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First, "Conservapedia" does not seem likely to be much of an authority just because it was founded by unidentified homeschoolers (home school is OK but guarantees nothing; we homeschooled two of our own for years and I'll bet you won't agree with them) and the even more descriptive "college bound students." Obviously the voice of the authority and experience. Then there is the little matter of allowing editing by readers. That is just the sort of thing that appeals to paleodimbulbs since they have not a prayer of electoral victories, they waste their time on straw polls and editing defenseless websites.

Second, have any of your list EVER militantly supported American war efforts. A number of them are too obscure to know for sure.

Brimelow is the immigrant hypocrite (from the UK and his wife from Canada) who wrote that he was dedicated to the notion that when his tow-headed ten-year-old turned sixty in about 2050, he wanted him living in a blond, blue-eyed America that looks like his ten-year-old. Can you spell u-p-p-i-t-y r-a-c-i-s-t who can return to England if he is so dissatisfied here and thinks he has some business rejecting Hispanics who have been here longer than have the Brits????

Patrick Buchanan is one I have voted for a couple of times. I agree with him on taxes and tariffs and social conservatism. I once heard a brilliant speech on foreign policy that he delivered on C-SPAN to the DAR (pinch hitting for Quayle), a tour de force that was right in most respects. That was then. This is now and PJB is under the influence of Justin(e) Raimondo the lavender queen and paleo foreign minister and proprietor of the despicable antiwar.com. Since last I voted for him, we have had PJB the scientist who has concluded that the Holocaust could not have occurred since a trainload of passengers in a tunnel for several hours did not die of carbon monoxide poisoning. He has opined that the Commonwealth of Virginia would be worse off with an influx of Zulus (pro-Western, capitalistic, moral warriors, see the movie or read the speeches of Mengistu Buthelezi) than with an influx of Brits. I am 1/4 Brit and not at all Zulu but even I don't believe that. Bill Buckley cleared him of the charge of anti-Semitism but it was not an easy task. Pat likes sensationalism for its own sake. He did not come up in the conservative movement but through the patronage of Nixon, like Kevin Phillips. Pat, like Reagan, would be a great guy to have dinner and a few hours or a weekend of good conversation with but, politically, he is generally unhinged nowadays. He does get credit for zipping his lip after we opened the Iraq War. Unlike the paleopipsqueak, PJB knows better than to engage in treasonous weasel behavior. He is socially acceptable as most paleos are not.

I know Tom Fleming. I endured his "real American history" course for two years because I had enrolled a kid in it. He is probably a lot better fellow than he would like to admit or have anyone know. His eccentricity is a hallmark of the paleos. The first year of his course (available on tape from the Rockford Institute) I would generally recommend to any conservative and any other patriot. He is apparently a descendant of George Rogers Clark. He is a very faithful convert to Catholicism, if only he would convert to support of the military and to support of US foreign policy of an interventionist sort, but alas it is not likely to be. He shares your apparent notion that labor unions are communist institutions. The second year of his course runs off the rails. He loses it completely over the Progressive Movement (not to be confused with those communists who use the term today). If he is not a pacifist in this era, he will do until the real thing comes along. He has an ambition of retiring to Serbia as an authentic little unspoiled culture for unfathomable reasons and visits Serbia regularly. He admires the classics and teaches them (like Russell Kirk). He was very resentful of Slick Willie's Yugoslavian efforts (but I have to admit that I was at least skeptical too without mouthing off about it). He does not vote which he ought to recommend to other paleos. He admired Sam Francis, about whom more below but that is no recommendation. He is at enmity with Fr. Neuhaus and that diminishes Fleming. The Institute had a distinguished old fellow who had participated in the D-Day landing come and talk about it to the students. Only after the old guy had finished his very interesting presentation did his memory as to why he was invited kick in. He called everyone back to say that he had stepped on some soldier's detached genitals on the beach and he had forgotten that he was supposed to include that in his presentation. Abbie Hoffman, call your office!

Richard Weaver is long dead. I won't presume to speak for him and I confess I have not read Ideas Have Consequences or anything else by him. I know who he was. Most of my old friends who had read him thought a great deal of him. Getting his books is not as easy now as once it was. I would recommend him sight unseen and books unread as a second-hand endorsement.

I am quite unacquainted with Peter Hitchens, William S. Lind, Steve Sailer and Clyde Wilson and that condition is likely to continue. Scott McConnell used to have a real job at the NY Daily News before he fell in with the paleos. No one I know pays him much attention since he went native. I know a few people who read Chronicles since it is published here but none who read "The American 'Conservative'." Why should they? These are strictly third rate publications. Paul Craig Roberts may have been accidentally credentialed under Reagan but went nuts thereafter. Charley Reese???? Really!

The late Sam Francis who died while editing some Missouri based newsrag for the Conservative Citizens' Council (maiden name was the White Citizens' Councils of Mississippi) was an atheist who Buchanan slipped in as a columnist for the Wanderer. Francis had been fired by the Washington Times for addressing some neo-nazi national convention (American Renaissance??) He was probably a fan of Don Black and Stormfront and Willis Carto and vice versa.

I won't try Nisbet for lack of familiarity.

Russell Kirk was a dear old man and, on matters cultural, cleverly and wisely insightful. On matters political, he was hardly Mr. Excitement. For scholars and people who care about their children's education (and their own?), Kirk wrote and said a lot worth writing and saying. Enemies of the Permanent Things was great. OTOH, he was keeping the cultural patient alive while the New Right was performing deep surgery (by analogy to Dr. Zhivago's observation to KGB brother Yevgraf Zhivago). Fleming and other paleos could learn a lot from Kirk's approach and get the hell out of the way politically and shed their nuttier ideas.

Whatever you may suppose and whatever their value, Nisbet, Weaver and Kirk are not THE three key intellectuals of post-war conservatism. Weaver died too young by far. Nisbet had far too little impact. Kirk, maybe, maybe. Best of the group. He also converted to Catholicism at the end which is always a plus in my estimation, however biased I may be.