A Paleoconservative Anthology - (Political Theory for Today) by Paul Gottfried (Hardcover)

About the Book

This anthology presents a full range of the perspectives of the paleoconservtive right underlining the originality of its thought and the reasons for its marginal status within the conservative establishment. Our book also shows why certain themes paleoconservtism has highligh...

Book Synopsis

This anthology provides detailed examinations of the major themes and perspectives of the paleoconservatives as political thinkers and activists. A long forgotten and persistently disregarded group within the American Right, but their ideas show a remarkable staying power. Paleoconservatives, as this anthology undertakes to show, have been among the most original and insightful representatives of the Right over the last thirty years but because of internal quarrels and their conspicuous defiance of the conservative establishment, they have become isolated voices. Almost everything about the paleoconservatives should be of interest to historians of political movements, including the process by which they became a marginalized force on the intellectual right and their periodic attempts to build bridges across the political spectrum.

Review Quotes

"Edited by the distinguished historian who coined the term "paleoconservatism" for a loosely defined camp of Old Right (as opposed to "neoconservative") thinkers, this book brings together essays by thoughtful and independently-minded members of a younger generation of that persuasion. While acknowledging their debt to their predecessors, they are less resigned to the decline of the West and inclined to place greater emphasis on the realities and importance of political power.

---Lee Congdon, author of George Kennan for Our Time." --Lee Congdon, professor emeritus, James Madison University

"Finally, students, academics, and concerned citizens can read a full-throated, scholarly defense of paleoconservatism. The dean of paleoconservatism, Paul Gottfried, has assembled essays by prominent writers on the work of those who pioneered the study of the cultural roots of popular self-rule in America and their endangerment by a managerial class. Love it, hate it, or even fear some of what it contains, this book is essential for understanding a rigorous, coherent body of thought crucial to the development of and debates within American conservatism." --Bruce Frohnen, Ohio Northern University College of Law

"In A Paleoconservative Anthology, Paul Gottfried has ably introduced what paleoconservatism is, what it is not, and something of the nature of the ofttimes feisty debates allied intellectuals frequently have among themselves. The contributors cover subjects that range from the sociologist Alexander Riley's forcible demolition of the progressive view regarding human nature to defense consultant Wayne Allensworth's reassessment of US national security imperiled by the forces of globalization. Taken as a whole, these contributors do not mince words in what they consider the outrages of the modern world. Gottfried has assembled voices that are always interesting, frequently challenging, and occasionally superb." --Robert Paquette, President of The Alexander Hamilton Institute

About the Author

Paul Edward Gottfried is the editor of Chronicles and a former Horace Raffensperger professor of humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.