In his contribution to a symposium on “The State of Conservatism” in the Spring 1986 issue of the Intercollegiate Review, the Old Right historian and editor Paul Gottfried noted that neoconservatives “have always been open in expressing their contempt for the Old Right.” Whether or not this claim is valid—and there is reason to question its validity, inasmuch as a central theme of neoconservative thought is that the enemies are now on the Left—the converse seems to be true: criticism of neoconservatism has come to be an increasingly conspicuous feature of Old Right writings.

The general complaint is that neoconservatives exert disproportionate influence within the “conservative intellectual movement,” that neoconservatism is now regarded as roughly equivalent to—rather than merely a species of—“American conservatism.” Thus Clyde Wilson, in the Intercollegiate Review symposium, wrote (of the Old Right) that “we have simply been crowded out by overwhelming numbers. . . . Our estate has been taken over by an impostor, just as we were about to inherit.” And Stephen J. Tonsor took the following well-publicized swipe at neoconservatives at a Philadelphia Society meeting: “It is splendid when the town whore gets religion and joins the church. Now and then she makes a good choir director, but when she begins to tell the minister what he ought to say in his Sunday sermons, matters have been carried too far.”

The tension between neoconservatism and what has come to be called paleoconservatism (i.e., the Old Right) is one of the major themes of The Conservative Movement, a slim book by Paul Gottfried and Old Right editor Thomas Fleming,¹ which serves, essentially, as a postscript to George H. Nash’s excellent history, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America (1976). While the authors of The Conservative Movement are considerably more evenhanded and less polemical in their treatment of neoconservatism than previous Old Right observers have been, Gottfried and Fleming’s attitude toward neoconservatism remains unmistakably—albeit subtly—critical.

Why the conflict? What is (are) the difference(s) between neoconservatism and paleoconservatism? Are these differences superficial or fundamental?

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There are several prevailing explanations for the split between neo- and paleoconservatives. Some are more convincing than others. None is entirely satisfactory.

One explanation holds that it is not so much the neoconservatives’ conservatism that is new as their conversion to it. That is to say, neoconservatives and paleoconservatives differ only with respect to their past: as opposed to the neoconservatives, who moved—or “progressed,” as some would say—from socialism to anti-Communist liberalism to conservatism, the paleoconservatives have spent their entire lives on the right half of the political spectrum. At present, according to this explanation, there is no significant difference between the two groups. Thus Nathan Glazer’s definition of a neoconservative: “someone who wasn’t a conservative.”

While this account may apply to the neoconservative “elders”—Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Hilton Kramer, for example—it cannot explain why younger editors and writers, who have never embraced any ideology of the Left, choose to think of themselves as neoconservatives rather than simply as conservatives. The existence of second-generation neoconservatives suggests that it is possible to have been a neoconservative all of one’s life—or at least since political consciousness began.

A second explanation stresses the link between neoconservatism and social science—or more specifically, sociology, the discipline of choice for, among others, Nathan Glazer, Peter L. Berger, and Seymour Martin Lipset. (Daniel Bell, another sociologist who is regularly identified with neoconservatism, continues to spurn the label.) Paleoconservatives, in contrast, are generally suspicious of social science: they eschew “tinkering,” and reject the view of society as a set of “problems” for which there are discoverable “solutions.” Thus Gottfried and Fleming distinguish between the paleoconservatives, whose “hearts [are] in literature and theology,” and the neoconservatives, who “revel in statistics and computerized information.” Paleoconservatives, add the authors, “rarely sought the kind of statistical confirmation that neoconservative academics produce for their positions.”

While it is true that neoconservatives tend to be more respectful than paleoconservatives of the social-scientific method, the connection between neoconservatism and social science is often exaggerated—perhaps because of a tendency to equate neoconservative thought with the contents of the Public Interest. While it is fair to describe the Public Interest, with its tables, graphs, and regression analyses, as a social-science journal, such a description is inappropriate for COMMENTARY, which regularly publishes essays on history, religion, and literature, among other topics outside the bounds of social science. Still less is there anything social-scientific about the New Criterion.

Insofar as neoconservatives do take social science seriously, moreover, their approach tends to be skeptical: neoconservative social scientists have consistently argued that a large part of the solution to social problems lies in the restoration of tradition, authority, and restraint. Thus Nathan Glazer, writing in these pages in 1971,² argued that “the breakdown of traditional modes of behavior is the chief cause of our social problems,” and prescribed “hesitation in the development of social policies that sanction the abandonment of traditional practices” and “the creation and building of new traditions.” And James Q. Wilson, contributing an essay on “Private Virtue and Public Policy” to the 20th-anniver-sary issue of the Public Interest (Fall 1985), wrote: “In almost every area of important public concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as schoolchildren, applicants for public assistance, would-be lawbreakers, or voters and public officials.” Neoconservative social science is not, in the language of Max Weber, wertfrei (value-free), nor is it necessarily inconsistent with the paleoconservative (i.e., non-social-scientific) approach to social problems.

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A third explanation emphasizes the “Jewish” character of neoconservatism. Thus Gottfried and Fleming: “Among the factors that led . . . many . . . neoconservatives to disengage from the Left, their Jewishness was certainly significant.” (Stephen Tonsor has stated that “neoconservatism is culturally unthinkable aside from the history of the Jewish intellectual in the 20th century.”) According to this explanation, there is something inherently Jewish about neoconservatism, while paleoconservatism is thought to be intrinsically Christian (usually specifically Catholic). Or, stated differently (and more bluntly): paleoconservatism is the conservatism of Christians, neoconservatism the conservatism of Jews.

While it is fair to argue that Judaism is a “significant” aspect of neoconservatism, it is probably an exaggeration to say that neoconservatism is “unthinkable” apart from it. The anti-Israel sentiment, to say nothing of anti-Semitism, that has become increasingly prominent in certain Left-liberal circles in the last twenty years, has indeed been an important influence on many who have broken with the Left. But this is by no means the only feature of Left liberalism that neoconservatives find objectionable; the contemporary Left’s anti-Americanism, for example, is a quality that has led Gentiles as well as Jews to repudiate the Left. Brigitte and Peter Berger (both Lutherans) have observed, in these pages,³ that “many more non-Jews identify with neoconservatism than is often supposed.” And whatever causes Michael Novak (a lay Catholic theologian) and Richard John Neuhaus (a Lutheran pastor) to feel more comfortable with the neoconservative than with the paleoconservative label, it is certainly not Judaism.

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A fourth explanation suggests that the distinction between neo-and paleoconservatism is a matter of placement on the political spectrum: neoconservatives are thought to be “to the left” of paleoconservatives. Gottfried and Fleming, for example, see neoconservatives as “political centrists who deplore the lack of moderation on both sides of the spectrum,” and add that “neoconservatives, who may have learned from Arthur Schlesinger’s book by that title the value of claiming to be the vital center, never abandon, at least rhetorically, the juste milieu.” The view of neoconservatives as center-rightists is accurate in many respects—particularly with regard to the welfare state. Gottfried and Fleming are certainly correct when they observe that neoconservatism “is not entirely incompatible with modern state planning,” and that “almost all neoconservatives . . . remain qualified defenders of the welfare state.” And their distinction between the neoconservatives’ plans to “trim” the welfare state and the paleoconservatives’ desire to “dismantle” it is an important one.

Neoconservatives also tend to be “to the left” of paleoconservatives socially and culturally. In the preface to The Conservative Movement, the authors write that “one conclusion that may be drawn from this book” is that an “emphasis on progress” is a “distinctive feature of the contemporary American Right”—i.e., an American Right that has come increasingly under the influence of neoconservatism. Most of the (neoconservative) contributors to the November 1985 COMMENTARY symposium,⁴ as Gottfried and Fleming observe, wrote favorably about recent improvements in the areas of civil rights and economic well-being. Against neoconservatives, who emphasize social and material progress, paleoconservatives tend to see moral degeneration—itself a product of secularization—as the distinguishing characteristic of American life in the second half of the 20th century.

There is also the matter of party identification. It is probably safe to say that virtually all paleoconservatives are registered Republicans. As for neoconservatives, though the dominant branch of the Democratic party currently embraces the very ideas and policies against which they have rebelled, many neoconservatives still do not feel entirely comfortable with the Republican party—if only from an emotional or psychological standpoint. While it is likely that Robert Nisbet was exaggerating when he wrote (in the Fall 1985 Public Interest) that “probably only a small fraction of those who had been most prominent in the Public Interest and in COMMENTARY voted for Reagan” in 1980 and 1984, it remains true that many—perhaps most—of the older neoconservatives, and more than a few of the younger ones, continue to think of themselves as Democrats, even while distancing themselves from the policies and candidates of the Democratic party. (Nathan Glazer, two years after his confession of his conversion to conservatism,⁵ endorsed the candidacy of George McGovern, himself a founding father of the left wing of the Democratic Party.⁶)

With regard to domestic policy, then, it is fair to say that neoconservatism is a center-right tendency, and that paleoconservatism is “to its right.” It would be difficult to support a similar claim, however, with regard to foreign policy. If movement from left to right on the foreign-policy spectrum represents a movement from less anti-Communism to more, a case can be made for locating neoconservatives “to the right” of paleoconservatives. For in contrast to neoconservatism, a prominent feature of which is an unapologetic and unyielding anti-Communism, paleoconservatism, as Gottfried and Fleming acknowledge, “for all its professed anti-Communism, retains some of its old isolationist spirit.” In foreign policy it is the paleoconservatives, not the neoconservatives, who are the “moderates.”

The difference between paleoconservatives and neoconservatives, in sum, is thought to be a difference of chronology (old-timers vs. Johnnies-come-lately); a difference in attitude toward social science (hostility vs. sympathy); a difference of religion (Christianity vs. Judaism); or a difference in location on the political spectrum (right vs. center-right). Each of these explanations is only partially correct. There is another, better way of explaining the tension between the two conservatisms—namely, as a tension between two distinct philosophical traditions.

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Reflecting on the definition of a neoconservative, Irving Kristol has written that “the political tradition . . . which neoconservatives wish to renew and revive . . . is the political tradition associated with the birth of modern liberal society—a society distinguished from all others by representative government and a predominantly free-market economy.”⁷ Stephen Tonsor, seeking to distinguish “real” conservatism from neoconservatism, has argued that “conservatism has its roots in a much older tradition. Its world view is Roman or Anglo-Catholic; its political philosophy, Aristotelian and Thomist; its concerns, moral and ethical; its culture, that of Christian humanism.”

The fundamental difference between neoconservatism and paleoconservatism is this: neoconservatives belong to the tradition of liberal-democratic modernity, the tradition of Montesquieu, Madison, and Tocqueville; paleoconservatives are the heirs to the Christian and aristocratic Middle Ages, to Augustine, Aquinas, and Hooker. The principles of neoconservatism are individual liberty, self-government, and equality of opportunity; those of paleoconservatism are religious—particularly Christian—belief, hierarchy, and prescription.

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Insofar as the principles that neoconservatives embrace are rather explicitly American—they are conspicuously embodied in the Declaration of Independence, for example—and insofar as these are not the principles with which paleoconservatives feel most comfortable, it is fair to say that paleoconservatism is fundamentally extra-American. That is to say, it stands outside the American liberal tradition. Thus Gottfried and Fleming, acknowledging the premodern—indeed, antimodern—character of paleoconservatism, locate its roots in “a civilization that went back beyond the American past, into the medieval and ancient worlds.”

This philosophical division underlies the many instances in which neoconservatives and paleoconservatives disagree even while agreeing, in which they agree on what but not on why. Take the Founding Fathers, for example, of whom conservatives of every stripe tend to be respectful, if not reverent. For neoconservatives the Founders are liberals in the best sense: they are champions of individual rights, popular government, spiritual equality, and cultural and religious pluralism. Paleoconservatives, in contrast, place the Founders in the Christian tradition; they regard them as defenders of the “religious heritage” of Western civilization.

Thus, in the seminal work of paleoconservatism, The Conservative Mind (1953), Old Right elder Russell Kirk’s treatment of the Founding Fathers consists of a chapter on John Adams, by all estimates the most Burkean of the Founders. The lead author of The Federalist, James Madison, himself less respectful than Adams of predemocratic ages, does not appear in Kirk’s 450-page book: the index skips from James Mackintosh to Sir Henry Maine. Kirk devotes four pages to democratic capitalism (which “demolished conservative ramparts”). And as for the influence of John Locke, Kirk has written (in National Review) that “Richard Hooker, directly or indirectly, had far more to do with the fundamental opinions of the Founding Fathers than did Locke.”

Or take anti-Communism, generally regarded as a common denominator of the different brands of conservatism. Neoconservatives are anti-Communist because Communism is the enemy of freedom and democracy, paleoconservatives because it is the enemy of religion, tradition, and hierarchy. For neoconservatives the relevant distinction between East and West is not the distinction between atheism and belief (as it is for paleoconservatives), nor is it the distinction between socialism and capitalism (as it is for certain libertarians). The fundamental difference, rather, is that between totalitarianism and freedom. Thus neoconservatives reject Communism in favor of some version of liberal-democratic capitalism, while paleoconservatives reject it in favor of what Gottfried and Fleming call “historic nationalities.” (What is meant by “historic nationality” is not entirely clear, though presumably it implies some variety of monarchy, theocracy, or other traditionalist societal arrangement.) Paleoconservatives are critical of neoconservative anti-Communism, which Gottfried and Fleming identify with “global democratic revolution.” This vision of global democracy is “secularist” and “politically and sexually egalitarian,” and thus “as far removed from a traditionalist world view as from Marxist-Leninism.”⁸

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This philosophical division also explains the difference between neo- and paleoconservatives in their attitude toward liberalism (in the original sense of that term) and its underlying ideals. Take equality. Neoconservatives contrast equality of opportunity, a central tenet of liberalism, with equality of result, which they regard as an essentially discriminatory and coercive, and therefore illiberal, doctrine, Paleoconservatives are less apt to draw this distinction: they are suspicious of any principle bearing the name equality. Thus neoconservatives, by and large, are favorably disposed toward the civil-rights movement of the 1960’s, but are critical of affirmative action, particularly when that term implies the use of quotas. In supporting the former and opposing the latter, neoconservatives are being entirely consistent—that is, consistently liberal: in contrast to the civil-rights movement, whose goals were a color-blind society and an end to legal discrimination, affirmative action requires a race-conscious society and a new form of legal discrimination.

Which is not to say that the paleoconservative view of equality is necessarily inconsistent. While neoconservatives regard affirmative action as a perversion of the ideals of the civil-rights movement, paleoconservatives see it as an extension: both the civil-rights movement and affirmative action have egalitarian goals; both are objectionable. Or as Gottfried and Fleming put it: “Unlike the neoconservatives, [the Old Right] remains irreconcilably opposed to . . . the principle of social equality.” Thus neoconservatives tend to be respectful of Martin Luther King, Jr., whom they regard as a champion of liberal ideals, but not of Jesse Jackson, for example, whose ideas they regard as illiberal. Paleoconservatives, in contrast, for whom the relevant feature of each man is his egalitarianism (broadly defined), are respectful of neither. (Gottfried and Fleming think President Reagan’s declaring King’s birthday a national holiday represents a betrayal.)

If neoconservatives are defenders of the American liberal tradition, they are clearly not liberals in the sense in which that term is generally used today. For neoconservatives there are two kinds of liberals: genuine and counterfeit. The latter are men and women of the Left, who, in the last twenty-five years, have usurped the liberal label, leaving real liberals to be designated neoconservatives. These so-called liberals are illiberal in many respects: insofar as they support quotas in employment and education, they reject the liberal ideal of a society indifferent to race, gender, and ethnicity; insofar as they are inhospitable to certain views (particularly on college campuses), they show contempt for the liberal ideals of free speech and toleration of unpopular, heretical, or minority opinion; and, most important, insofar as they regard Communism as a lesser threat than anti-Communism, they betray an indifference to large-scale tyranny, the opposition to which once served as the very definition of liberalism.

Paleoconservatives, in contrast, do not distinguish between good liberals and bad; for them the phrases “great liberal tradition” and “liberal in the best sense” are merely oxymorons. Paleoconservatives regard liberalism—in all its forms—as intrinsically flawed, primarily because it is a secular and egalitarian tendency, insufficiently respectful of tradition. Thus, while neoconservatives draw a distinction between the liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy, on the one hand, a liberalism representing a double commitment to progressivism in domestic policy and vigorous anti-Communism in foreign policy, and the anti-anti-Communist liberalism of George McGovern and his heirs, on the other, paleoconservatives see not disjunction but continuity.

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A central theme of The Conservative Movement is that American conservatism, under the influence of neoconservatism, has, in the last two decades, moved “left.” (The authors, for example, write that the emergence of neoconservatism has had the effect of “shift[ing] the parameters of conservative respectability toward the center.”) Rather than arguing that American conservatism has moved left, however, it might be more accurate to say that half of American liberalism moved left and half—i.e., the neoconservatives—stayed put. Or as Gottfried and Fleming themselves put it: “Neoconservatism . . . arose in reaction to what was regarded as a betrayal of purpose. . . . Democrats and young radicals [had] corrupted the great liberal tradition.” In fact, “neoconservatism” is probably a misnomer—and doubly so: it is not particularly new, and it is not necessarily conservative (at least not in the classical or medieval sense). Perhaps “paleoliberalism” would be a better term.

And just as the 18th- and 19th-century liberals opposed the Tories and ancien régime to their right, and the French Revolutionists and socialists to their left, so too does neoconservatism stand in opposition to both (Old) Right and (New) Left. At this point in history the fundamental challenge to liberal democracy—both externally, in the form of Communist totalitarianism, and internally, in the form of an anti-anti-Communist academic/intellectual community—comes from the Left. Thus liberal democrats (a.k.a. neoconservatives) must devote their energy to countering attacks from this quarter. In different historical circumstances, however, in which the challenge came from the opposite flank, it is entirely conceivable that the friends of liberal democracy would make ready to do battle with the Right. In this regard, it might be helpful to think not of conservatives and liberals, but of liberal democrats and their opponents, on both Left and Right.

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An implicit thesis of The Conservative Movement—and an explicit thesis of previous essays by Old Right authors—is that neoconservatism is not an authentic conservatism, that it is insufficiently distinguishable from welfare-state liberalism. (Gottfried himself has written, in the Intercollegiate Review symposium, that one of the “common mistakes among interpreters of the current American Right” is “treating neoconservatives as genuine conservatives.”) Yet neoconservatives might make a similar claim with respect to paleoconservatives. For if conservatism implies “presentism,” if it means a defense of existing institutions, then there is reason to question the authenticity of a self-proclaimed American conservatism that readily identifies itself as a medieval tendency.

Indeed, it might with some justification be argued that it is neoconservatism, and not paleoconservatism, that is both genuinely American and genuinely conservative. In a brilliant 1957 essay in the American Political Science Review, Samuel P. Huntington, implicitly adopting the thesis of Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America (1955), argued that American conservatives must be liberals, that antiliberal American conservatism is an anachronism. “American institutions . . . ,” wrote Huntington, “are liberal, popular, and democratic. They can best be defended by those who believe in liberalism, popular control, and democratic government. Just as aristocrats were the conservatives in Prussia in 1820 and slaveowners were the conservatives in the South in 1850, so the liberals must be the conservatives in America today.”

Whether or not one is “truly” a conservative, however, ought not to be a matter of fundamental importance. More significant than what one is called is what one believes: labels matter less than principles. Thus liberal democrats should be willing to regard as friends those who are generally sympathetic to the principles of liberal democracy, regardless of what these individuals are called (or call themselves). And, conversely, liberal democrats should hesitate to regard as friends those who, irrespective of how they are labeled, are uncomfortable with, suspicious of, or hostile toward liberal-democratic ideals. Such discrimination is especially necessary at a time when liberal democracy has so few friends.

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¹ Twayne Publishers, 140 pp., $18.95.

² “The Limits of Social Policy,” September 1971.

³ “Our Conservatism and Theirs,” October 1986.

⁴ “How Has the United States Met Its Major Challenges Since 1945?”

⁵ “On Being Deradicalized,” COMMENTARY, October 1970.

⁶ “McGovern and the Jews: A Debate” (with Milton Himmelfarb), COMMENTARY, September 1972.

⁷ “What is a Liberal—Who is a Conservative?: A Symposium,” COMMENTARY, September 1976.

⁸ The authors' claim that neoconservative anti-Communism rests on the “stated or implicit assumption that American democracy with its mixed economy is the supreme human good” is at best only half right. Certainly neoconservatives prefer liberal democracy to both Communist and traditionalist societies. Few neoconservatives would agree, however, that democratic capitalism is—or, indeed, that any political or economic system can be—the “supreme human good.” And insofar as neoconservatives embrace liberal democracy, they do so not so much because it is best as because it is least bad: with Churchill, they regard democracy as the worst political system, except for any other.