Friday, June 04, 2010

What's wrong with paleoconservatism

Wow. Well, in keeping with my use of this personal blog as a sort of safety valve for all manner of things I can't sound off about elsewhere, herewith an endorsement of the following summary of the problem with paleoconservatism:

Their lack of any larger idea of the good is perfectly expressed in the way the paleocons typically express their positive belief. Over and over, you hear them say something like this: "I believe in hearth, home, and kindred." This is their affirmation of the particular and the local as distinct from the universal and the massified. But the problem is, it's not enough. "Hearth and kindred" boils down to one's family, neighbors, and locality. It has no reference to a political order, no reference to a cultural order, no reference to transcendent moral order, no reference to philosophical truth, no reference to a nation.
The rest is here.

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