The Old Right, Ctd

More

Noah Millman wants to know which issues palecons are willing to compromise on:

I suspect that, for Larison, the most important issues relate to foreign policy, with civil liberties a distant second and both social and economic questions further back in the back. That is to say: his top priorities line up better with the priority list of a left-wing critic of the Obama Administration like Glenn Greenwald than with his fellows on the right, even if the larger intellectual framework and much of the stuff further down on the list would be stuff where he and Greenwald would strongly disagree.

If I’m right, and if most paleos agree, then there’s a basis for cooperation with the Greenwalds of the world, and a clear way that a paleo tendency could make itself relevant. But what if a significant bloc of paleos is concerned primarily with questions of race and identity? Or with some other issue – abortion, opposition to Federal regulation, gun rights – that sits comfortably within the existing Republican coalition? Then the basis for making that tendency politically effective is much less obvious.

I think the paleocon critique of the imperial hubris of the last decade is the most valuable. What we don't have is a prudentially non-interventionist, civil libertarian, fiscally strict, socially tolerant conservatism. At least not in America. In Britain, it seems to be thriving right now. But the paleocons deserve a real place in this conversation, if only because they might trouble the right enough to examine its anachronisms.

Jump to comments

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Get Today's Top Stories in Your Inbox (preview)


Elsewhere on the web

Join the Discussion

After you comment, click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be asked to log in or register. blog comments powered by Disqus

Video

Miami: The Next Big Start-Up City?

How the city became a center for innovation

Video

Video

A Brief History of Romantic Comedies

From The Atlantic's Chris Orr

Video

Life in 'the New Arctic'

A moving portrait of a fading landscape

Video

Video

The Rise of New York City

A fascinating look at Manhattan in the 1940s

Video

What Is Methane Hydrate?

"Flaming ice" is a vast natural energy source

Video

NASA's Time-Lapse of the Sun

Now with epic dubstep music

Video

Shaken Not Tuned: Cocktail Experiments

Can a tuning fork improve a cocktail?

Video

Video

Is He Cheating? A 1950s Guide

'That little blonde secretary from the office?’

Video

New Yorkers: Vintage Vacuum-Tube Amps

Risking electric shock to restore old amplifiers

Video

The DIY Piano-Bicycle

Everybody needs a hobby

Writers

Up
Down

In Focus

Photos of Tornado Damage in Moore, Oklahoma