The Left should find much to laud in the Paleoconservative / Paleolibertarian reaction against Neoconnerie.
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One of the more interesting developments of the Bush years has been the resurgence of the Old Right. Self-described conservatives taking an anti-war and anti-empire stance is not the anomaly it may seem to many on the Left. In fact, the Left should find much to laud in the
Paleoconservative /
Paleolibertarian reaction against Neoconnerie.
The Old Right dates back opposition to FDR's New Deal and his march to war (the "Welfare-Warfare State" of which
Murray N. Rothbard later spoke). The history of this time when conservatives wrote books with titles like
Our Enemy, the State is told by two of the current resurgence's brightest voices ¦¡ by
Justin Raimondo in
Reclaiming the American Right in and by
Bill Kauffman in the soon-to-be released
Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism.
Justin Raimondo is the editor-in-chief of the venerable
Antiwar.com, which got its start in opposition to Clinton's wars and has only redoubled its efforts against Bush's. The openly gay libertarian's "
Buchananism or Barbarism" speech nominated
Pat Buchanan's 2000 Reform Party candidacy, which was subsequently blacked out by the media.
Pat Buchanan, that friend of
Ralph Nader, is almost universally vilified on the Left, so successful has been the corporate media campaign against him. In 2000, he was called "the only left-wing candidate" by
Bill Kauffman due to his populist, pro-labor views and his longstanding opposition to Empire, as detailed in his
magnum opus,
A Republic, Not an Empire. The
Wall Street Journal called him a "leftist" at the time, but did not mean it as a compliment. (For more, see this appreciation of the man from
The Progressive:
Buchanan to the Left of Them - presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.)
The magazine Mr. Buchanan founded,
The American Conservative, should be read by all progressives and tough liberals. A good place to start is its August 28, 2006
What is Left? What is Right? issue, a must-read for those not easily boxed by our current American political taxonomy.
The aforementioned
Bill Kauffman chronicles those not easily boxed by our current American political taxonomy in
Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals. Among those chronicled is
Karl Hess, speechwriter for
Barry Goldwater who later joined the
Students for a Democratic Society, fitted his old boss for a daishiki, worked to bring toward unity between the Old Right and the New Left, and told us that "Vietnam should remind all conservatives that whenever you put your faith in big government, for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder."
Another such figure is
Paul Craig Roberts, who served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and has been called the "Father of Reaganomics." His writings regularly appear in the far-right
Chronicles and the far-left
CounterPunch. A glance at the titles of some of his recent articles tells us where he stands:
Leaderless and Clueless America Heads for the Trash Can of History,
Bush Regime Preaches Democracy, Proposes Tyranny,
Rudy or Hillary: Pick Your Poison. Dr. Roberts is also one of the leading critics of offshoring, calling it "labor arbitrage."
Paleos of various persuasions ¦¡ they are hardly a monolithic bloc ¦¡ have found voice in the campaign of
Dr. Ron Paul. Those on the Left might disagree with this or that position of Dr. Paul, but they would nevertheless be wise to welcome his campaign and the ideas it represents as an alternative to the
status quo, just as many in the Old Right have welcomed the campaign of
Dennis Kucinich, hailed by the "Father of Reaganomics" as "the only member of Congress sufficiently concerned and courageous to introduce impeachment against the notorious war criminal Dick Cheney."
Left and Right should work for the day when Paul and Kucinich represent their party's mainstream, and
Hitlery and
Ghouliani are relegated to the extremes. All Americans must work to bring about the end of one-party rule in our country, and send
The War Party packing.
Authors Website: http://orientem.blogspot.com/
Authors Bio:An American Catholic son-in-law of Korea, Joshua Snyder lives with his wife and two children in self-imposed exile in Pohang, where he serves as an assistant visiting professor of English at a science and technology university. Religiously orthodox and politically heterodox, he might be best described as a peace-and-love anarcho-traditionalist retro-progressive reactionary. He blogs at
The Western Confucian.