No Country for Old Politics (How to Define the Right in a Left World)

traditionalRight ^ | 9/18/2013 | Paul Gottfried

[mojito]

The task before me is explaining with appropriate distinctions and qualifications “What is right and what is left?” For those who wish to avoid the harangue of an activist, let me assure them that I do not equate “conservative” with Republican or with the viewing habits of FOX News devotees. Being a Republican and dutifully reciting party talking points is for me no sign of being on the right; nor is a disinclination to do either indicative of being on the left.

A classical or essentialist Right is hard to find in the contemporary Western world, where journalists and other assorted intellectuals rush to denounce its bearers, or even partial bearers, as “fascists.” That may be one reason that such types rarely come into public view, outside of certain European parties that have been able to survive in a multi-party electoral system. Being on the essentialist Right is deadly in an academic or journalistic milieu that is shot through with quintessential leftist values. There are isolated intellectual groups in the US that exhibit evidence of a right wing gestalt, but these groups are usually cut off from the movement-conservative mainstream lest they endanger “conservative” institutes or publications by expressing improper anti-leftist ideas. This is entirely understandable, given the prevalence of leftist influences in Western societies—and given the extent to which the establishment non-left has absorbed leftist values and attitudes that come from existing in a predominantly leftist environment.

[rmlew]

The right wing of the American Revolution saw itself as restoring traditional English rights of Americans. The left wing believed in universalism. I side with the Federalists like Washington over the Jacobin lovers.

[rmlew]

It’s not a blog. It’s an online magazine, with serious writers. It’s publishing platform is irrelevant.

[humblegunner]

It’s not a blog.

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It's a blog.

[ConservingFreedom]

Doesn't sound like the essentialist Right has much to do with anything that could reasonably be called American conservatism: 'the US was founded in the eighteenth-century as a liberal republic and does not have what Burke called an “ancient constitution” similar to the one found in Europe. The social world that gave birth to classical conservatism was a lot more ancient or medieval than the society that American conservatives set out to defend.'

The right wing of the American Revolution saw itself as restoring traditional English rights of Americans.

I agree - but I think they understood themselves to be accomplishing that end by means of creating a form of government that was new, albeit leaning on English common law and informed by history. If "American conservatism" means anything, it means conserving that then-new creation.

[ConservingFreedom]

reap the benefits of their work by having FR traffic directed to the site where their work was originally posted

See post #9 - JR, the owner of this site, is explicitly against excerpting for the purpose of driving hits to the original site. His house, his rules.