2nd Amendment & Values - quote from Samuel Francis, paleoconservative

"The society of late twentieth century America is perhaps the first in human history where most grown men do not routinely bear arms on their persons and boys are not regularly raised from childhood to learn skill in the use of some kind of weapon, either for community or personal defense - club or spear, broadsword or long bow, rifle or Bowie knife. 

It also happens to be one of the rudest and crudest societies in history, having jubilantly swept most of the etiquette of speech, table, dress, hospitality, fairness, deference to authority and the relations of male and female and child and elder under the fraying and filthy carpet of politically convenient illusions.  With little fear of physical reprisal Americans can be as loud, gross, disrespectful, pushy, and negligent as they please. 

If more people carried rapiers at their belts, or revolvers on their hips, it is a fair bet you would be able to go to a movie and enjoy the dialogue from the screen without having to endure the small talk, family gossip and assorted bodily noises that many theater audiences these days regularly emit.  Today, discourtesy is commonplace precisely because there is no price to pay for it."

-- Dr. Samuel Todd "Sam" Francis (29Apr47 – 15Feb05) paleoconservative

source: Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

authored:  Council of Conservative Citizen's Statement of Principles (2005)

Sam Francis articles: http://www.vdare.com/francis/

more "American Founding Fathers' & Traditional American Values" quotes at: http://harrold.org/quotes

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Paleoconservatism

excerpts from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paleoconservatism (sometimes shortened to paleo or paleocon when the context is clear) is a term for an anti-communist and anti-imperialist right-wing political philosophy in the United States stressing tradition, civil society and anti-federalism, along with religious, regional, national and Western identity.  Chilton Williamson, Jr. describes paleoconservatism as "the expression of rootedness: a sense of place and of history, a sense of self derived from forebears, kin, and culture—an identity that is both collective and personal."  Paleoconservatism is not expressed as an ideology and its adherents do not necessarily subscribe to any one party line.

Paleoconservatives in the 21st century often highlight their points of disagreement with neoconservatives, especially on issues like immigration, affirmative action, U.S. funding of its allies abroad, foreign wars, and welfare.  They also criticize social democracy, which some refer to as the "therapeutic managerial state," the "welfare-warfare state" or "polite totalitarianism."  They see themselves as the legitimate heirs to the American conservative tradition.

Paul Gottfried is credited with coining the term in the 1980s.  He says the term originally referred to various Americans, such as traditionalist Catholics and agrarian Southerners, who turned to anticommunism during the Cold War.

Paleoconservative thought has developed within the pages of the Rockford Institute's Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.  Pat Buchanan was heavily influenced by its articles and helped create another paleocon publication, The American Conservative.  Its concerns overlap those of the Old Right that opposed the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as American social conservatism of the late 20th century expressed, for example, in the book Single Issues by Joseph Sobran.

The prefix paleo derives from the Greek root palaeo- meaning "ancient" or "old."  It is somewhat tongue-in-cheek—and refers to the paleocons' claim to represent a more historic, authentic conservative tradition than that found in neoconservative.

What paleoconservatism tries to tell Americans is that the dominant forces in their society are no longer committed to conserving the traditions, institutions, and values that created and formed it, and, therefore, that those who are really conservative in any serious sense and wish to live under those traditions, institutions, and values need to oppose the dominant forces and form new ones.

Core beliefs of Paleoconservatism

Appreciation of Tradition

Francis defined authentic conservatism as "the survival and enhancement of a particular people and its institutionalized cultural expressions."   He de-emphasized the "conservative" part of the "paleoconservative" label, saying that he did not want the status quo preserved.  He said of the paleo movement:

What paleoconservatism tries to tell Americans is that the dominant forces in their society are no longer committed to conserving the traditions, institutions, and values that created and formed it, and, therefore, that those who are really conservative in any serious sense and wish to live under those traditions, institutions, and values need to oppose the dominant forces and form new ones.

Francis respected the role tradition plays in civil society. "The power of tradition and its allies," he remarked, "lies not their ability to justify themselves through logic but in their capacity to mobilize those who remain attached to tradition; in a declining civilization, or one challenged by the enemies of tradition, that capacity will dwindle as the power of the challenger grows."

Conservative heritage
Sam Francis wrote:

We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character.  We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime.  We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies.

Concrete roots

Many paleocons also say that Westerners have lost touch with their classical and European heritage, to the point that they are in danger of losing their civilization.  Robert S. Griffin notes that paleocons fear the United States becoming a "secularized, homogenized, de-Europeanized, pacified, deluded, manipulated, lowest-common-denominator-leveled, popular-culture-dopified country"

Family

Paleocons often argue that modern managerial society is a threat to stable families.  Allan C. Carlson, former president of the Rockford Institute, argues that

The family is the natural and fundamental social unit, inscribed in our nature as human beings, rooted in marriage, rooted in the commitment to bring new life into the world, and rooted in a deep respect for both ancestors and posterity.

He calls this a universal rule of human nature, true for Westerners and non-Westerners alike. He also argues that happiness "comes through natural family bonds" and that "the future of any nation shall be by way of the family."  He defines family as "a man and a woman living in a socially sanctioned bond called marriage for the purposes of propagating and rearing children, sharing intimacy and resources, and conserving lineage, property, and tradition."

To be human is to be familial.  Any significant departure from the family rooted in stable marriage, the welcoming of children, and respect for ancestors and posterity — any deviation from this social structure makes us in a way less "human": that is, I think it fair to say, the true message of modern science.
Paleocons also question the validity of gender feminism in similar ways, some questioning feminism in both its radical and moderate forms. They say that the push for total gender equality dehumanizes both men and women, damaging the nuclear family and sacralizing abortion.  Certain attitudes toward feminism also create room for the managerial state to try engineering sexual equality.

Human nature, tradition and reason
Joseph Sobran picks up this same theme, saying that heterosexual marriage is hard-coded into human nature:

[Even] the Pope can't change the nature of marriage.  It existed, by necessity of human nature, long before Jesus or even Abraham.... This has nothing to do with mere disapproval of sodomy.  Even societies that were indifferent to sodomy saw no reason to treat same-sex domestic partnerships as marriages.  Why not?  Because such unions don't produce children....  To put it as unromantically as possible, people who have children should be stuck with each other, sharing the responsibility.

Along these lines, Joseph Sobran, in his "Pensees", argues that Western civilization relies on civility at the center of the society:

Civility is the relationship among citizens in a republic.  It corresponds to the condition we call "freedom", which is not just an absence of restraint or coercion, but the security of living under commonly recognized rules of conduct.  Not all these rules are enforced by the state; legal institutions of civility depend on the ethical substratum and collapse when it is absent.  And in fact the colloquial sense of civility as good manners is relevant to its political meaning: citizens typically deal with each other by consent, and they have to say "please" and "thank you" to each other.

Certain paleoconservatives say that tradition is a better guide than reason.  For example, Mel Bradford wrote that certain questions are settled before any serious deliberation concerning a preferred course of conduct may begin.  This ethic is based in a "culture of families, linked by friendship, common enemies, and common projects."  So a good conservative keeps "a clear sense of what Southern grandmothers have always meant in admonishing children, we don't do that."

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Paleocons often say they are not conservatives in the sense that they necessarily wish to preserve existing institutions or seek merely to slow the growth of modern big government liberalism.  They do not wish to be closely identified with the U.S. Republican Party.  Rather, they seek the renewal of "small 'r'" republican society in the context of the Western heritage, customs and civilization.

Paleocons tend to dislike abstract principles presented without connection to concrete roots, like religion, heritage or traditional institutions.
On some issues, many paleocons are hard to distinguish from others on the conservative spectrum.  For example, they tend to oppose abortion on demand and gay marriage, while supporting capital punishment, handgun ownership  and an original intent reading of the U.S. Constitution.
The movement combines disparate people and ideas that might seem incompatible in another context.

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As Stephen J. Tonsor said of former Marxists who, as "neocons", had joined the conservative movement:

"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."

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The earliest mention of the word paleoconservative listed in Nexis is a use in the October 20, 1984, issue of The Nation, referring to academic economists who allegedly work to redefine poverty.  The American Heritage Dictionary (fourth edition) lists a generic, informal use of the term, meaning "extremely or stubbornly conservative in political matters."  Outside of the United States, the word is sometimes spelled palaeoconservative.

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