Reply To: Paleoconservativism vs Libertarianism

#19813
samgheb
Participant

Paleoconservatives believe the nation is made of blood and soil. They are traditionalist for the most part. They are pretty standard conservative as far as I can tell. I think Tom Woods has said of Patrick Buchanan that he simply holds the views that exists pre-social revolution of the 60’s. (not negatively meant btw)

They cherish private property but not to extent that libertarians do. They are based in history while libertarians are based in universal principles that hold for all people at all time. They are more focused on community. They are localists whereas neocons are globalists. This is also partly why you see some hostility from them towards the market although I’m not sure it is as representative of the movment as one would gather from the presence of Buchanan.

While paleoconservative can resemble libertarians the opposite is not true. Libertarians are for the most part left-libertarian from my experience. What is often (falsely)said about libertarianism(atomistic, etc) is quite often true of libertarians. Many libertarians are also very economistic. The best case is immigration which is a pretty good way to seperate left-libertarian from a right-libertarian.

Murray Rothbard used to employ the test of what one thought of Martin Luther King or Lincoln(and by extension the civil war). In the 90’s we saw right-libertarianism or paleo-libertarianism but it died out.
http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1993dec-00001
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch5.html