Old Right (United States)

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In the United States, the Old Right, also called the Paleoconservatives are a faction of American conservatives who both opposed New Deal domestic programs and were also isolationists opposing entry into World War II. Many were associated with the Republicans of the interwar years led by Robert Taft, but some were Democrats. They were called the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their anti-communist New Right successors, such as Barry Goldwater, who were interventionist in foreign policy (although a great majority of Old Right intellectuals were passionately opposed to communism and socialism). Many members of the Old Right were laissez-faire classical liberals, some were business-oriented conservatives like Herbert Hoover; others were ex-radicals who moved sharply to the right, like John Dos Passos; others, like the Southern Agrarians, dreamed of restoring a premodern communal society.

Contents

1 Views
2 Members

2.1 Southern Agrarians reject modernity

3 Legacy
4 Notes
5 References
6 External link

Views

1936 cartoon shows GOP building its platform from the conservative planks abandoned by the Democrats

The Old Right emerged in opposition to the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. By 1937 they formed a Conservative coalition that controlled Congress until 1964. In 1939-41 they were isolationist and opposed war in Europe, although many favored a war against Japan. The Old Right's "America First" attitude was organized by the America First Committee. Later, they opposed NATO and US military intervention in the Korean War.

According to economist, historian and political theorist Murray Rothbard:

"This anti-New Deal movement was a coalition of three groups: (1) the "extremists," the individualists and libertarians, like H. L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, and Garet Garrett; (2) right-wing Democrats, harking back to the laissez-faire views of the nineteenth century Democratic party, men such as Governor Albert Ritchie of Maryland or Senator James A. Reed of Missouri; and (3) moderate New Dealers, who thought that the Roosevelt New Deal went too far, for example Herbert Hoover. Interestingly, even though the libertarian intellectuals were in the minority, they necessarily set the terms and the rhetoric of the debate, since theirs was the only thought-out contrasting ideology to the New Deal."

Members

Influential members of the American Old Right include:

politicians: Robert Taft, Herbert Hoover, Al Smith and the American Liberty League, James A. Reed, William Borah, Bennett Champ Clark, Albert Ritchie, Lewis Douglas, Norman Thomas, Robert La Follette, Jr., and Vice President John Nance Garner.

Others include:

businessman Robert E. Wood
publishers Robert R. McCormick and William Randolph Hearst
journalists: John T. Flynn, Oswald Garrison Villard, and Garet Garrett
scholars: Peter Viereck, Harry Elmer Barnes, and Frank Lawrence Owsley
celebrities: Charles Lindbergh
authors H. L. Mencken, Robert Frost, John Dos Passos, Frank Chodorov, Albert Jay Nock, Isabel Paterson, Ayn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, Louis Bromfield, Leonard Read, Francis Neilson, Felix Morley, F. A. Harper, and the Southern Agrarians, notably Frank Lawrence Owsley, John Crowe Ransom, and Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson as well as William Faulkner.

Jeff Riggenbach argues that some members of the Old Right were actually classical liberals and "were accepted members of the "Left" before 1933. Yet, without changing any of their fundamental views, all of them, over the next decade, came to be though of as examplars of the political "Right.""Riggenbach, Jeff. The Mighty Flynn', Liberty'' January 2006 p. 34

Southern Agrarians reject modernity

The “Old Right” drew on some of the values and anxieties being articulated on the anti-modern right, including the desire to retain the social authority and defend the autonomy of the American states and regions, especially the South. [Murphy p 124] Donald Davidson was one of the most politically active of the agrarians, especially in his attacks on the TVA in his native Tennessee. As Murphy [2001 p 5] shows, the Southern Agrarians:

"Rejected industrial capitalism and the culture it produced. In I'll Take My Stand they called for a return to the small-scale economy of rural America as a means to preserve the cultural amenities of the society they knew. Ransom and Tate believed that only by arresting the progress of industrial capitalism and its imperatives of science and efficiency could a social order capable of fostering and validating humane values and traditional religious faith be preserved. Skeptical and unorthodox themselves, they admired the capacity of orthodox religion to provide surety in life."

Legacy

The successors and torchbearers of the Old Right view in the late 20th century and current era are the paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians. Both of these groups often rally behind Old Right slogans such as "America First" while sharing similar views to the Old Right opposition to the New Deal.

Notes

References

Wayne S. Cole; America First; The Battle Against Intervention, 1940-41 (1953)
Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffery O. Nelson, eds. American Conservatism : An Encyclopedia (2006)
Paul V Murphy, The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (2001)
Ronald Radosh. Prophets on the right: Profiles of conservative critics of American globalism (1978) on Charles A. Beard, Oswald Garrison Villard, Robert A. Taft, John T. Flynn and Lawrence Dennis.
Leo Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (1983)
Raimondo, Justin. An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (2000)
Gregory L. Schneider, ed. Conservatism in America Since 1930: A Reader (2003)

External link

"[The Life and Death of the Old Right]" by Murray Rothbard, concerning the Old Right in the U.S. The writer is an ardent supporter of Old Right ideals.

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