"...Clarification on definition of paleoconservatism:
- Rejection of centralized, wide ranging authority of government in general;
- Limited government authority over the individual;
- Protection from intrusion on individual privacy from both the public and private sector;
- Preference of community (local and failing that, state) rather than federal governance;
- Government support of entrepreneurship rather than large, multinational corporations;
- Support for domestic development over globalization;
- Increased access to capital, training and opportunity rather than government maintenance;
- Cultural traditionalism over social decadence;
- Support for a balanced life (stressing family and community) over hyper-consumerism;
- Environmental stewardship and planning over any environmental degradation and costly, government borne remedial solutions;
- Belief in vigilance and reform to weed out the inevitable corruption, waste and collusion in government and the marketplace. (This does not mean the rejection of government and the market but protection of them from abuse.)
It is only honest to say that "paleoconservative" (and for that matter "libertarian" and paleolibertarian") forms part of an emerging nomenklature; with these terms being used as counterpoint phrases to include a wide ranging group on the left and right opposed to the neoconservative cabal and its irresponsible elitism, virulent groupism and conflict promotion that seems to hold sway over, well everything..."
In the language of Antonio Gramsci, whose thinking overlapped that of the Frankfurt School, Straussians predictably defend the "hegemonic ideology" associated with the ruling class. Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those that realize there is no morality and that there is only natural right- the right of the superior to rule over the inferior", described his ethic.
Like all neocons, Strauss’s epigones are busy using all means at their disposal to push our country into conflict on behalf of their causes.
Some paleoconservatives of (also "paleocons" or "paleos") support imperialism of the Realist school that is rooted in protecting and promoting domestic development of the U.S. economy or even prevention of the emergence of rival states. Most paleos entirely reject this sort of interventionism.
Paleos appeal to broad based society rather than the elite or an assortment of interest groups. Because of this they are often accused of being populists. Paleos promote certain cultural and social choices rather than simply legislation.
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An Academic Replies to the Question: Paleo, Neo, What's the Big Deal?
Having received a note from an inquiring graduate student, Mitch, who is "banging out a Master’s thesis," and cannot comprehend why I have insisted that Straussians and paleos are irreconcilably divided, I wish to offer the following clarification. At the very least my explanation may be help to relieve the "cognitive dissonance" that Mitch has complained about, and which has been produced by my apparent inability to distinguish the disciples of Leo Strauss and neoconservatives.
Strauss was an obscure classicist peripherally active with the notorious Frankfurt School who fled to the US in 1938, Strauss (1899-1973) drew around himself enterprising students, other German-Jews like himself, who went on to amazingly successful academic and political careers, first at the New School for Social Research and then, between 1949 and 1969, at the University of Chicago, and later by extension, Cornell University and its Telluride Institute. In this way he replicated other, more prominent Frankfurt School scholars, German-Jewish and neo-Marxists like himself, who went into exile coalescing largely at Columbia. (Left, Jay Epstein, a Straussian disciple at University of Chicago.)
Strauss’ studies on Hobbes, Machiavelli, Plato, and Xenophon show his particular approach to the history of political theory, a perspective set forth most starkly in Natural Right and History (1953).
In Strauss's defense that at least two of his works are worth reading, his critique of Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political and his study of Hobbes. Both were written originally in German and came early in his career; neither shows the highly manipulative albeit ponderous style that is characteristic of his later books and a fortiori of those of his politically crazed students.
To appearances, Strauss was vindicating ancient political philosophy against the claims of historicists (who promote convenient contextual interpretation) and natural rights theorists, who are more concerned with individual pleasure than with a vision of the good (socially responsible) life.
But the archaicism was deceptive. Textual manipulation: a pervasive presentism, was discernible in Strauss's tracts even on the ancients. Thus the dishonesty of contriving information based on a self serving agenda could already be viewed in his work.
Nevertheless Mitch tells us he has moved, by some thoroughly natural progression, from being a fervent Straussian to the gates of paleoconservative wisdom, and found it a very short journey, one which hardly required him to leave the same address. For me, however, this is truly mind-boggling.
Unlike Mitch, I cannot imagine anyone with any care for the wider benefit or simple respect for truth as motivations, who has not undergone second thoughts after sojourning among the Straussians.
It is possible for a paleo to be influenced by Frankfurt School ("neo-Marxist" class-based interpretive) critical theory without buying into the Straussians. Whereas so-called Cultural Marxists provide a key to grasping the substance (and fictions) of managerial tyranny, Straussians have created a defense of such tyranny, disguised as global democracy or as standing up for "values."
As a side note, the Frankfurt School has drawn blame and condemnation by non-theorist and non historian reactionaries, like William S. Lind, and with good reason. Attempts however to claim that the Frankfort School's initial influence was in the counter culture and so-called liberalism of the 1970's are wrong. Rather than dating from the 1970's, neocons progenitors were theorists we associate with the Frankfort School. They exerted influence on American society from the 1910's, starting with the Federal Reserve's formation.
One has to be aware that theorists linked to the Frankfurt School such as Sigmund Freud (and by extension) Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman are figures at the very least who used the School's neo-Marxist understanding of societies to both locate the power elite in the U.S. and then to sell it on a program of massive social engineering, centralization of power and managerial tyranny. If American politicians had their own history of power mongering and dishonesty the Frankfurt School program was based on a much more psychologically manipulative and sinister approach.
They do not have popularly acceptable arguments on their side. They do have the machinery that operates when the levers of power are pulled. This may make them attractive as the influential "movers" but it is far from any intellectual validation. The theoretical squalor and moral bankruptcy from each endeavor the Straussians promote reveals how false and manipulative Straussians are. In short, while critical theory can help one to look more deeply into mechanisms of control and global democratic agitprop, the Straussians, always the power mongering cynics, have worked to justify and misrepresent such control.
It is no surprise then that they are also heavily, indeed obscenely, rewarded defenders of that ruling class, holding high places in leftist academic institutions, in the government bureaucracy, and in bogus conservative "think tanks" alike. The real trick, and seemingly their driving goal, has been to actually be the ruling class.
What also interests me about a Straussian road leading to the right is that Straussians uphold a version of the American regime that is quintessentially Marxist: Straussians see class struggle and managerial tyranny but opposes any remedy, indeed validating and promoting an ever more rapacious tyranny and the elite's use of deception because it is their natural right.
Straussians have long been seen as Marxist or more often Trotskyite with good reason. The charge of Trotskyites is based more in the notion of traitorous users of extremists popular or populists revolution to achieve power and is more of a description of purveyors of a tactic rather than social theory. Yet conservatives, in the stance of fierce anti communists have been wont to dismiss Marxist historical reading because they rightly objected to his theoretical remedy (presented as an ineluctable post class struggle stage.) A number of conservatives opposed to communism were not comfortable criticizing American society on the basis of failures in our class structure or the failures of responsibility of the elite (to lead a good or socially responsible life.) To Straussians such failures were clear and they represented opportunity.
They have refined Marxism, to be sure, finding its practical application for the power monger. Their version of "democracy," which receives its final apotheosis in Allan Bloom’s Closing the American Mind abhors historical and cultural particularities. Its advocates are always beating the drums for an American imperial mission to make every country over into a "universal nation" nurtured by the concept of "human rights" and various manifestations of open borders and multinational regimes.
Israel is the one famous exception to this enforced universalism; and all Straussians are both obsessed and experts at wielding the anti-Semitic branding iron against anyone who does not accept their "Middle Eastern policy" or their group of self-promoting elite. And outside of admitting more Palestinians to Israel, I am not aware of Straussians ever saying “no” to immigration or American unilateral dictates.
It was Straussians who saddled us with the odious slogan that "the U.S. is a propositional nation," the proposition in this case being whatever strikes the fancy or political interests of neoconservatives. One would be hard pressed to cite many cases in which Straussians have broken from their neocon fellows (more policy oriented partners) to stand with the paleos; except those putative paleos of the “political realist” variety.
Prior to the group of political realist coming aboard the paleoconservative train, the usual method for Straussian/political realist cooperation was to support gussied up notions of U.S. interests being best served by maintaining advantage over every single or possible combination of rival states. Any potentially independent nation, or one that denied access to resources and markets, and indeed any nation that promoted the idea living outside of the sphere of world "interdependence of markets" were at least a theoretical threat. But this caused more and more political realist to grumble about Straussian Middle Eastern policy as well as the Straussian emphasis on securing the advantage for a global elite (whom Straussians themselves defined), rather than securing advantage for America itself.
John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt became the public spectacle of how this grumbling would be dealt with. While much discussed, it was neither the first nor the last instance of political realists who themselves realized that even American hegemony-promoting theorist could not really find compatibility with Straussians. Mearsheimer and Walt have been turned into practical pariahs in academic and government circles they used to thrive in, despite a great amount of support for their perspective.
Personally I am compelled to ask Mitch, the inquiring neocon student who insists that if the Straussians and paleoconservatives such as myself are so much alike, why then did they invest time and funding to have a graduate professorship denied to me after being offered at Catholic University fourteen years ago? Was that only fraternal admonition that I mistook for an unfriendly act.
As for taking Straussian thinkers seriously, the problem is they rarely transcend their agendas. Their casting of those they dislike, particularly, libertarians, anti-imperialists, and of course (almost laughably) Southerners and Germans, as perpetual villains, and their zealously maintained historical distortions are not something you can debate. There is no debating an agenda driven propaganda. You accept it or fight it. (Right-Neocons and government leaders: who is who?)
Note while Straussians do not believe in "historicism," they do confabulate on historical topics for the good of "the regime." And they are not merely inaccurate historians. Their crusade to vilify Tom DiLorenzo for instance, for telling the truth about the reserved right to secession among states entering the federal union, and about Lincoln's Victorian views about blacks, seems entirely fueled by nineteen-sixties pseudo left-liberal fanaticism. The Jaffaite response to Professor DiLorenzo has been an expression of how flexible and devastating their exercise in Stalinism, or perhaps Bernaysism, can be. They smell enemies wherever convenient or self serving orthodoxy is threatened and attack with rabidly anti-intellectual vigor.
Finally I am unimpressed by most of Strauss's characteristic interpretations of "political philosophers" who are turned into precursors of his own school of hypocritical skeptics. Strauss’s Averroist reading of Plato resurrects questionable medieval interpretive methods, supposedly to show that Plato did not really believe in eternal ideals as the basis of knowing.
Strauss’s appeal to a skeptical reading of Plato’s dialogues is ultimately non-demonstrable – and therefore arbitrary. Moreover, I still recall my shock when I encountered Strauss’s students offering trendy interpretations of Aristotle’s Politics, e.g., discovering that the ancient father of political analysis was providing in Book One an "esoteric" critique of slavery and sexism. When I asked a published proponent of this view whether she had read Aristotle’s biological observations, I was told they were irrelevant.
Having recently read Strauss on Thucydides, about whom I know a great deal, I was struck by the forced application of the usual Straussian grid. Never would I have guessed from my own examination of the text that Thucydides was writing his histories to demonstrate the superiority of Athenian imperial democracy over the Spartan military aristocracy! Not only was I befuddled, but so obviously were almost all of the classicists I had read on Thucydides, who had not probed deeply enough to discover what a fan their subject was of whatever Straussians are supposed to like.
I guess one learns new things every day, though in this case, that new thing is always more of the same, an extended Wall Street Journal editorial or the gloss on a speech by Martin Luther King or Ariel Sharon, both of whom incidentally had their more provocative core ideas buried by Straussians, if for very different reasons.
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