evil times, but when the height of their ideology states, and indeed all they can offer, is ‘lower taxes’ you know some-thing’s wrong. What the democrats offer is so distasteful, I find myself voting against my own ‘economic interests’ because of it.
I don’t keep up with the National Review, but when I read a number of issues at the library some years back, I couldn’t believe how poorly it was written. Buckley JR should hire some observers who know how to think - and write.
Posted by Dr. Smith at 6:45 PM on October 31
Mr. Taylor’s excellent review of Mr. Gottfried’s book couldn’t come at a more important time. The issues that the book and the review raise are at the crux of the conservative dilemma in American today. I am heartened to see that Mr. Taylor has taken up these issues, which I believe need to be more thoroughly examined.
The Reagan Revolution, unfortunately, appears to have been merely a false front orchestrated by the fledgling ‘neocons’, and many conservatives knew it at the time, including the perceptive conservative writer, Joe Sobran, who was peremptorily fired from the National Review by Buckley himself at the behest of his neocon masters who had, for all intents and purposes, taken over the periodical, and as Gottfried rightly pointed out, changed its direction to the Left.
Let’s not forget that Reagan’s long-time nickname was “Ronnie The Red,” which he earned as president of the Screen Actors Guild by defending the black-balled communists in Hollywood during a country-wide speaking tour, at the behest of the studio executives, trying to reassure American moviegoers that Hollywood had purged itself of its communist hatchet men, which was a blatant lie. Most were still working under the table using aliases.
Reagan’s payback for doing the studio executives’ dirty work was their financial backing of his run for governor of California and then the presidency as a ‘staunch conservative.”
And so Reagan became the perfect Trojan Horse for the ‘neo-conservatives’ to take power. They had much in common—the neocons were/are modern-day Trotskyites, ideological disciples of Leo Strauss who emphasized the philosophy of deception to promote a neo-bolshevik ideology here in America, by exploiting a ‘conservative’ front man.
Rather than ushering in a new authentic conservativism, the Reagan years brought disillusionment and in-fighting among the Right, which was intended to factionalize the true opposition the the neocons and their Trotskyite minions who still occupy the White House to this day.
Posted by at 7:46 PM on October 31
The biggest problem with conservatism trying to find a home in the Republican Party is the founding principles of that party. It will always be the Party of Lincoln, with all the baggage that entails. The Republican Party was a radical left-wing party full of egalitarian, abolitionist fire-eaters. It also attracted many of the newly arrived liberals from Europe, fresh from a series of failed revolutions. One of the largest immigrant groups, the so-called “48ers” from Germany, were hell-bent on consolidating power at the federal level and erasing states rights. They were Prussians, and their historic experiences skewed their ability to understand the American situation. Keeping in mind what I have just written, is it any wonder that families like the Rockefellers and Bushes are knee-jerk politicos who bend with the slightest liberal pressure. For God’s sake, it’s who they are!
Posted by Xenophon at 9:48 AM on November 1
I agree that the Republican party needs a complete makeover (either that or a new party needs to form). But I don’t think that the Republicans need to be losing votes during this particular election. Yes, Baraq Obama could wake up a lot of people, but he could also be very dangerous. Besides, I think that the third party will work its way through one way or another (even though McCain is much safer than Obama, he is still far enough to the left to awaken a third party). And also, if McCain wins, don’t you think the backlash from the other side will awaken enough people anyway?
Posted by Courtney at 11:45 AM on November 1
“even though McCain is much safer than Obama, he is still far enough to the left to awaken a third party”
Obama seems to be trying to mimic McCain’s policies. The difference being Obama is black, and he promises to be tough on the wealthiest 1 percent.
Posted by at 6:21 PM on November 1
Paul Gottfried is a great paleo-conservative.
And that, my fellow people, is the problem. White people identify themselves by ideology. Our non-white competitors identify themselves tribally. That is why Barack Obama smiles when whites accuse him of being a communist or a socialist. That means he has succeeded. He has made the sale. Note how his loyal opposition, the McCain campaign, has made sure that Obama is always pictured as a Marxist or Communist or Socialist, but never as the anti-white racist that he really is.
As long as whites in this country and around the world allow themselves to be divided by silly philosophical constructs, they will remain a house divided in the face of increasingly hostile non-white attacks upon them.
White people have become convinced that the words written on a piece of paper are more important than the blood of their ancestors and the genetic heritage they carry in their loins.
No people can survive with that belief.
Please, please, understand this.
You are Caucasians. First, second, and always.
Not abstract “ists” and “isms”.
Sempre fi…always faithful.
Posted by Mike Erpelding at 7:57 PM on November 1
Conservatism is really a myth. There aren’t any conservatives in Washington. There aren’t any real “conservatives” anywhere. Well, maybe a few. I guess old cranks like Pat Buchanan and Tom Fleming qualify as “conservative.” But that’s about all.
What is called conservatism today is quite clearly a form of liberal fascism. Which I wouldn’t really mind if it was more fascistic and less liberal. Although I think that is the direction it is going.
Posted by Dino at 11:20 PM on November 1
“They were Prussians, and their historic experiences skewed their ability to understand the American situation.
Keeping in mind what I have just written, is it any wonder that families like the Rockefellers and Bushes are knee-jerk politicos who bend with the slightest liberal pressure. For God’s sake, it’s who they are!”
Posted by Xenophon
……………………………..
“Who they are”??? I’m not fully sure what you’re implying here. Are you saying that they are/were Prussians?
Don’t misunderstand me — I’m not arguing with you! Those were very interesting insights that you gave.
Posted by ghw at 11:23 PM on November 1
ghw, see this link…
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~dalbello/FLVA/activists/48ers.html
These revolutionaries were a good fit for the radical free-soilers. They had no understanding (nor do their descendants today) of the old republic. Their views were those of the radical, and thus they were a good fit for the old Puritan abolitionists.
Posted by Xenophon at 9:49 AM on November 2
1. IMHO, “Conservatism” in America today stands for advocacy of the regime of the Bourgeoisie as Rulership (i.e.: The minority at the pinnacle of society in whose interest the State is ruled, as counterposed to the Ruling Class [I follow Mosca’s narrow definition of that latter term.]) where this does not exist, and endorsement of Bourgeois Rulership where it does exist.
2. Throughout his The Mind and Society, Pareto makes the case that the democratic republic is the metamorphic precursor — as tadpole to frog, caterpillar to moth, etcetera by logical extension — of a plutocratic oligarchy.
3. Both “mainstream” parties pursue short-range tunnel-vision monomaniacal economomania. To the contrary of assertions that the United States is a predominantly Christian country, I respectfully submit that the ruling god of elite culture within the entire American sphere of influence, is not He of the ineffable four-letter Name (whom Jewish folk call “ha Shem”), nor Y’shua bar Joseph of Nazareth (whom Christian folk revere as Y’shua bar IHVH, a.k.a. Jesus the Christ); but rather Mammon, the demon of avarice, unnatural blind lust for money. Even so, the idea that the Left should be the political tendency of the elite in the United States, seems to me to be one of history’s most blatant ironies.
Posted by Robert Pinkerton at 11:07 AM on November 2
“…[The] idea that the Left should be the political tendency of the elite in the United States, seems to me to be one of history’s most blatant ironies.”
There is absolutely nothing ‘ironic’ about the ‘elites’ in this country promoting socialism—it’s completely logical. After all, it was the Schiff family who bragged about their financing of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, along with founding the Council on Foreign Relations and the Federal Reserve here, all around the same time in history. Coincidence? Each of these actions had the same end—consolidation of power and wealth.
The ‘elites’ in England and Europe, by which I mean the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, the Schiffs, and the Oppenheimers, financially supported Karl Marx in writing and promoting the Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx even sent Abraham Lincoln a telegram congratulating him on the Union victory, which consolidated power of a centralized federal government over the entire United States.
When you understand that under communism and socialism, there is no such thing as private property, freedom of speech, with no opposition and no competition—then you will understand why the ‘elite’ love it. Of course, the ‘elite’, the banks, own everything and play by different rules, while the common man, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat dupes, have nothing.
Bismark said as much, in no uncertain terms when he saw how he had been manipulated by the bankers:
“I fear the….banks with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America. And use it to systematically corrupt modern civilization. [They]….will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos that the earth should become their inheritance.”
—German Chancellor Bismark (1815-1898)
Or as John Rockefeller put it, “The poor continue to be a great source of wealth.”
Posted by at 6:28 PM on November 2
“…[The] idea that the Left should be the political tendency of the elite in the United States, seems to me to be one of history’s most blatant ironies.”
“There is absolutely nothing ‘ironic’ about the ‘elites’ in this country promoting socialism—it’s completely logical.”
- — — — — —
All very fascinating comments above - - - all of them, these and all the rest!
Of the two quotes here, I (ironically!) am able to agree with both. It all depends how you define “the elite”. (Which elite?) It is an error that many of us make to perceive the so-called “elite” as if it were a solid, monolithic group, all holding the same goals and values and world-view. Not so. Better to speak of “the elites” as individual sub-groups, each having its/their own individual outlook and agenda, based on historical and ethnic experience, which can be very different from the others, depending on who they are and where they came from. I doubt that Cornelius Vanderbilt saw the world through the same lens as Jacob Schiff, for instance. Each could look at the world before them and see a very different thing, and different issues of concern, depending on their own life experiences. Thus it’s not surprising or ironic if today’s Hollywood or Wall Street billionaires still view the world through the same lens that they inherited from their immigrant grandfathers. Only their stock portfolio and bank balance have changed, and massively, but their social outlook remains the same.
For example, this calls to mind the California billionaire, grandson of an immigrant, who bought off the Sierra Club with a massive contribution on the stipulation that it must not address the subject of immigration. He said he owed this to his grandfather. And so they do not address immigration!
Many here say, or fear, that Obama is a Marxist Trojan horse being slipped into the White House. We have only to look at the list of major Obama backers: Pritzger, Soros, Sandler, Lewis, Bing, etc. — all MULTI-billionaires! — to see the same phenomenon at work. Why would billionaires be backing a subversive anti-white crypto-socialist? Why? Because, while they may be rich beyond imagination today, they have not forgotten their roots and are paying homage to their grandfathers.
Posted by browser at 1:16 PM on November 3
As usual, Mr. Taylor’s reviews are as instructive as the work he is critiquing. I couldn’t imagine a more concise and rich lode of information.
Having grown long of tooth, my delving into long treatises and forensics on what true, traditional, conservatism is, or was, is a bit futile; I will not witness any meaningful turnaround. Suffice it to say, we have lost our way, and strayed so far afield that we may never rediscover the Right path.
Will Durant writes in “Caesar and Christ”, about the large diversity settled in Rome:”Oriental faces, ways, dress, word, gestures, quarrels, ideas, and faiths made up a great part of the City’s seething life. By the 3rd century the government would be an Oriental monarchy; by the 4th, the religion of Rome would be an Oriental creed, and the masters of the world would kneel to the god of the slaves.”
As of tomorrow, we’ll be there. When the progeny of the Founders sold the entire array of opinion-forming media, one by one, to one community, our fate was sealed.
Posted by Harry Hagan at 8:58 PM on November 3