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Old Right

The Old Right refers to separate political groups in the United Kingdom and the United States.

U.S. Old Right

In the United States, the Old Right, also called the Old Guard, was a group of conservative Republicans of the interwar years led by Robert Taft. They managed to split the Republican party in two during the 1912 presidential election, with the progressives following Theodore Roosevelt and forming the United States Progressive Party, and causing Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic Candidate, to win. They successfully fought to cut down immigration in the 1920s. They also opposed United States membership of the League of Nations and the New Deal. Influential members of the American Old Right, in addition to Taft, incluided Senate Majority Leader Nelson Aldrich, Congressman Howard Buffett, Senator James A. Reed , Governor Albert Ritchie of Maryland, businessman Robert E. Wood , journalists Robert R. McCormick and H.L. Mencken, and authors such as Frank Chodorov , Garet Garrett, Albert Jay Nock, Isabel Paterson, John T. Flynn, Leonard Read, and Felix Morley . Several of these individuals had been associated with progressive movements prior to the political realignments caused by the New Deal; in light of this fact, some would also include former president Herbert Hoover as a man of the Old Right.

They were called the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their New Right successors of the Cold War who were more friendly to both foreign and economic intervention.

Their successors and torchbearers in the late 20th century and present century are paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians. Both of these groups often rally behind Old Right slogans like "America First" while sharing similar views to the Old Right opposition to the New Deal.

U.K. Old Right

In Britain, the term Old Right is sporadically used to refer to conservatives of various stripes who predated the emergence of Thatcherism, initially in opposition in the 1970s and then in government in the 1980s. The term is used most frequently to refer to the sort of Right-wingers who held what are now generally considered to be racist views on many issues and were often members of the League of Empire Loyalists, but it is occasionally also used to refer to the Tory wing of post-war consensus politics (often called Butskellism).

The former axis of the British "Old Right" are known for their staunch opposition to immigration, European federalism and the break-up of the British Empire while also being more culturally fogeyish and wary of American influence than latter-day Tories; they are also often accused of anti-Semitism. The post-war centre-ground Tories who are sometimes (but much less often) also confusingly called "Old Right" are also often sceptical of the US and Israel, but much less virulently so than the former group; their wariness is of the political Right in Israel and its allies in the US, not of the very existence of Israel or of Jews more generally. One major difference is that the Butskellite Tories were often strongly supportive of European integration and Britain's role in it, which distinguishes them from both the group more frequently referred to as "Old Right" and the Thatcher generation in the party.

The (arguably resurgent) remnants of both wings have recently been described, somewhat contentiously, as "Michael Moore Conservatives" by the writer Adrian Wooldridge , a reference to the stocky American film director.

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Last updated: 08-07-2005 21:00:29
Last updated: 09-12-2005 02:39:13