January
2008
'Old
Right' Intellectual Challenges NeoConservatives
By Peter B. Gemma
r.
Paul Edward Gottfried should be a familiar name among the
Sunday morning talking heads and most certainly in every
college political science class. But he's not -- for a reason:
there is no better authority -- or critic -- of neo-conservatism
in America. The powerful neo-con lobby really doesn't like
him. National Review's David Frum once went out of his way
to denounce him as "solipsistic" and "disgruntled."
In real life, Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor
of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and a recipient of
a Guggenheim Fellowship for "exceptional" scholarly
ability. He is the author of numerous books on intellectual
history, conservatism, and political theory. Of particular
interest to those the late Sam Francis called Middle American
radicals, are Gottfried's books, Multiculturalism and
the Politics of Guilt and The Strange Death of Marxism.
His latest, Conservatism in America: Making Sense of
the American Right is available from Palgrave Macmillan
for $39.95. I talked with Dr. Gottfried about his new book
and the state of the American Right.
Gottfried explained Conservatism in America this
way: "A driving theme in my book is that the postwar
conservative movement was the contrivance of big city journalists,
who brought their work into prominence by replacing and
to some extent discrediting an older 'American liberalism,'
identified with national leaders like [Senator] Robert Taft.
From the outset the new movement, grouped around National
Review, engaged in play-acting [at being conservatives
in the Burkean tradition], something that my friend Sam
Francis pointed out to me twenty years ago. It featured
European émigrés warning against the 'totalitarian
temptation' of Communism and offered dubious comparisons
between the U.S. in the 1950s and Edmund Burke's England
resisting the French Revolution."
Gottfried says the rise of the neo-conservative movement
diverted America's genuine conservative forces away from
meaningful political action against America's liberal-Left
establishment: "Above all, [the postwar conservative
movement] substituted for the war against the centralized
managerial state the more whimsical notion of 'standing
for values,' a fateful move that provided the window-dressing
for the values-peddling neo-cons to take over the conservative
movement, as the champion of 'democratic values.' Of course
after the Goldwater debacle of 1964, the Republican Party
and its conservative movement adjunct never stood again
for any kind of effort to dismantle or decentralize the
central state. It was easier to yak about 'conservative
values,' whatever that meant on a given day of an electoral
campaign, and to make empty promises about 'getting government
off our backs.'"
When asked for his frank appraisal of the battle between
the "old right" (such as Middle American News
readers) and the neo-cons, he noted: "Despite my desire
to believe the opposite, it seems to me that the neo-conservatives
have a better grasp on the levers of power than the old
right would like to believe." He went on to say that
"among their assets, I argue in my book, are their
tight control of an extensive media network, including a
television channel [FOX News], numerous think-tanks grinding
out their party lines, access to the national press and
the relative good will of the liberal establishment. One
of the circumstances contributing to the rise of the neo-cons
as power brokers of the respectable Right was their friendly
relations with liberal elites that would have nothing to
do with the more authentic Right."
One of the sharpest differences within the Right is between
the neocons and traditional conservtive leaders who David
Frum smeared as "Unpatriotic Conservatives" --
meaning those who oppose the Iraq invasion and other foreign
adventures of the Bush Administration (such as Pat Buchanan,
Joe Sobran, Paul Craig Roberts, etc.). In Conservatism
in America, he writes: "The question, then, is
how far the current conservative movement can accept deviations
among its members ... For example, those who reject a hard
line against the Palestinians or who come out explicitly
against the war in Iraq may be unacceptable as 'conservatives,'
..."
When asked about the argument between liberals and the neo-cons
regarding the Iraq invasion -- i.e., anti-war Democrats
criticizing the neo-cons' foreign policy -- Gottfried had
this take:"Unlike some journalists, I am totally unimpressed
by the apparent quarrel between the liberals and neo-cons
over the war in Iraq. Both sides represent the same liberal
internationalism, and the rhetoric about nation-building
and global democracy heard during the Clinton administration
prefigured the language of the present administration. The
same language and vision are also those of the neo-conservative
masters of the current 'conservative movement.'" ]
Gottfried notes that the Left is comfortable with neocon
opponents.
"Everything considered, the liberal Left is much happier
with the neo cons as their talking partners than they would
be if the neo-cons were supplanted by a real Right. The
Leftist critics of the war have not rushed to embrace the
anti-war Right; nor have they asked members of that Right
to contribute to the national dialogue. The anti-war Left
at the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post
publishes Jeff Jacoby, David Brooks and Bill Kristol but
never the backers of Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan."
Gottfried writes in his new book: "During the Reagan
presidency, movement conservatives gravitated toward the
nation's capital, and most went to work for good salaries
in movement conservative foundations and publications and
government posts. ...These activists were afraid of being
out of step with their movement, specifically of believing
and saying things that were no longer socially acceptable."
Gottfried told Middle American News, "Everyone to the
right of the neo-cons is presumably a nativist and/or someone
who fills his attic with copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf.
That is the way the liberal-neo-con axis deals with its
opposition, by turning them into non-persons or else calling
them 'Nazis.' There is no shortcut to changing the balance
of power." He said that if any movement representing
Middle America wants "to make headway it will have
to create its own media resources" which explains the
vital role of Middle American News.
He writes in Conservatism in America, that the neo-cons
would have won the entire war of ideas on the Right "save
for the inconvenient fact that [Pat] Buchanan had tried
to capture the Republican presidential nomination from a
faltering George H.W. Bush in 1992." Gottfried said
in his interview that Rep. Ron Paul is fulfilling the same
function today.
"One can't stress sufficiently the importance of the
Ron Paul candidacy for giving a second life to that part
of the Right that the neo-cons and liberals have until now
marginalized. What Congressman Paul and his backers have
done is use to optimal advantage the internet, for raising
funds and disseminating campaign positions. Since the national
media, controlled by a liberal/neo-con coalition and their
corporate supporters, have treated Paul with utter contempt,
when they do bother to notice him at all, his campaign has
had to exploit alternative forms of communication. It has
done so, judging by the fund raising, with brilliant success."
He believes Paul's campaign has an important role in the
larger context of the fight for the definition of conservatism.
"For me, another advantage of Ron Paul's campaign is
that he has stepped outside the 'conservative movement,'
a movement that I present critically in my book. That movement
has never been an independent force but rather a tool of
Republican Party operatives, particularly since the 1960s,
and more recently, a hollow shell into which the neo-conservatives
have moved their staffs and propaganda organization."
Gottfried was asked about the role readers of Middle
American News have in this battle.
"There is an American grassroots Right, as I point
out in my book, but that force has operated outside of the
New York-Washington foundation and media empire that the
neo-conservatives have put together as the face of the 'conservative
movement.' The real Right despises 'democratic public administration,'
and it recognizes that phenomenon as a force for radical
social engineering and multicultural indoctrination. That
particular Right has no desire to spread 'democracy' around
the world but seeks to replace 'democratic values' with
federalist, constitutional ones." He emphasised what
Middle American activists should be doing: "I'd like
to focus on what can be done to rein in the present political-media
elite. Such a task, which, by the way, Ron Paul seems interested
in advancing, is one that our own Right should be concentrating
on."
_________
Peter Gemma, whose book Shots Fired:
Sam Francis on America's Culture War was published last
year, is a columnist for Middle American News and
a widely published free lance writer.
