By Michael Brendan Dougherty

What is paleoconservatism? The name is meant to suggest a substance predating its rival “neoconservatism.” And though many who have traveled under the paleo name have harked to various figures of the pre–World War II “Old Right,” the term comes out of the 1980s, coined by Thomas Fleming, then the editor of Chronicles magazine, and Paul Gottfried, a professor of humanities and successor to Fleming at the same magazine. A new collection of essays edited by Gottfried attempts to give the history,  shape, and variety of paleoconservative thought, and it mostly succeeds. Paleoconservatism: An Anthology is a useful introduction to this broad, multifarious school.

Paul Gottfried is a proudly irascible figure who likely views National Review the way that Trotsky came to view Stalin. A prolific academic writer on the topics of Marxism and fascism, Gottfried is a scabrous critic of the mainstream Right, which he saw as seeking a role as an acceptable opposition to a hegemonic American Left. He is an obsessive hater of Jonah Goldberg in particular. And, like many paleoconservatives, he seems committed to thinning the ranks of paleocons, to constantly distinguishing himself and this unmerry band from everyone else. He has a tendency to characterize writers and political figures as more than a few degrees to the left of where they themselves and most of the rest of the world perceives them. In his introduction to the volume, Gottfried characterizes Jacob Siegel, who wrote a sympathetic profile of Gottfried, as one of those “on the left” who grudgingly respect paleoconservatives. In fact, Siegel is a second-generation conservative whose views probably place him to the right of his neoconservative father, the late Fred Siegel. Gottfried similarly mischaracterizes Ross Douthat as “conventionally center-left.”

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