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Reflections from the Old Right WINTER 2009-2010 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Reflections from the Old Right REVIEWED BY CARL F. HOROWITZ With this work, at least, he doesn’t have to. Gottfried wanted to write a political memoir, not onservative political philosophy an end-of-the-world jeremiad. He may or may not — the real kind — has never been qualify as a public figure — his friendship with that big on optimism, inasmuch as it Richard Nixon would give him some benefit of the views human nature as predisposed doubt — but he is one of the few conservatives still toward rapaciousness. People can be alive willing to take on big ideas in ways that go Creal predators, whether for the purpose of territori- well beyond standard Red State Über Alles culture- al acquisition, abstract principle, or revenge. It’s the war talking points. job of civil society, backed by statecraft, to rein in Paul Gottfried belongs to the Old Right, a con- the worst among them. Even successful nations like tentious fraternity prone to crossing swords some- ours are far more unstable than they look, especially times as much among themselves as with others. But when those who govern lack the requisite wisdom unlike another Old Right paladin, Chronicles maga- to recognize peril domestically or from abroad. zine’s Thomas Fleming, a man seemingly terminal- Paul Gottfried, a professor of humanities at ly incapable of uttering or writing a sentence with- Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, recognizes out inflicting moral punishment, Gottfried comes this, perhaps a bit too much. And as one of our coun- off as pleasant, more so anyway than much of his try’s leading conservative political philosophers, recent work would suggest. More than from anyone he’s not about to allow some careerist middlebrow else, his worldview comes from his late German- like William Ben- speaking, Hun- nett or Newt Ging- Encounters garian-born Jew- rich claim the My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers ish-immigrant fa- high ground for by Paul E. Gottfried ther, Andrew Got- his cause. Even Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute tfried. A mas- a quarter-century 220 pp., $28.00 ter furrier, the el- ago, Gottfried was der Gottfried and reluctant to sing family members the “morning in America” tune, necessary as it may on his and his future wife’s side emigrated from Na- have been to securing electoral victory — the Rea- zified Europe during the Thirties, settling in Bridge- gan presidency, in his mind, brought no revolution. port, Connecticut. Young Paul didn’t quite take to The man looks out his window and can’t help but his father’s vindictive streak or his admiration for see dusk. He wryly acknowledges as much in En- FDR’s New Deal, but he did internalize the father’s counters, his remembrance of people, living and de- strong “sense of command.” Paul’s massive twing- ceased, who have shaped his worldview, recalling a es of disdain for the sorts of wimpy, guilt-ridden question directed at him, “Do you give out suicide white men who too often populate today’s academ- razors with your books?” ic, corporate, philanthropical, and government cir- cles on some level are echoes of his father. What may arouse the most curiosity is how the Carl F. Horowitz is a prominent Washington, author became a confidante to another father figure D.C.-area consultant on immigration, labor, (of sorts), Richard Nixon. They first met in Janu- housing and other issues. He holds a Ph.D. in ary 1989 in the former president’s Woodcliff Lake, urban planning and public policy. New Jersey office. Nixon had been impressed with 141 WINTER 2009-2010 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Gottfried’s book of a few years earlier, The Search Richard Nixon was one of two “pugnacious for Historical Meaning, praising it in The Ameri- Republicans” who shaped Gottfried, the other be- can Spectator. Gottfried, taking the initiative, wrote ing Nixon’s former understudy and syndicated Nixon, partly in hopes of getting him to write for pundit, Patrick Buchanan. Gottfried had formed The World and I, where he was a senior editor; Gott- a friendship with Buchanan following a speech in fried’s boss at that magazine, Morton Kaplan, had Philadelphia during the 1992 Republican presiden- been an advisor to the Nixon administration’s arms tial primary season. Buchanan’s beliefs and style limitation talks with the Soviets. The former presi- posed problems, but the frequent and “indefensi- Libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard in the classroom (left) and Pat Buchanan (right), with Paul Gottfried at the 2009 H. L. Mencken Club meeting, are some of the intellectual luminaries on the old right that author Gottried reminisces about in Encounters. dent’s response was prompt, and a visit ensued. bly extreme” attacks from liberals, denunciations Nixon, up close, far from embodying his cautiously seconded by William F. Buckley and familiar caricature of awkward, shifty-eyed other marquee conservatives, convinced Gottfried neurosis, projected relaxed erudition, a presence that the Right needed redefinition. He sent his new Frank Langella captured in his Tony-winning and friend information on sources of neoconservative Oscar-nominated depictions in Frost/Nixon. But funding, which Buchanan used for a column. the conversations did something more: They gave The primaries produced no victories, not even Gottfried a first-hand education in realism in the in the celebrated case of New Hampshire, where world of nations. Nixon, he writes, “belonged to a Buchanan (contrary to Gottfried’s unfortunate tradition that would place him well to the right of assertion) lost to incumbent President George his neo-Wilsonian critics.” This tradition especially H.W. Bush by 58 percent to 40 percent. But the drew from Hobbes, rooted as it was in a resignation experience proved a launching pad for a 1996 run. to the inevitability of violence and the need for a Gottfried had won himself a job as a member of the State to restrain it without inflicting it. Nixon, as a Buchanan brain trust, which included Russell Kirk, matter of principle, reserved his idealistic rhetoric Murray Rothbard, and Samuel T. Francis. He’d for mobilizing public support, not for developing a known them from before, but the new context was stable political order. bracing. They were now a band of brothers locked 142 WINTER 2009-2010 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT in mortal combat with the post-American socialism closest among the three to grasping how resentments, and multiculturalism that had come to set the tenor properly harnessed, could move voters rightward, of debate even among the Republicans. but even he could not grasp that “Middle America” Francis saw our post-World War II managerial was a highly imprecise post-Sixties construct. And class, bent on centralization and egalitarianism, for all that Gottfried desired counterrevolution, he as supplanting older property-owning classes. As sided with Kirk, not Francis, in fearing the fabled traditional American “conservatism” no longer “wisdom of crowds,” including those inside voting really existed, its successor would have to court booths. Given the multitudes’ susceptibility to “Middle American Radicals,” who were at once demagogues, it has been a minor miracle that we populist, traditionalist, and angry. have managed to avoid a police Murray Rothbard, godfather of state. At one point in Encounters, anarcho-libertarianism, saw an Gottfried recalls being asked at ally in this revived conservatism, a Cato Institute seminar if the a way station toward abolition of people have the government the State. Capitalists are crucial to they deserve. His response: “The liberty and prosperity, he argued, government is far better than but they are as prone as the rest of the one that the masses actually us to seeking and protecting favors merit.” The masses, needless to from government (especially during say, did not go for Pat Buchanan in wartime), while giving lip service 1996. Gottfried ruefully notes the to “free enterprise.” Secession, naïveté of today’s conservatives, or some less extreme form of even Buchanan to some extent, political devolution, could restrict who accept man’s nature as fallen government’s capacity to bestow yet believe an electorate can benefits upon the relative few at the become angelic if roused to action expense of everyone else. Russell by the right candidate. Kirk, a bohemian Tory with a prodigious output, A trio of distinguished Central European saw conservative victory as impossible without a Catholic émigrés — Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, revival of a nearly defunct moral sensibility. But Thomas Molnar, and John Lukacs — could hardly that sensibility was very much a projection of be accused of such an error. Like Gottfried, they Kirk’s own crusty, mystic Luddism, and as such, had ancestral connections to Budapest. And each he was an unlikely source of advice for anyone’s offered an attractive critique of mass politics campaign. Political victory required mastery of that was at once Rightist and realistic. Kuehnelt- television (among other media), and it would have Leddihn, having witnessed democracy degenerate been hard to find a person anywhere more filled into legitimized mob rule in Europe, came to see it with hatred for that device than Kirk — the oft-told as unworkable here as well, a secularized extension story about Kirk tossing a TV set out his Mecosta, of Protestant sectarian passions. Molnar was a Michigan home attic window rather than have his throne-and-altar Catholic, providing a defense of family watch it happens to be true. Gottfried never a reactionary tradition, which though moored in quite found Kirk’s style or beliefs tenable, but they theocracy, at least understood the futility of expecting both agreed that populism and conservatism were a democracy to adjudicate vast, warlike differences poor fit.
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