A Paleoconservative Anthology: New Voices for an Old Tradition(Political Theory for Today)

This anthology provides detailed examinations of the major themes and perspectives of the paleoconservatives as political thinkers and activists. A long forgotten and persistently disregarded group within the American Right, but their ideas show a remarkable staying power. Paleoconservatives, as this anthology undertakes to show, have been among the most original and insightful representatives of the Right over the last thirty years but because of internal quarrels and their conspicuous defiance of the conservative establishment, they have become isolated voices. Almost everything about the paleoconservatives should be of interest to historians of political movements, including the process by which they became a marginalized force on the intellectual right and their periodic attempts to build bridges across the political spectrum.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: What Conservatives Could Learn from Paleoconservatives by David Azerrad Chapter 2: Revisiting the Clash between Neoconservatives and Paleoconservatives by Keith Preston Chapter 3: Sam Francis: A Foundational Thinker of the Right by Pedro Gonzalez Chapter 4: Jeffersonian Constitutionalism: The Heart of Paleoconservative Legal Theory by Williams J. Watkins Chapter 5: Paleoconservative Jurisprudence by Stephen B Presser Chapter 6: The Triumph of the Political: Post-Libertarianism at the End of the American Ideology by C. Jay Engel Chapter 7: Richard Weaver and The South by Joseph Scotchie Chapter 8: A Paleoconservative Dialectic by Grant Havers Chapter 9: Human Nature: A Biosocial View by Alexander Riley Chapter 10: How Conservatives Should Practice the Historian’s Craft by Mark J. Brennan Chapter 11: Myth of the Reagan Revolution by Carl F Horowitz Chapter 12: Rethinking “National Security” by Wayne Allensworth About the Contributors

About the Author :
Paul Edward Gottfried is the editor of Chronicles and a former Horace Raffensperger professor of humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

Review :
Edited by the distinguished historian who coined the term “paleoconservatism” for a loosely defined camp of Old Right (as opposed to “neoconservative”) thinkers, this book brings together essays by thoughtful and independently-minded members of a younger generation of that persuasion. While acknowledging their debt to their predecessors, they are less resigned to the decline of the West and inclined to place greater emphasis on the realities and importance of political power. ---Lee Congdon, author of George Kennan for Our Time. Finally, students, academics, and concerned citizens can read a full-throated, scholarly defense of paleoconservatism. The dean of paleoconservatism, Paul Gottfried, has assembled essays by prominent writers on the work of those who pioneered the study of the cultural roots of popular self-rule in America and their endangerment by a managerial class. Love it, hate it, or even fear some of what it contains, this book is essential for understanding a rigorous, coherent body of thought crucial to the development of and debates within American conservatism. In A Paleoconservative Anthology, Paul Gottfried has ably introduced what paleoconservatism is, what it is not, and something of the nature of the ofttimes feisty debates allied intellectuals frequently have among themselves. The contributors cover subjects that range from the sociologist Alexander Riley’s forcible demolition of the progressive view regarding human nature to defense consultant Wayne Allensworth’s reassessment of US national security imperiled by the forces of globalization. Taken as a whole, these contributors do not mince words in what they consider the outrages of the modern world. Gottfried has assembled voices that are always interesting, frequently challenging, and occasionally superb.