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Your points stand, and it seems the politics of the national security state has carried the moment, we may also agree that the disenchanted right has yet to rally around a political figure let alone a consensus on how to proceed. Sam Francis suggests a version of Euro-nationalism; Lew Rockwell argues just ignore them and they will go away; Chronicles argues recovering our political liberty begins with local institutions like Churches.

That will play-out over time.

In the meantime, the current brand of PC conservatism has a massive aesthetics problem. While we have Braveheart, Legends of the Fall, and The Outlaw Josey Wales, they have crappy pulp like Independence Day.

We have Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe, Thomas Fleming (the historian), they have a plagerist, Stephen Ambrose and what...a pulp novelist in Tom Clancy?

We get Murray Rothbard and HL Mencken; they get who, Bill Buckley? Fred Barnes? David Frum?

Their version of beauty is a landing on an Air Craft carrier; ours, the humility of Rembrandts depictions of the Crucifixion. We get Mel Gibson; what do they get?

We get Southern military heroes like Lee and Jackson, they get fanciful tales of the foreign monsters FDR slew.

We get Johnny Cash; they get, who, Toby Keith?

Most periods in history are the subject of very ambiguous lines of right and wrong, think a bourgeoisie in 1935 Bavaria; ours, the lines could not be more clear, could they?

To further your comparison of old right/new right I quote something posted on the LRC Blog the other day:

"What starts with Whittaker Chambers, Ludwig von Mises and Russell Kirk and ends up with Sean Hannity? The Conservative Book Club, apparently, which turns 40 this year and has an ad in the new National Review showing a selection of the club's authors, beginning with Chamber and Mises and running through the Bookie of Virtue to Sean Hannity. Could there be a better illustration of the decline of the life of the mind on the American Right?"

Speaking of Kirk, on a thread yesterday equating Limbaugh with the Passion of Christ there was an argument between the rushbots (who were busy doing the full Monica, Clintonian style for their "conservative" hero) and a few sane individuals. One poster suggested to another that he should read some Russel Kirk. Another staunch conservative asked contemptuously and in all sincerity who was Kirk and why he should care.

On another thread a column criticizing Bush from the real conservtive angle quoted Goldwater circa 1964. Pretty amazing reaction Goldwater received on a conservative website. I'm sure you can guess correctly how it went.