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In the United States , the Old Right, also called the Paleoconservatives are a faction of American Conservatives who both opposed New Deal domestic programs and were also Non-interventionists opposing entry into World War II . Many were associated with the Republicans of the Interwar years led by Robert Taft , but some were Democrats . They were called the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their anti-communist New Right successors, such as Barry Goldwater , who were interventionist in foreign policy (although a great majority of Old Right intellectuals were passionately opposed to communism and socialism). Many members of the Old Right were laissez-faire Classical Liberals , some were business-oriented conservatives like Herbert Hoover ; others were ex-radicals who moved sharply to the right, like John Dos Passos ; others, like the Southern Agrarians , dreamed of restoring a premodern communal society. VIEWS The Old Right emerged in opposition to the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt . By 1937 they formed a Conservative Coalition that controlled Congress until 1964. In 1939-41 they were isolationist and opposed entering WWII. The Old Right's "America First" attitude was organized by the America First Committee . Later, most opposed NATO and US military intervention in the Korean War . This anti-New Deal movement was a coalition of multiple groups: (1) intellectual individualists and libertarians, including H. L. Mencken , Albert Jay Nock , Rose Wilder Lane , Garet Garrett , Raymond Moley and (from a different direction), Walter Lippmann ; (2) Laissez-faire Liberals , especially the heirs of the Bourbon Democrats like Albert Ritchie of Maryland or Senator James A. Reed of Missouri; (3) pro-business or anti-union Republicans, such as Herbert Hoover and Robert Taft ; (4) conservative states-rights Democrats from the South; (5) pro-business Democrats such as Al Smith , the founders of the American Liberty League , and William Randolph Hearst ; and (6) soured radicals, such as Father Charles Coughlin . MEMBERS Influential members of the American Old Right include:
Jeff Riggenbach argues that some members of the Old Right were actually classical liberals and "were accepted members of the "Left" before 1933. Yet, without changing any of their fundamental views, all of them, over the next decade, came to be thought of as examplars of the political "Right.""Riggenbach, Jeff. ''The Mighty Flynn', ''Liberty'' January 2006 p. 34 Southern Agrarians reject Modernity The “Old Right” drew on some of the values and anxieties being articulated on the anti-modern right, including the desire to retain the social authority and defend the autonomy of the American states and regions, especially the South. p 124 Donald Davidson was one of the most politically active of the agrarians, especially in his attacks on the TVA in his native Tennessee . As Murphy p 5 shows, the Southern Agrarians :
However, the Southern Agrarians were very much a different breed as opposed to the list of what is now thought as "Old Right", such as the list of individuals above. LEGACY The successors and torchbearers of the Old Right view in the late 20th Century and current era are the Paleoconservatives and Paleolibertarian s. Both of these groups often rally behind Old Right slogans such as "America First" while sharing similar views to the Old Right opposition to the New Deal . REFERENCES
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