Posted on 11/13/2001 12:10:56 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator
I do not post these musings of mine to be disagreeable or provocative, but I simply do not understand the consistent inconsistencies of "palaeo"conservatives. And I am not referring to their position on Communist Arabs vis a vis their position on every other Communist in the world. I am referring to something far more basic.
I do not understand someone calling himself a "palaeo"conservative who then invokes "liberty," "rights," etc., for the very simple reason that "palaeo"conservatism connotes a European-style conservatism that opposes these very things in the name of Throne and Altar. So why do our disciples of Joseph de la Maistre pose as followers of Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, or Friedrich von Hayek?
I don't know. Honestly. I'm asking.
True, Charley Reese and Joseph Sobran (unlike their more honest and consistent fellow, Pat Buchanan) pose as across-the-board individualist Jeffersonian ideologues. But truly consistern libertarians, even the most "rightwing," took positions on civil rights and the new left in the Sixties that were (and are) anathema to some of these fellow travellers. I recently went to a libertarian site (this one here) where I was impressed with the fearless consistency of a true libertarian, such as Rothbard. I urge interested parties to read some of Rothbard's writings here (particularly "Liberty and the New Left") and honestly ask themselves if they can imagine "libertarians" like Sobran or Reese (or their supporters here at FR) saying such things.
Imagine, for example, the following quotation from Rothbard, from the article just cited:
It is no wonder then that, confronted by the spectre of this Leviathan, many people devoted to the liberty of the individual turned to the Right-wing, which seemed to offer a groundwork for saving the individual from this burgeoning morass. But the Right-wing, by embracing American militarism and imperialism, as well as police brutality against the Negro people, faced the most vital issues of our time . . . and came down squarely on the side of the State and agaisnt the person. The torch of liberty against the Establishment passed therefore to the New Left.
Okay, the militarism/imperialism quote is right in character, but can you honestly imagine Sobran saying such things about "police brutality against the Negro people" or heaping such praises on the New Left in an address before Mississippi's "Council of Conservative Citizens?" Or Reese saying such things before a League of the South convention???
Something doesn't fit here.
The thing is, the "palaeo"right has roots going back to the turn-of-the-century European right (eg, Action Francaise) as well as to the Austrian school of economics. In fact, sometimes these roots jump out from the midst of libertarian rhetoric--for example, when someone stops thumping the First Amendment long enough to bemoan the subversive, rootless, cosmopolitan nature of international capitalism (and surely no one expects libertarian Austrian economics to create a Pat Buchanan-style monocultural country!), or to defend Salazar Portugal or Vichy France.
In short, what we are faced with here is the same situation as on the Left, where unwashed, undisciplined, excrement-throwing hippies rioted in favor of the ultra-orderly goose-stepping military dictatorships in Cuba and Vietnam. In each case--Left and Right--the American section advocated positions that the mother movement in the mother country would not tolerate. For one thing, Communist countries exploit and use totalitarian patriotism; no one in Cuba burns the Cuban flag and gets away with it, I guarantee. Yet partisans of nationalist-communist Cuba advocate the "right" of Americans to burn their national flag. And can anyone imagine what Franco or Salazar would have done to some dissident spouting Rothbard's rhetoric back in Iberia in the 1950's or 60's? Yet once again, a philosophy alien to the mother country is seized upon by native Falangists as the essence of the movement.
I don't get it. Palaeos, like Leftists, don't seem to be able to make up their minds. Are they in favor of or opposed to "rights liberalism?" Do they dream of a reborn medieval European chr*stendom, or a reborn early-federal-period enlightenment/Masonic United States of America? Do they want a virtually nonexistent government or something like the strong, paternalistic governments of Franco, Salazar, and Petain that will preserve the purity of the ethnoculture? Or they for or against free trade? (It is forgotten by today's Buchananite Confederacy-partisans that "free trade" was one of the doctrines most dear to the real Confederacy.) Are you for Jeffersonial localism or against it when a Hispanic border town votes to make Spanish (the language of Franco!) its official language?
I wonder if I could possibly be more confused than you yourselves seem to be.
Honestly, it does sometimes seem that the issue that defines "palaeo"ism is hostility to Israel. Why else would someone like "Gecko," a FReeper who openly admired 19th Century German "conservatism," which he admitted was a form of state socialism, be considered a member of the family by "disciples of Ludwig von Mises?" None of this makes any sense at all.
As a final postscript, I must add once more that I am myself a "palaeo" in all my instincts (except that I don't go around advocating a Biblical Theocracy for Israel and a Masonic republic for the United States, nor do I brandish the Bill of Rights like an ACLU lawyer). Whatever the intrinsic opposition between palaeoconservatism (at least of the more honest de la Maistre variety) and a reborn Halakhic Torah state based on the Throne and Altar in Jerusalem, I have never been able to discover them. I guess the rest of you know something I don't (although it sure as heck ain't the Bible). If there is some law requiring "true" palaeoconservatism to be based on European idealist philosophy, Hellenistic philosophy, or Austrian libertarian economics rather than the Divinely-Dictated Word of the Creator, I would like to hear about it. All I know is the rest of you "palaeos" seem to take hostility to Judaism (not just Zionism and Israel but Judaism itself) as a given for anyone who wants to be a member of the "club." And you seem to have a mutual agreement to act as though Biblical Fundamentalist Zionism didn't exist and that all sympathy for Israel originated in the philosophy of former Trotskyist/globalist/capitalist/neoconservatism (which is confusing because according to libertarianism capitalism is good). I have moreover learned from past experience that if I question any of you about your position on the Bible you ignore it with a smirk I can practically feel coming out of the monitor.
My attitude is as follows: for true libertarians who are actually sincere and consistent I have a deep respect, even though I disagree with you philosophy. For people who insist that one should be required to oppose the existence of a Jewish State on the ancient 'Eretz Yisra'el in order to even consider himself a conservative, you can all boil in hot excrement, since I have no desire to belong to your loathsome `Amaleq-spawned society. I simply wish I could understand why conservatism--which to me has always meant an acknowledgement of the Jewish G-d and His Word--has spawned so many people whose fundamental outlook is so diametrically opposed to this.
At any rate, while I do not expect any other than taunting, smart-aleck replies, I will most assuredly listen with an open mind to any explanation of the otherwise inexplicable Franco/Ayn Rand connection.
Dragging in Ayn Rand and Franco simply muddles things. To say one is more individualist than the mainstream doesn't make one a Randian. To say one is more traditionalist than the mainstream doesn't make one a fascist or even an authoritarian. Those are the terms the majority uses to stigmatize, isolate and punish dissenters, and if you are really asking your question in good faith you wouldn't use them.
As to why some paleos are critical of Zionism, one obvious place to start is that they feel that the conservative establishment has distorted the situation to lead the following around by the nose. Another is that they don't feel that that area is any business of ours.
The question is, what political philosophy drives any proposed government policy.
I think the common thread is anti-egalitarianism.
I disagree with that statement, because in the New Testament [and particularly Gen. 1:1] there is a definitive link between common patriarchs with the Jews and the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Also, it is specifically wriiten that Isaac was the chosen son of Abraham, not Ishmael, the son of Hagar.
Some of the references are Matt. 8:11, Mark 12:12, Luke 3: 33-34, Acts 3:13, 7:8, and finally in Romans 9: 7-13.
We know that Esau despised his birthright and sold it to his younger brother Jacob. IN Genesis 27: 39-40 we have this:
39: And Isaac his father answered him [Esau] and said unto him: Behold, of the fat places of the earth shall be thy dwelling places [fat places in hebrew literally means "of the oils of the land]. And of the dew of heaven from above [meaning the desert].
40: And by thy sword shalt thou live and thou shalt serve thy brother, and it shall come to pass when thou shalt break loose, that thou shall shake the yoke off thy neck.
Its also important to note that abraham, Isaac, and Jacob insisted that their progeny marry only Aramean women from their place of origin because canaanite women were hateful due to theri idolatry. [Gen 28:6]
And in spite of Isaac's command "When Esau was 40 years old, he took to wife Judith, the daughter of Beeri, the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. And there was a bitterness of spirit unto Isaac and Rebekah.
Then you have Gen 28: 7-12--which shows how the old and new testaments refer to their geneaology of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and how the old testament alone refers to Ishmael and Esau, who were to lead lives in the desert. Ishamel isn't menationed in the New Testament and Esau only once.
Romans aren't descendants of Ishmael or Esau--moslems [arabs] are.
I thought you might like to put in your two cents.
However, Joe is an insufferable crackpot who believes in an "international Jewish thought-control apparatus".
True. But what exactly it is your point? That paleos support the Taiwan adventure? I don't think so. If some commentators in "far right" magazines have been known to argue against support for Israel and other commentators argue in favor of support for Taiwan, this merely shows the tension between the America First and the anti-communism factions of the American right.
It has nothing to do with anti-semitism, a current of thought which was always negligible in the US and which was thoroughly eradicated after the second world war. The fact that we here discussing ultramontagne conservatism, a French movement whose only North American influence was in Quebec, simply proves that home-grown anti-semitism is impossible to find. We are therefore obliged to import the "conservatism" of others to find examples. What's more the examples in question are 60-70 years years old. Today anti-semitism is non-existant in France too.
So just lay off. OK?
Bozell was the exception that proves the rule in his open Carlism and rejection of the entire Enlightenment apparatus.
I think the reason most American authoritarian conservatives, especially the ultramontagne Roman Catholics, pose as friends of liberty is that they know that if they were to show their true views, they would have neither audience nor influence. It's a simple matter of practicality: the underlying philosophical assumptions of the unconsciously held political philosophy of the US -- what's "in the air we breathe" if you will -- begins with and requires an acceptance of the Enlightenment principles of individual liberty upon which the Republic is founded. That's the same reason the Marxists have so little traction here when they're honest.
Remember, in the 19th century and even into the 20th, Catholics in the US were objects of strong suspicion of disloyalty, or rather of having a higher loyalty to the Rome of the Inquisition, the Popish Plot and Bloody Mary that looms so large in the Anglo-Saxon imagination. Catholic political and philosophical dialogue with the Anglo-Saxon majority in the US had to find ways of speaking that did not rouse the Protestant hue and cry. Most of our ultramontagne authoritarian conservatives in the US are Roman Catholics who were educated before Vatican II, and so grew up in the tradition that it was necessary to wrap oneself in the flag. In conservative political terms in the modern era, that has meant "original intent", lots of Adams and Jefferson and talk of liberty.
Would you agree there is a difference
between America First and America Only?
Anyone believing in the aforementioned is, in my book,
anti-Semitic.
No. Joe believes in the existence an American pro-Israeli thought-control apparatus. He is right. This apparatus exists. This apparatus is only a conspiracy in the original sense of the word - people who breathe together.
The apparatus gains its strength from a variety of sources. It comes from Zionist Jews. It comes from millenial Christians. Most importantly, it comes from general Western guilt over centuries of anti-semitism which culminated in the Nazi Holocaust. Interestingly, most Jews were anti-Zionists until Hitler's crimes were revealed to the world.
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