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No. "Class" is something different from group. Class refers to a social level people are born into, regardless of ability or actions. In America, a politician too blatantly corrupt will be rejected as unworthy to serve. In Europe, corruption and greed in a politician is blandly overlooked because the pol is of a different class than ordinary folk. Pols in France, say, are the aristocracy of France, with all the privileges of the ancien regime's aristocracy.

In a class system of society, people don't move up and down as in America. The divides are rigid

One of the reasons the "Old South" system had to be rooted out of America, in addition to its harboring slavery, was because it was in fact a transplant of the European class model for society. That's why most Southerners, who didn't own slavery, defended the system -- every person in the South "knew his place." There can be comfort in that. A meritocracy produces much more anxiety -- to achieve if you want to be well thought of.

One of the reasons the "Old South" system had to be rooted out of America, in addition to its harboring slavery, was because it was in fact a transplant of the European class model for society. That's why most Southerners, who didn't own slavery, defended the system -- every person in the South "knew his place." There can be comfort in that. A meritocracy produces much more anxiety -- to achieve if you want to be well thought of.

What was it about the "Old South" system - aside from slavery - that supposedly created such a stratification? I mean, what laws existed that prevented people from advancing based on merit? Did they have socialist government? Did they have an overbearing public sector? Were their policies any less "free market" than in the North?

I usually think of the term "class" as it is used in the formal logic sense. If you instead prefer the use as in "the English upper class", that is fine with me. In that sense, there are social classes in America. I run into this all the time at work. Don't you? But perhaps you don't run into this as often as I, because I work in a factory. Workplaces are highly segregated by class in America. Working class people have blue collar jobs, middle class white collar jobs, and upper class people have (by my standards) very high incomes and net worths. Classes are certainly not as rigid as in England, and there is comparatively more movement between classes in America, certainly. But social class exists in America. And most people stay in the same class as their parents.

I don't agree. Virtually every society has classes and elites, and every self-conscious political movement or party contains the seeds of elite rule. I don't see any especial support among paleos for the idea that politicians are a class that is above all of us and can't be replaced if they do wrong. If anything, they seem to be too hard on politicians, at least in contrast to the neo-cons. It may be that paleo-conservative policies, if applied, won't bring equality, but that's true of other political agendas, including the neo-conservative one.

Quidnunc's idea that the paleocons represent the East Coast elite is wrong. Most of them live between the two coasts and oppose the policies of America's most prominent elites. That was the original impulse behind the emergence of the movement. There is an animus against political and economic elites running throughout all their writings. Some paleos add other views to this, like a sympathy with the Old South, that are objectionable, but the tendency behind the movement has generally been anti-elitist.

The idea that paleos stand against an egalitarian and mobile society is also not proven (and it's also not true that egalitarian societies are always the most mobile and vice versa -- there are stagnant egalitarian and highly mobile inegalitarian societies). One could well argue that a permanent commitment to globalization, unlimited free trade and mass immigration will produce a radically inegalitarian society. One could also argue that the US is less egalitarian now than it was forty or fifty years ago. And one can certainly question whether globalization will benefit most Americans.

But I suspect the problem here is that people are arguing different things. I think Jaffa won his debate with Bradford and Kendall, and don't see very much point in reviving the Confederate view of history now. It was wrong and inadequate and shouldn't be unearthed. Nor do I think Fleming's peddling of sociobiological theories is a worthy endeavor.

But I do think think that the ideas of global human rights and egalitarianism are sometimes used to justify the expansion of government power beyond what is necessary or desirable. Kesler would apparently agree with this, at least in part:

[In] abstract terms, the paleo-cons and neo-cons agree on far more than they disagree on. Both sides agree that rationalism in politics leads quickly to Jacobinism; that universal truths of the sort expressed in the Declaration of Independence (or in twentieth-century liberalism: they tend to see the two as continuous) are ultimately destructive of authentic, historically rooted human communities; that history or experience is therefore a better guide than reason in political affairs.

So it looks to me like there is much room for common ground here that those who want to promote an either/or view ignore. Kesler himself seems to be of two minds. He recognizes the common ground, but wants to minimize it to advance his own faction above the others. He sees that radical ideas may win acceptance in a conservative disguise, but he doesn't always take the problem as seriously as he ought. He's right about the more extreme ideas of some thinkers who define themselves as paleoconservatives, but he's too complacent about the neo-conservative tendency of many of today's prominent conservatives.