In a nutshell - Paleoconservatism is a name used to distinguish the traditional conservative movement (and those who adhere to it today) that existed before a group of Trotskyites, liberals and Democrats claimed they were "conservative" and moved into the Republican party and become dominant. Basically the neocon's accept FDR's New Deal socialism as well as Johnson's Great Society as good ideas (just managed poorly) i.e. they are for a strong central government and the welfare state. On foreign policy they go far beyond national defense to the point where they are down right aggressive, belligerent even. Paleocons see this stance as dangerous to the national health and world peace.
Neocons have been trying to personify paleoconservatism as the very embodiment of a racist pre-civil rights US. This tar brush is designed to paint their opposition's ideas of all kinds - foreign and domestic as beyond the pale. Basically this fight is about maintaining the position of power the neo's have achieved. Since some of the paleos aren't suffering the slander in silence the fight is getting nasty.
As long as you snuggle up to Sam Francis, that's exactly what you are.
The post-WWII conservative movement has never been isolationist or protectionist and has consistently been pro-Israel. It has also been full of ex-Marxists. The likes of Francis and Thomas Fleming are open in their detestation of the actually existing conservative movement of the past 50+ years. Francis himself has written, as cited in Frum's original article:
"While paleos sometimes like to characterize their beliefs as merely the continuation of the conservative thought of the 1950s and '60s, and while in fact many of them do have their personal and intellectual roots in the conservatism of that era, the truth is that what is now called paleoconservatism is at least as new as the neoconservatism at which many paleos like to sniff as a newcomer." — SAMUEL FRANCIS, IN THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, DECEMBER 16, 2002
If you want to say that pre-WWII America-Firsters, oldline Southern Democrats, Slobodan Milosevic and Jacques Le Pen's National Front are the "traditional conservative movement," that's fine, but there isn't any other sense in which Pat Buchanan and Sam Francis and Thomas Fleming are "traditional conservatives."
Novak, I'll agree, is not exactly a paleo -- he's just a strident apologist for Arab terrorism. And a Democrat, by the way.
The paleo amen-corner (to coin a phrase) can vent their spite on Frum as much as they choose, but the fact is that Frum's original article has condemned the paleo leadership out of their own mouths. That the leading paleos hate America -- the real country that's not an idea in their minds -- is not some outlandish charge or some subtle inference. They say outright that they hate this country. Buchanan trumpets his spite against the America which actually exists on page 6 of his Death of the West:
"We are two countries, two peoples. An older America is passing away, and a new America is coming into its own. The new Americans who grew up in the 1960s and the years since did not like the old America. They thought it a bigoted, reactionary, repressive, stodgy country. So they kicked the dust from their heels and set out to build a new America, and they have succeeded. To its acolytes the cultural revolution has been a glorious revolution. But to millions, they have replaced the good country we grew up in with a cultural wasteland and a moral sewer that are not worth living in and not worth fighting for--their country, not ours" (p. 6).
The troops in Iraq are not fighting for Pat Buchanan's "good" America of yesteryear. They are fighting for the real America, which Pat says straight out is not his country. Pat can puff and blow about supporting the troops all he wants, but as far as I'm concerned he is a liar and a hypocrite until he publicly apologizes for saying that the United States is not worth fighting for.