Thanks!

TAC:http://www.amconmag.com/12_16/review6.html

Here’s how some Paleoconservatives define Paleoconservatism:

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/January2001/0101RoundTable.htm

Now, I may have an imperfect concept of all that the “paleo” prefix contains. I would certainly agree that any conservative that wishes to reverse the results of the Civil War and create a news country “hates” America in the sense that they like something else better.

“They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation’s enemies.”

Each allegation is supported with examples.

What Frum doesn’t mention are the close ties between the paleo Rockford Institute (which he does mention) and the League of the South – an organization that seeks to reverse the results of the Civil War and create a new country from the former states of the Confederacy. Thomas Fleming, Editor of Chronicles Magazine and President of the Rockford Institute, is also a Director of the League of the South. Other paleos are either members or have written positively about the organization.

As I read Novak, one of his complaints about Frum’s piece is being “bracket[ed] with his selected paleos–people whom I have never met or read and whose anti-Semitic and white supremacist views I abhor.”

One of the interesting things about conservatism in the U.S. is that it is defined more by what it isn’t (capital L Liberalism) than by what it is. Hence groups as disparate as the paleos and the neocons both claim the mantle.

Just as Europe is experiencing a union of red-brown interests, so too are some American paleo-conservatives sounding an awful lot like the extreme left. Hence, we have hints of a Zionist conspiracy, operating at the highest levels of government, from both the Workers World Party and from Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak (e.g. neo-conservatives like David Frum are actually “Sharonists” who control American foreign policy and brought about war against Iraq on Israel’s behalf.). We have Buchanan’s magazine publishing authors who have elsewhere claimed Israeli culpability in the terrorist acts of 9/11, including hints of active participation (e.g. Jason Raimondo).

Buchanan’s close paleo friend, Joe Sobran, has actively questioned whether democracy is a desirable system of government. In 1999 Buchanan sought and received the backing of Lenora Fulani, a founder of the leftwing, anti-Semitic New Alliance Party, in his bid for the Presidency. Likewise, Buchanan and many others paleos are every bit as opposed to free trade as their leftwing counterparts, blurring any de facto economic policy distinction between left and paleo right.

What I have yet to see is a serious refutation of David Frum’s allegations.