As the era of neoconservative dominance comes to a close, the direction of the right is seemingly up for grabs. The strict guardrails that constrained the post-war conservative movement and the gatekeeping of establishment figures such as National Review Editor William F. Buckley have now been replaced by social media platforms that are open to controversial thinkers. Gone are the days when expressing the wrong beliefs would end a person’s public career. Today, anti-establishment sentiment drives right-wing media. This new reality eliminates the default ideology that conservative youths were previously expected to adopt.

The next generation should take advantage of this opening by moving away from the failed conservatism of the last several decades and returning to paleoconservatism. Yet, many conservatives will disagree, insisting that the paleos are the real failures; they lost all the old conservative battles, after all.

A cursory glance at the paleos since their emergence in the 1980s would suggest that they have been primarily preoccupied with their conflict against the neoconservatives—the liberal internationalists who had taken over the conservative movement. George W. Bush’s former speechwriter, David Frum, suggested that the paleos were motivated in their criticisms by “grievances.” What’s more, he labeled the paleos “unpatriotic conservatives” for their attacks on the Bush administration during the Iraq War. While Frum—a dual-citizen of Canada and the U.S. who supported Kamala Harris in 2024—was attacking the paleos for sabotaging the movement, paleoconservatives were opposing these “new conservatives” precisely because they were an extension of the left. True opposition to leftism has always been the paleo’s goal.

Paleoconservatives have written the most articulate and detailed deconstructions of leftism. The realities of the managerial state, the fantasies of globalism, and the attempt to rid the West of its social norms, traditions, and peoples were all subjects of paleo critique, and all are now mainstream topics. Paleos actually see the left as an existential threat, unlike the neoconservatives, who have sounded the alarm and vented their disapproval at paleo critiques of leftism, whether on immigration policy, foreign policy, or cultural mores. 

The fact that neoconservatives held the upper hand in the conservative civil wars reveals that it was only the paleos who posed a real challenge to the left’s totalitarian regime. Only the faux neoconservative establishment, a controlled opposition, was permitted by the leftist regime. As a young member of the right, I did not experience the peak of neoconservative influence. Half of the neocons jumped ship and voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, and most of the others are held at arm’s length in President Trump’s Republican Party.

Paleoconservatism’s robustness suits it for the current era just as well as the late 20th century. A reactionary, not merely defensive, conservatism is what the paleo movement is truly about, and it is exactly what the present moment calls for. Chronicles columnist Sam Francis wrote that paleoconservatism is not “conservative” in the sense of seeking to preserve the current system. The system, as it is currently comprised, has waged war against the American people. Rather, paleoconservatives are concerned with restoring the traditional American way of life. They believe in the classical conservatism of Edmund Burke, as manifested in the unique Anglo-Saxon founding of America. The Southern Agrarians, the American System protectionists, the Old Right that opposed the New Deal, and the immigration restrictionists of the early 1900s, all influenced the paleoconservative movement and continue to shape its politics today. In other words, paleoconservatism represents an authentically American right-wing.

Paleoconservatism brings to the forefront what is needed today: a love for historic America, a recognition of its enemies, and a vision for its restoration. There could be no better direction for the youth of the right, who are already embracing many of these beliefs due to the rise of Trump. 

Before 2016, the paleos had reached the most sophisticated levels of intellectual political thought but had failed to distill those ideas into policy. In President Trump’s second term, these ideas have been even more strongly represented than they were in his first. The paleos have been vindicated in their convictions on mass immigration, trade policy, and foreign policy, among many other issues.

While Sam Francis was known as a paleoconservative, he preferred other labels for the movement. I am the last person who should propose a new name for this movement, though I can speculate on why a name change appealed to Francis. He and his cohorts adopted “paleoconservative” to distinguish themselves from “neoconservatives.” Both names, however, share the “conservative” root, which frames both as branches of a broader tradition that works to conserve the present regime. The next generation should not consider paleoconservatism as merely another strain of regime conservatism. We can embrace it as the remnant of America’s authentic right-wing political tradition, and adapt it for today’s fight against the reigning leftist regime that is openly hostile to that tradition. 

The rising crop of rightists values the traditional American order, while rejecting the regime that threatens it. The paleoconservative tradition is the only sensible guide for today’s right-wingers. It is the only authentic American right, and it is the soul of the emerging New Right. ◆