Unpatriotic Conservatives: A war against America

The decisive year for both the magazine and paleoconservatism was 1989. Until then, Chronicles had managed to coexist with most of the rest of the conservative community. This coexistence was symbolized by the Rockford Institute, which sponsored not only Chronicles but also the Center for Religion and Society in New York, headed by Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran minister who had been involved in both the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam protests.

Neuhaus's experiences as a pastor in the New York slums and his passionate opposition to abortion had led him rightward in the 1980s. But he was disturbed by the racial politics of Chronicles, and also by what he termed its "insensitiv[ity] to the classical language of anti- Semitism." Neuhaus contemplated severing the connection between his institute and Rockford. Word of his dissatisfaction filtered back to Illinois, and, one day in May, Rockford struck back. An executive from the institute jetted out to New York, fired Neuhaus and his entire staff, ordered them literally out onto the streets, and changed the office locks. The paleos at Rockford exploded in dumbfounded rage when the foundations that had been supporting Neuhaus's work refused to switch the money over to them instead.

The shuttering of Neuhaus's offices brought the emerging paleoconservative movement to national attention. The incident was covered by the New York Times and commented upon by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. It was, however, events across the Atlantic that gave the shuttering a larger importance.

At the same time that Fleming was sacking Neuhaus, the people of Leopold Tyrmand's native Poland were engaged in their country's first free elections since World War II. Solidarity won all but one open seat in the lower house of parliament and 92 of 100 seats in the Polish senate. Over the next six months, the Communist governments of central Europe would collapse.

The conservative movement had come to life in the 1950s to goad the governments of the West to wage the Cold War more energetically and skillfully. When National Review declared in its founding editorial that it would stand "athwart history, yelling Stop" the history it had in mind was Marx's "History" -- the "History" with a capital H that was supposed to run inevitably toward Communism. By November 1989, that History had indeed stopped -- was rapidly running backward -- and the great question for conservatives was, "What now?"

"How horrible to realize, ten years after the Cold War, that the real evil empire is not some foreign regime, but the U.S. military state.

It bombs buses, bridges, factories, churches, and schools, expresses 'regret,' and then continues to do the same. A host of innocents have died from U.S. attacks -- a fact which should make every patriot wince. The propaganda should also make us wonder to what extent the old Communist Threat was trumped up to plunder the American taxpayer."