Neoconservatism and paleoconservatism

The beginning rift is often traced back to a dispute over the directorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities by the incoming Republican administration in 1981. Senator John East proposed literary scholar Mel Bradford, a former Dixiecrat. Bradford withdrew himself from consideration after Neoconservatives argued that his record of academic articles criticizing the actions and thought of Abraham Lincoln ill-suited a Republican nominee. They circulated quotes of Bradford calling Lincoln "a dangerous man," and saying, "The image of Lincoln rose to be very dark" and "indeed almost sinister."[13]

Historian Paul Young described Bradford's view of Lincoln as follows:

Bradford cast all of Lincoln's life in the most sinister of terms. He gave Lincoln no credit for any intellectual or moral progression from his pronouncements in the 1840s to the years of the Civil War. Rather, Bradford freely juxtaposed the young Lincoln's comments on race and slavery, whether on the political hustings or otherwise, with his later statements and actions in order to convict him of hypocrisy. Neither did Bradford afford any consideration to the expediencies of politics; no sin by Lincoln could ever be justified by an appeal to political necessity. Bradford's Lincoln was a paragon of venality: hypocritical, corrupt, racist, unscrupulous, and duplicitous in his rhetoric. He was motivated by his own ambitions and thirst for power, provoking sectional conflict in order to attain his goals. Lincoln was guilty of war crimes for denying medicine to the South, complicit in the under rationing of his own troops, given to locking up political opponents in a "Northern 'Gulag,'" and, in general, an apt model for the twentieth-century dictator. Noting the dyspeptic Edmund Wilson's comparison of Lincoln to Bismarck and Lenin in Patriotic Gore (1962), Bradford added Hitler for good measure.[14]

The Neoconservative choice, William Bennett, was nominated on November 13, 1981.[15] Curiously, a few leaders, whom the Paleocons would later oppose, supported Bradford: Dan Quayle, William F. Buckley Jr., and Harry Jaffa.[16] Former Bradford associate Thomas Landess wrote in 2003 that today's Neocons "are too busy running the world to tilt with Mel Bradford."[17]

Democratic congressman from Georgia Larry McDonald was elected second president of the John Birch Society upon the retirement of first president, Robert Welch. Shortly after, McDonald was reported killed when the passenger plane he had boarded to take him to the 30th year commemoration of the U.S.-S. Korea Mutual Defense Treaty, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, was shot down near Moneron Island by the Soviets. Three months earlier, McDonald had appeared as the guest of Pat Buchanan's Crossfire T.V. show, on which Buchanan and journalist Tom Braden discussed with him the John Birch Society's position with regards to the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and conspiracy. Speaking of the Rockefeller family, McDonald had written in the introduction of a book:

The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government, combining super-capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control ... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.[18]

The real genesis of the Paleocons came in 1986 when the Paleoconservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute's journal Intercollegiate Review ran a "State of Conservatism" symposium.[19] Some of the contributors complained about growing Neoconservative dominance. Historian Clyde Wilson wrote of being "crowded out by overwhelming numbers." Gregory Wolfe argued that true Conservative scholars valued "order and organic community, class and natural aristocracy" and considered "Christian belief as the foundation of morality and law."

Soon after, a Conservative group called the Philadelphia Society held a symposium on Neoconservatism at its 1986 annual meeting.[20] Among the critics was historian Stephen Tonsor (who does not accept the paleo label[21]), who said:

It has always struck me as odd, even perverse, that former Marxists have been permitted, yes invited, to play such a leading role in the Conservative movement of the twentieth century. It is splendid when the town whore gets religion and joins the church. Now and then she makes a good choir director, but when she begins to tell the minister what he ought to say in his Sunday sermons, matters have been carried too far.[22]

Tonsor also argued that the movement divided "techniques from ends in an effort to maintain their cultural modernism while rejecting its social and political implications." He said it couldn't be done.

Neoconservatives are, as Irving Kristol remarked, "liberals who have been mugged by reality," but while they have been detached from their social and political myths they have not located themselves in a body of principle that makes life worth living, or that one would die defending.[22]

Paul Gottfried says that Neoconservative lobbying kept him from a professorship in classical political theory at The Catholic University of America.[23] David Frum claims this allegation is "relentlessly solipsistic."[24] Gottfried described the incident as follows:

[In 1987,] Neocons denounced me to the authorities at Catholic University of America, on the grounds that I was "not safe on Israel," their flagrantly illogical argument: I had denied that Imperial Germany was principally to blame for the outbreak of World War One. Somehow this proved that I had denied the Holocaust, at least by indirection (never mind that it was the wrong German war!), and therefore I had to be against the Israelis (many of whose ancestors fought for the Central Powers in World War One—as did my own, Austrian Jewish forebears). Nevertheless, I still lost a graduate professorship.[25]

Russell Kirk found himself in the minority on December 15, 1988, when he gave a lecture at The Heritage Foundation. The title was "The Neoconservatives: An Endangered Species." As Chronicles editor Scott Richert described it,

[One line] helped define the emerging struggle between Neoconservatives and Paleoconservatives. "Not seldom has it seemed," Kirk declared, "as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States." A few years later, in another Heritage Foundation speech, Kirk repeated that line verbatim. In the wake of the Gulf War, which he had opposed, he clearly understood that those words carried even greater meaning.[26]

Neoconservative commentator Norman Podhoretz, called Kirk's line "a bloody outrage, a piece of anti-Semitism by Kirk that impugns the loyalty of Neoconservatives." She claimed that Kirk "said people like my husband and me put the interest of Israel before the interest of the United States, that we have a dual loyalty."[27] She had previously denounced Joseph Sobran and the Intercollegiate Review symposium as anti-Semitic as well.[27] She told The New Republic, "It's this notion of a Christian civilization. You have to be part of it or you're not really fit to conserve anything. That's an old line and it's very ignorant."[27]

Conversely, Paleocon Samuel Francis called Kirk's "Tel Aviv" remark "a wisecrack about the slavishly pro-Israel sympathies among Neoconservatives."[27] He called Decter's response untrue,[27] "reckless" and "vitriolic." Furthermore, he argued that such a denunciation "always plays into the hands of the left, which is then able to repeat the charges and claim Conservative endorsement of them."[4]

Another defining incident came on May 5, 1989, when the Rockford Institute fired Richard John Neuhaus, who went on to launch the religious journal First Things. One issue between them was that Neuhaus claimed that Chronicles, Rockford's magazine, tilted toward nativism and was "insensitive to the classic language of anti-Semitism." Allan Carlson, then Rockford's president, called the allegations "egregious and potentially damaging."[28] Fourteen years later, Neuhaus called Chronicles "racist and anti-Semitic," joked about "Schadenfreude" and said he holds a "gala staff luncheon" every year to commemorate his termination.[29]

John Judis, a left-wing author and journalist, described the incident:

Under the Rockford Institute's name and funding, Neuhaus published a regular newsletter out of his Center for Religion and Society in New York. But in March 1989, Neuhaus and Podhoretz took strong exception to two articles published in Rockford's glossy journal, Chronicles. In one of them, Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming called for stricter quotas to prevent the United States from "being dominated by Third World immigrants," and in the other, novelist Bill Kauffman defended Gore Vidal, who had earlier attacked Podhoretz for putting Israel's interests before America's. In a letter, Podhoretz wrote Neuhaus, "I know an enemy when I see one, and Chronicles has become just that so far as I am concerned." In May the Rockford Institute made the next move by locking Neuhaus out of the center and confiscating his files. When Neuhaus left, three foundations linked to the Neoconservatives, Olin, Smith Richardson, and Bradley, withdrew their funding for the Rockford Institute, costing an estimated $700,000 a year.[30]

Pat Buchanan's Paleoconservative views soon became a point of dispute. The major controversy began with the August 26, 1990 The McLaughlin Group television broadcast. He said that "there are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East—the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States"—and was accused of antisemitism.[31]

A further event was the demotion and eventual firing in 1993 of Joseph Sobran from National Review, who had criticized American supporters of Israel. One such comment was that the New York Times "really ought to change its name to Holocaust Update."[32] Neoconservative Norman Podhoretz vehemently objected to such writing,[33] saying they were "anti-Semitic in themselves,"[34] His wife, Midge Decter, told Sobran she felt "shock and disgust—and contempt—at the discovery that you are little more than a crude and naked anti-Semite."[35]

Sobran himself claimed that founder William F. Buckley told him to "stop antagonizing the Zionist crowd," and Buckley accused him of libel and moral incapacitation.[36] Buckley had previously said that an outsider "might reasonably conclude that those [Israel] columns were written by a writer inclined to anti-Semitism."[37] Before his firing, Sobran discussed the issue in National Review, saying:

I'm responding to an obsession—a more or less official national obsession with a tiny, faraway socialist ethnocracy, which, I agree, ought to be a very minor concern of American policy-makers, but isn't. The orthodox view that Israel is a "reliable ally" is so brittle that a single maverick can ignite a frenzy. The reason, I repeat, is not that critics of Israel are so numerous, but that even one, as far as Israel's claque is concerned, is one too many. There is the terrible danger that the public may be more interested in what he has to say than in the party line the rest of the chorus is emitting.[38]

Paleoconservative Scott McConnell was fired as the New York Post's editorial page editor on September 4, 1997 after writing editorials critical of Haitian immigration and Puerto Rican statehood. About the latter, he had cited statistics that "half the island's 3.7 million inhabitants receive Food Stamps" and "59.4 percent of Puerto Rican children born on the U.S. mainland are born to unwed mothers."[39] He concluded:

We believe that the looming vote on Puerto Rico's status is yet another sign of how the congressional GOP has lost its way. The current leadership seems more interested in trying to placate the liberal Washington establishment—or hatching schemes it imagines are popular with minority voters—than in protecting the interests of the voters who elected it. This is a feckless way to guide America's destiny.[40]

McConnell later remarked that "our society had developed an expected script of white Anglo contrition and apology ... and that I had failed to follow it." He found himself replaced by John Podhoretz.

Two years after the incident, McConnell said he had changed his mind about Pat Buchanan and joined his campaign as an adviser. He once dismissed his presidential hopes as "not worth discussing."[41] Soon he helped found The American Conservative.

Since the end of the Cold War, the rift within the conservative movement has deepened with the neoconservatives' ascent and the paleoconservatives' marginalization. For example, there were no prominent paleoconservatives in the Bush administration. Charles Krauthammer called Paleoconservatism a "philosophical corpse" and "a mix of nativism, protectionism and isolationism."[42] However, the Trump administration saw a resurgence in paleoconservatism, with Steve Bannon serving as White House Chief Strategist until his dismissal in August 2017,[43] and Stephen Miller continuing to hold a prominent advisory post.[44][45]

On domestic affairs, The Weekly Standard claimed that "the paleos' radical dissatisfaction with contemporary America could eventually veer into an anti-Americanism almost indistinguishable from the more familiar variety on the left."[46] David Brooks, in the same magazine, claimed that the movement combines "high principle and bad-boy bravado," along with melding good ("longing for the old virtues") with bad ("race and sex roles"). He concluded that paleocons replace "the universalist ideas of the Founding" with "blood and soil."[47] Brooks also described Pat Buchanan's campaign supporters as "people who thrived in the machine age" but who "are not going to thrive in the new economy."[48]

Lew Rockwell once illustrated the depth of paleo/neo schism with the story of an encounter between a Paleocon and a Neocon. The Neocon complained that the Paleocon made an "insensitive remark" about AIDS and said, "How can you say that, when we all have so many close friends who have been struck down by this terrible disease?" The Paleo replied, "'Close friends?' I don't know anyone who has AIDS. I don't know anyone who knows anyone who has AIDS." After that, the Neocon stopped speaking to the Paleocon.[49]

David Frum of National Review and Pat Buchanan of The American Conservative exchanged harsh words just before the Iraq War began. Buchanan wrote that Neocons influence the U.S. government toward the pursuit of global empire and the benefit of pro-Israel hawks.[50] Frum charged that Paleocons have become unpatriotic, racist, and antisemitic.[24] He also hinted that Paleocons were subversives, claiming they "made common cause with" international Islamists and "deny and excuse terror." (Though a year later, National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. described The American Conservative as "highly literate" and "wonderfully well edited."[51])

In his article, Buchanan wrote:

This is a time for truth. For America is about to make a momentous decision: whether to launch a series of wars in the Middle East that could ignite the Clash of Civilizations against which Harvard professor Samuel Huntington has warned, a war we believe would be a tragedy and a disaster for this Republic. To avert this war, to answer the Neocon smears, we ask that our readers review their agenda as stated in their words. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. As Al Smith used to say, "Nothing un-American can live in the sunlight."[50]

Frum wrote that:

Having quickly decided that the War on Terror was a Jewish war, the Paleos equally swiftly concluded that they wanted no part of it. It's odd: 9/11 actually vindicated some of the things that the Paleos had been arguing, particularly about immigration and national cohesion. But the Paleos were in no mood to press their case. Instead, they plunged into apologetics for the enemy and wishful defeatism.[24]

In 2003, Paleocon Clyde Wilson speculated that their critique of this "nasty little cabal" might be "belated and repetitive—a diversion from more fundamental problems," namely "a fatal defect of national character." He wrote that the Neocons are courtiers who saw "the chance presented by the vast gaping vacuum of ideas and principles that is the Republican Party." He concluded that Middle America is too willing to "clamber aboard" a GOP bandwagon "and hosanna their way down the road to perdition," instead of creating a populist replacement that might preserve "some semblance of civilized order and liberty."[52]

In addition, while Paleos and Neos quarrel over Middle East policy, Paul Gottfried argued that domestic equality and the exportability of democracy are greater points of contention between them.[53] He wrote that the neocons' call for "permanent revolution" exists independently of their beliefs about Israel,[20] characterizing the Neos as "ranters out of a Dostoyevskian novel, who are out to practice permanent revolution courtesy of the U.S. government".[54] He also said, "What bothers me is not what Israel is but the manner in which its well-wishers blatantly misrepresent it,"[55] Also, Paleos, while not wanting the US tied to Israel too strongly, freely disagree with one another about certain Israeli leaders. Pat Buchanan supported Yitzhak Rabin,[31] while Gottfried, who criticizes "truculent [neoconservative] Zionism,"[56] admires Ariel Sharon.[57]

Note, however, that not everyone associated with American conservatism can be easily sorted into neo or paleo categories. Prominent examples are Claes Ryn, John Lukacs and George Carey, who are strongly critical of neoconservatism but do not share the paleocon fondness for sociobiology, positivist social science or populism. The division into two camps also ignores that it might be possible to support the war in Iraq, for pragmatic rather than ideological or ethnic reasons, and yet support economic nationalism and immigration reform. Note further that paleos and neos both oppose the New Left, Marxism and Soviet Communism, especially Stalinism, and do not necessarily disagree on every political and cultural matter.