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Joe Scotchie’s recently published anthology Writing on the Southern Front: Authentic Conservatism For Our Times made me aware of the task that confronts every serious student of the Right—recovering what otherwise might slip down theMemory Hole. Both the American media and, more generally, American political culture have moved so far away from anything that looks... Read More
I must confess that I feel a bit awkward about reviewing Dr. Boyd Cathey’s outstanding anthology, The Land We Love: The South and its Heritage. I am, as the reader may notice, mentioned in the preface, along with Clyde Wilson, as one of the author’s two most significant guides in preparing these essays. And despite... Read More
We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the fateful Unite The Right Rally, at which the violence that took place was all blamed on the “Alt-Right”, leading to much persecution (deplatforming, firings, conferences cancelled) of people identified with that movement. It’s been said repeatedly that the Alt Right is dead or dying—but it can’t be, if... Read More
I wrote a lot in the early aughts about Jonah Goldberg’s apotheosis at National Review in the wake of William F. Buckley’s purge of immigration patriots like John O’Sullivan and VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow because I regarded him as a symbol and a symptom of the intellectual and moral degeneration of a magazine I once... Read More
I’ve just been looking at an interview by clinical psychologist and University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson dealing with postmodernism and the triumph of Marxism in Canada. In view of Peterson’s brave struggle against Political Correctness at the U of T (which my late wife attended in more tolerant times) I was ready to treat... Read More
Franklin Einspruch, A commentator in The Federalist, describes me as a “circumspect conservative” scholar who has written responsibly about Cultural Marxism. I’m also deemed to be a conservative who agrees with other conservative critics of the Frankfurt School on the harmful effects of this group’s radical ideas. But I must part ways with Mr. Einspruch... Read More
Looking at a French nationalist website Boulevard Voltaire this morning, I notice a repetition of the conventional American media account of what occurred in Charlottesville on Saturday. The news commentary explained that a white racist had run down and killed with a vehicle a thirty-two-year-old “anti-racist” demonstrator, Heather Heyer, while injuring other anti-racists who were... Read More
Although I generally agree with the Latin adage “de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est,” sometimes the death of someone leads one to reflect on the gushing eulogies that are showered on the deceased. The recent premature passing at the age of sixty-five of Peter Lawler, a professor of political studies at Berry College in... Read More
Thanks to at least nine opposing Republican senators, Congress left for its July 4 break without passing a replacement bill for Obamacare. The opposition from these Republicans was two-fold: Four conservatives thought the GOP bill on the table went too far in retaining government control over the medical insurance market, while five centrist members complained... Read More
The most recent of incident of Cultural Marxist commissars refusing to admit that dissidents are to be treated as fellow citizens is the crazed female professor who accosted the NPI’s Richard Spencer while he was exercising at a Alexandria gym. She, recognizing him from coverage of the election campaign, started haranguing him and calling him... Read More
The story of Eastern European Jews who immigrated to America in the beginning of the twentieth century is a story of “self-marginalization.” The more dramatically Eastern European Jews progress socio-economically, the more strenuously they identify with “marginalized groups” and seek to undermine the white Christian majority population. And though he takes care to guard against... Read More
Recently, one of my neighbors saw students from Elizabethtown College, where I taught for many years, walking down the street wearing what looked like the puzzle pieces featured as symbols by Autistic Awareness. When he asked why they were wearing the all-white puzzle pieces, one of the coeds proudly explained that they were dramatizing the... Read More
About ten years ago I published a book, The Strange Death of Marxism, which argued strenuously that the present Left is not Marxist, but post-Marxist. Unlike traditional Marxists and European democratic socialists, the type of Left that has gained ground since and even before the fall of the Soviet Empire is culturally radical but only... Read More
Every day I hear exasperated Trump-backers exclaim that the Left has gone crazy. And their complaint seems justified, at least up to a point. The demonstrations against Trump, which now involve such gestures as setting fires, destroying property and beating up suspected Trump backers, look utterly “irrational.” It’s as if the election and subsequent inauguration... Read More
Let’s not imagine that Trump can alone pick up his popularity ratings. Several days ago I picked up the Inquirer while in Philadelphia and saw on the front cover, next to a puff piece for Michelle Obama, a headline that Trump’s popularity is now down to 40%. Although I’ve no implicit faith in polls, given... Read More
Lately I’ve been watching the blossoming lovefest between the conservative-Republican establishment and those on the Left who are raging over the Obama administration’s reaction to the UN resolution against Israel. Arguably, this resolution was an attempt to take away Israel’s bargaining chips in negotiating with the Palestinians. The UN Security Council, which passed the resolution,... Read More
During the last few months I’ve seen on TV and read in Newsmax the views of an earnest American patriot, Zudhi Jasser. A onetime naval officer, distinguished cardiologist and more recently, an inspired leader of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Dr. Yasser has been second to none in denouncing Islamicist terror and in exhorting... Read More
Forget the Clinton emails—the BIG story (89,800 results on Google News as of 11:00 tonight) is that one (1) Trump supporter of the thousands attending his Phoenix rally on Saturday night took the opportunity of the crowd’s chanting “USA! USA!” to yell “Jew-S-A” at the press pen, who seem to have been upset. My own... Read More
The following statement of support for Donald Trump is intended to counteract the dishonest presentation of this presidential candidate by much of the national media. Those who have attached their signatures to this statement are accredited scholars, mostly with PhDs, who are endorsing Donald Trump as a credible candidate for the presidency and as the... Read More
An article on the John W. Pope Center website dealing with Title IX by William L. Anderson begins with these passages: According to Anderson, Title IX, which required that equal opportunities be created for women in higher education, was a “good idea,” indeed one that Anderson goes out of his way to defend. But alas... Read More
As the person who has been asked to deliver this year’s Murray N. Rothbard address, it seems appropriate to relate my remarks to the person being honored. Although the observations that follow may not have come directly from Murray, he and my speech do have some connection. My pleasurable, often edifying conversations with this remarkable... Read More
Dr. George Hawley, [Email him] an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, has provided a badly-needed public service by producing Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism. Hawley’s work, published by an outstanding press for American studies at the University of Kansas, should bring him much deserved attention. Of course it’s ridiculous that America has had... Read More
Although I fully share the jubilation of others that Donald Trump may be taking a wrecking ball to the GOP establishment, I don’t hold the view that Trump’s candidacy will reduce neoconservative power. Matthew Richer, Justin Raimondo and other writers whose columns I usually welcome all believe that Trump’s rise as a Republican presidential candidate... Read More
He was once credited as the leading figure of the “Conservative Intellectual Movement” (to borrowGeorge Nash’s phrase) but today Conservatism Inc. wants to keep Russell Kirk in obscurity. Luckily,Bradley Birzer, the Russell Amos Kirk Professor of History at Hillsdale College, has written what may be the definitive Kirk biography Russell Kirk: American Conservative. It will... Read More
Jack Kerwick, who holds a doctorate in philosophy from Temple University and teaches at various colleges in the Philadelphia area, is a talented polemicist as well as learned academic. For those who want to sample the unleashed Jack Kerwick, I recommend his recent anthology The American Offensive, available in Kindle or paperback. Jack is a... Read More
Donald Trump has been dominating American news ever since he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination six months ago. Trump is known to be a deeply divisive figure, who in a two-way race with his likely Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, would lose the distaff vote by about seventeen percent. He has also emerged... Read More
Recent troubles at Yale, Missouri, and other campuses have made me think about how the academic culture has changed – much for the worse I believe. But a former colleague (who recently passed) used to tell me how much better the academic world seemed to him now than when he was a graduate student circa... Read More
Just as I was beginning to despair that Goucher College’s most famous graduate among contemporary historians Jonah Goldberg had lost his talent for offering revelations about the past, Jonah surprised me yesterday with a learned discourse on the Middle Ages as a prolonged period of primitive barbarism. For those who may have forgotten this nugget... Read More
An article in the decidedly Leftist Huffington Post by the unmistakably Leftist reporter Samantha Lachman described the just-concluded conference of theNational Policy Institute that I attended at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on October 31 in a way that bore little resemblance to what I heard there [White Nationalists Gather On Halloween To... Read More
Although I can’t think of a single social issue on which the predictably soporific Washington Post-columnist Jennifer Rubin sounds different from Barack Obama, Rubin, who welcomes gay marriage as a sign of the “inexorable course of greater inclusiveness” and favors amnesty for illegals, is now a certified voice for “serious conservatives.” Indeed she writes a... Read More
One of the first essays I ever published was in the left-leaning Canadian Forum, to which I contributed a dissenting article, from the right, in 1968. Those were the days when the Left was far more tolerant than it is at the present time, and also far more tolerant than are the Stalinists and Trotskyites... Read More
In my recently posted comments on the renaming of Calhoun College at Yale University, I failed to mention a glaring impropriety that the custodians of Political Correctness at Yale have not even begun to address. The university’s original benefactor, who in 1718 paid for the first building of what became a world-famous institution of learning,... Read More
I’ve recently received information that Yale University may be about to rename what is possibly the most picturesque of the twelve colleges that house its undergraduate population. Calhoun College, which flanks stately Elm Street in the now badly run-down city of New Haven, is for me a scene of youthful memory. As a graduate student... Read More
There’s an important connection between political firestorms on opposite sides of the Atlantic—therise of Donald Trump and the“cuckservative” controversy fascinating the American Right; and the recent claim by the French National Front that they support the ideals of a noted French socialist. These debates shows the Right in the West may be reconstituting itself around... Read More
A certain similarity exists between the French National Front, which garnered slightly over 25 % in the recent EU elections, and the soaring poll numbers of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. Both the supporters of Marine Le Pen, who is president of the Front, and the largely working-class fans of billionaire presidential candidate Donald... Read More
A young friend, who might be described as a journalist of the very independent Right (consisting largely of himself) just emailed to complain about how thoroughly boring he found the GOP talk fest in Cleveland last Thursday. I wrote back explaining that because of his callow youth (he is only 22) he doesn’t know what... Read More
A recent incident in Wallingford, Connecticut, not far from where I grew up, caused VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow to comment: “Cultural Marxist totalitarianism is coming to an America near you.” A complaint was lodged with the local police that “hate” merchandise— Nazi and Confederate memorabilia—was being publicly exhibited and sold at a popular flea market.... Read More
Yesterday afternoon I heard a black civic leader in Columbia, South Carolina being interviewed about the just completed removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the statehouse grounds. The lady from FOX who did the interview wanted to know about the satisfaction experienced by the black leader in light of the events that had just... Read More
Since the Charleston shootings, GOP officials have been scrambling to complywith Leftist demands that Southern Whites be stripped of visible signs of their Confederate heritage. The GOP has actually been downplaying the Confederacyfor years—Jeb Bush conspicuously removed Confederate banners and insignias from the Florida statehouse back in 2001. [Jeb Bush Ordered The Confederate Flag Removed... Read More
Since the neoconservatives took over the American conservative movement, in alliance with GOP operatives, I’ve been looking for a no-nonsense defense of academic and intellectual freedom issuing from the establishment Right. And I am still waiting for such a defense and may go on waiting until the end of my life. It’s not that Republican... Read More
Although I wouldn’t expect the mass media or the paid publicists of Conservatism, Inc. to have read my books about political reference points, I am deeply irritated by self-advertised authorities flinging around the words “conservative” and “liberal.” According to Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Jonah Goldberg and other” conservatism” experts, the US has been writhing in... Read More
I may be offending other members of the Old Right by expressing enthusiasm for the Israeli prime minister, but no one can accuse me of doing this in order to butter up Bibi’s American partisans. There is no group on Earth I loathe more deeply than the neoconservatives and the rest of Bibi’s cheering gallery... Read More
For some time now I’ve been intrigued by the bizarre length to which conservatism, inc. goes in trying to woo minority groups that vote consistently Democratic. I’ve heard from Republican journalists that the Democrats, and especially Obama, are abusing blacks by not lending enough support to charter schools. Before that I recall being serenaded (especially... Read More
A few months ago I encountered at a conference an eminent Straussian scholar who teaches at an Ivy League institution, and he almost immediately launched into a tirade against "the Europeans," who are at the point of "finishing Hitler’s work." The only exception that my interlocutor would concede to this sweeping statement was for the... Read More
Last week the death of Harry V. Jaffa at age 96 was met by exuberant detailed tributes in sources extending from the New York Times and Washington Post to the major organs of the Murdoch media. Jaffa was hailed as an influential conservative theorist, the founder and driving force behind the heavily endowed Claremont Institute,... Read More
Recently while working on a paper concerning the English political journalist Walter Bagehot and his 1867 classic The English Constitution, I was struck by Bagehot’s heated objections to the Reform Act of 1867. An act introduced by the Tory government of Benjamin Disraeli and reluctantly supported by most Liberal MPs, it doubled the franchise in... Read More
I find myself agreeing with about half of Phil Giraldi’s most recent diatribe against Israel, while shrugging my shoulders at the rest. I’d be the last to deny that the Israeli government has taken gross advantage of their “special relations” with the US or that GOP media drool on cue over “the only democracy in... Read More
My young paleoconservative friend Jack Kerwick has posted on his website his own distribution of blame for what befell two police officers shot by a black thug in Brooklyn last Saturday, as revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Jack has extended the burden of responsibility from protestors screaming “kill a cop”... Read More
An Address by Prof. Paul Gottfried, President of the H.L. Mencken Club, at the Seventh Annual Conference, October 31, 2014 As we begin the seventh annual meeting of the H.L. Mencken Club, it seems appropriate to address certain misconceptions about our organization. I would not be engaging this particular topic were it not for the... Read More
I recently received an unexpected gift from American historian and political theorist Barry Alan Shain, The Declaration of Independence in Historical Context, a 600 page collection of documents from the era of the American Revolution, with accompanying commentaries and a long introductory essay, published by Yale University Press. It would be marvelous if Barry’s ambitious... Read More
Paul Edward Gottfried (b. 1941) has been one of America's leading intellectual historians and paleoconservative thinkers for over 40 years, and is the author of many books, including Conservatism in America (2007), The Strange Death of Marxism (2005), After Liberalism (1999), Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt (2002), and Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America (2012) . A critic of the neoconservative movement, he has warned against the growing lack of distinctions between the Democratic and Republican parties and the rise of the managerial state. He has been acquainted with many of the leading American political figures of recent decades, including Richard Nixon and Patrick Buchanan. He is Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and a Guggenheim recipient.
"Over the years, I have disagreed with my Serbian friend on a variety of issues, ranging from the outbreak of World War One"
Yes, and this is why I as a Serb, hope you all get replaced by Afghanis, Kurds and Somalis asap.
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