1. - what might be called the
'proto-paleo," faction of the
party walked out, and what's
left of the LP is now spiraling
downward into oblivion.
n43w, revivified reincarnation
of the Grand Old Right of my
youth. Who says 'you can't go
home again?"
In my days in the Liber-
cus never went beyond a gal-
lant handful.
The Lesson.of Joe
McCarthy
It is a happy coincidence tarian Party, one of my hap- Quick: Who was the most
that just when the LP fell apart piest associations was with the hated, the most smeared, the
in 1989, the collapse of Com- hlead of the Arizona Party, most universally reviled, man
munism made the Cold War long-time political consultant in American political life,
obsolete, and gave us hope Emil Franzi, one before David
that many conservatives of the most as- Duke? You're
would now rejoin us in an anti- tute political right: it was
interventionist, anti-global minds in the LP. 'Tailgunner
America First foreign policy. (A 'proto-paleo" Joe" McCarthy.
Happily, we became aware if there ever was Why is that? Joe
that there was indeed a wing one, Franzi is McCarthy was
of conservatives, unfortu- also long out of not a Ku Kluxer,
nately all too small among the the LP.) Franzi he was not a
Official leadership in New York broke down LP Nazi, he was
and Washington, who agreed members into not a libertarian,
with us that the time had come three sociologi- he was not even
for a resurgent isolationism. cal categories: a conserva-
And it also turned out that 'Murray, there tive. One thing
these 'paleo-conservatives," a are three types quickly forgot-
generation younger than the of people in ten amidst the
'traditionalists" of twenty and the Libertarian anti-McCarthy
thirty years ago, were tren- Party: the hip- hysteria of the
chant and hard-core critics of pies, the prep- 1950s was that
the welfare state, scorners of pies, and the Joe McCarthy
the Official Conservative rednecks." As was a moderate,
scramble for government jobs, lhe self-pro- or liberal, Re-
and bitterly anti-statist in their [claimed leader publican. In ad-
basic outlook. Hence, the now ef the Redneckcaucus, Franzi dition, McCarthy did not create
famous rapprochement with left no doubt where he himself the frenetic anti-Communist
the paleo-conservatives, the stood. The "hippies" of course world view: indeed, it was a
creation of a new 'paleo-liber- were the people we have view that he absorbed out of
tarian" movement as a way to dubbed the Modals; the our political culture, a view
separate ourselves out from 'preppies" (or wannabee created and totally shared by
the flakes and cultural leftists preppies) were the Koch- conservatives, centrists, and
who constitute the LP and Crane machine. The Cold War liberals. Indeed, one
'Modal Libertarians," and the 'rednecks" were the real of the most common, and re-
happy fusion with the people. In a sense the strat- vealing, lines about McCarthy
paleocons into a new 'paleo" egy we are now proclaiming is was: "We agree with his goals
movement. For myself, after a strategy of Outreach to the [ant i-Communism], but we
thirty-five years in the ideo- Rednecks. And there really don't agree with his means."
logical wilderness, first allied are virtually no rednecks in Indeed, when McCarthy con-
with the New Left and then in the Libertarian Party. Truly, fronted the Army and the en-
a sectarian LP, I am happy to even at best, there were never tire Center in those famous
be once again at home in a very many: the Redneck Cau- hearings, nobody disputed all
12 January 1992
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