Paul Edward Gottfried (1941- ) is a leading historian of the American Right and President of the H. L. Mencken Club. H is a contributor to numerous paleoconservative and libertarian publications, including The American Conservative, Takimag, Lew Rockwell.com, and the Alternative Right.
The separation of church and state and morality:
“The United States until the 1950s impressed foreign visitors, such as the French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, as a land that combined religious freedom and pervasive public policy.”
On preserving the last vestiges of classical liberalism:
“The constellation of ideas associated with this tradition in its original setting – individual rights, limited government, local self-determination – count for little in a polity that promotes rampant dependence on state initiatives and remote federal policymaking.”
On his relationship with Murray Rothbard:
“Despite my debates with him over Locke and natural right theory, Murray as an historian lives on in my critical thinking. He is there even more than the ghosts of Schmitt, Hegel, and Weber, who were evoking a nation state that by now is almost defunct. What Murray focused on is not the old state, which came into existence in the early modern age, but its terrifying successor. This new luxury-size one, which supposedly never makes war unless driven by global democratic indignation, works toward the happy ending of the Wall Street Journal’s agitprop picture of history. Murray, my friend and teacher, knew better and explained the world honestly.”
On the relationship between traditionalists an libertarians:
“The Old Right is losing its fear of being identified with libertarians, who seem to be, at least objectively, reactionary. Because libertarians speak concretely of dismantling the welfare state, and thereby taking the predominantly leftist managerial class out of people’s lives, Old Conservatives are less and less inclined to ridicule libertarians as moral anarchists.”
On the changing definitions of “rights”:
“The best argument for ditching human-rights talk is that it stands in the way of saying something serious about one’s moral positions. The term “human rights” usually denotes something that one wants to impose or legislate universally. But why not frame these things as one’s personal beliefs rather than universal human rights? Isn’t it possible to address issues without spraying the listener with pious smarm?”
Human Rights: The Useless Fiction.
Democracy and liberty:
“Outside the circles of reactionaries among whom I travel, I have yet to run into people who oppose democracy or equality or who question this ideological consensus. Those who don’t belong to this consensus should not blame politicians. They should indict democracy itself.”
When Democracy Murders Liberty.
On the lesser of two evils:
“For those of us on the right who do not wish to get back to Karl Rove’s utopia, Ron Paul offers at least an opportunity to protest. Unlike George Will, some of us are no happier with the Reps than we are with the Dems. We are therefore willing to put up with four more years of Bam rather than replace him with a GOP technocrat who combines social democracy and crony capitalism with armed crusades for “human rights.’”
Ron Paul: The Least of Three Evils.
On the political duopoly:
“But there is also the possibility that what remains of a principled Right, which the GOP has held on to, may grow sick and tired of the party’s opportunism. Every day I run into people who were once Republicans but are now disgusted by how the GOP has betrayed the American heritage of freedom. I trust this disgust will become even more widespread and that it will generate support for an alternative party, one that is serious about a return to small, decentralized government and about opposing the tyranny of Political Correctness. Needless to say, I don’t expect the Republican leadership to help forge such a party. They are the opposition that would have to be dealt with if such an alternative can prevail.”
Glenn Beck’s Myths:
“The Progressives prepared the first tiny steps on a long journey that has resulted in a much bigger government than most of those early 20th-century figures planned to give us. The talk radio and television pundits who now inveigh against Progressivism have fully accepted the increased government that those they revile helped to create. And these faux conservatives celebrate the additions to it that came long after the Progressive era, amid the civil rights and sexual upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Our plight today has less to do with Progressives who lived a century ago than with the pabulum dispensers on our televisions every night.”
The irrelevance of “conservative” and “liberal”:
“Further, terms like “conservative” and “liberal” have no other meanings than the ones that politicians and the media assign them. Why is it “liberal” to urge military restraint but “conservative” to be in favor of invading foreign countries to bring them women’s rights and universal suffrage? Why is it “liberal” to think that America is not a truly exceptional political society, but “conservative” to believe we are morally better than other nations and immune to the forces that affect them? Why is it “liberal” to think it wrong to bug the cell phone of a foreign ally but “conservative” to imagine that we are entitled to do so because we’re Americans? One answer to these questions is the media have decided for us what terms mean. The other answer is that ideological markers have become interchangeable with the policies of our two national parties and their donor bases.”