(Well, it's a bump at least.)
Do they dream of a reborn medieval European chr*stendom, or a reborn early-federal-period enlightenment/Masonic United States of America? Do they want a virtually nonexistent government or something like the strong, paternalistic governments of Franco, Salazar, and Petain that will preserve the purity of the ethnoculture? Or they for or against free trade? (It is forgotten by today's Buchananite Confederacy-partisans that "free trade" was one of the doctrines most dear to the real Confederacy.) Are you for Jeffersonial localism or against it when a Hispanic border town votes to make Spanish (the language of Franco!) its official language?
LOL! Youre going to make a few heads explode with this paragraph.
Paelo Conservitism is a replay of the 30's isolationist dogma, they didn't have a problem with intervention in WW1, merged with some socalist protectionism of the last half of the 19th century.
To the light
Little Bill
You wont get an explanation because the connection is only in your head. Bullshit on false premise sandwich.
What has come to be considered the "Right" in America today is really borne of three strands, not so very well integrated:
1) The classical liberalism born of Locke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, which was the liberalism of the Founders and the 19th century, and which now encompasses Austrian economics, neoclassical microeconomics and rational expectations economic theory, and political libertarianism, in the broad sense more than in the party sense.
2) A moderate conservatism that seeks gradual change and to preserve the essence of the good in traditional institutions, borne of Burke's revulsion at the French Revolution and being now essentially country club Republican ism. The relationship of this with classical liberalism is gradual and curious, consider how the Republican party began as an amalgam of conservative Whigs and anti-slavery radicals who were often classical liberals. and
3) Authoritarin conservatism, that of the high Tory or Ultramontagne Continental Conservative. Whether it glorifies the state in monarchal or religious terms, it still views the individual as subordinate to the state. It lacks being totalitarian only because of its traditionalism grounding in morality (in most places) and the sense of reciprocal obligation of all in society in the Great Chain of Being whereby each had is place.
The Paelos are authoritarian conservatives for the most part, but who rarely have the historical or philosophical training to understand the implications of their views.
The problem with the classification "conservative" is that it doesn't always refer to the same status quo being conserved. Those who would return to the social mores of the 1950s, for example, would probably have a claim to that name, but to those for whom that era's post-FDR federal government constitutes a terrible inflation of power over that of the Founders' day, they wouldn't be "conservative" at all. Making it worse, libertarians are referred to as "conservative" because the status quo they are trying to conserve most resembles the original plan (or more properly, an more or less fuzzy idealization) of the Constitution. But to return to that era's laissez-faire attitude toward, say, drugs, appears to many latter-day "conservatives" as "liberal" or even "libertine" (for those who prefer looser usages of the English language).
As you point out, it gets worse still when European definitions are used, wherein "liberal" means adhering to the policies most Americans would classify as "conservative." Worse still when "conservative" applies to old-line Communists in, say, the ex-Soviet Union, whose economic and political stance is diametrically opposed to "conservative" in the U.S.
I think, therefore, that if it isn't merely a relative term, it doesn't have a great deal of meaning at all.
At this particular point in time in American politics, many wish for a return to traditional America which happened to enjoy small government and respect for individual rights as well as respect for Christian tradition, and so the wishes of libertarians and conservatives align -- not due to a common philosophy, but due to a circumstance.
For creating and perpetuating the most mature discussion/debate I have yet seen on FR.
If only more of the posts concerning Israel, Political Philosophy labels/definitions, Personalities, etc. could be so polite and erudite.
Many thanks.
What you get is what you get, regardless of labels.
Someone who thinks coming down from the trees was a bad idea?
I would consider myself a palaeoconservative and I would describe the apparent disconnect in this way:
Palaeoconservatism believes that there is such a thing as cultural particularity and that particular social/economic orders appear to work best when ensconced in their proper cultural milieu.
For example - Rothbard postulates a completely free market economy with a highly articulated financial apparatus built upon a few basic principles.
I believe that in his model there are a number of cultural assumptions that are necessary but unspoken postulates to his expressed axioms. I believe that his economic order works for people like himself and myself. I do not believe it works for someone who would nod his head in agreement at Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March address or Noam Chomsky's latest lecture or someone who is addicted to scatological pornography.
Rothbard himself based his observations on a tradition of thought beginning with Aristotle and continuing through Aquinas and the Physiocrats.
The palaeoconservative realizes that systems are not perfect and that cultural and historical factors intrude. Was Franco the absolute best ruler for Spain? Probably not. Was he immeasurably better than a Stalinist client state? Assuredly.
Because I think that Spain could have done a lot worse than Franco in 1936, does that mean I think his style of government appropriate for the US in 2001? Not at all.
Palaeoconservatives are most properly cultural patriots. If we believe that strict construction of the US Constitution is the cultural and political apex of American civil society, then we are not being inconsistent. If we believe that the US Constitution is not the perfect form of government for Myanmar because it is alien to their cultural traditions, we are again not being inconsistent.
There are certain bedrock principles of human nature and morality which apply to all men - but there are also myriad cultural differences which it is foolish to disturb.