Earlier this year, I published an article sharply criticizing white nationalism, neo-Nazism, and the resurgence of paleoconservatism within the Republican Party. In retrospect, I made a significant rookie error: I conflated paleoconservatism with the fringe ideologies of white nationalism and neo-Nazism. This mischaracterization stemmed from a shallow understanding of paleoconservatism, which I had not yet studied seriously. Ironically, many of my own long standing views, including my preference for a restrained foreign policy and my skepticism toward mass migration, have always aligned more closely with paleoconservative thought than with any other tradition on the Right. It was only through deeper engagement with the works of thinkers like Pat Buchanan and through conversations with newfound friends at The American Conservative that I came to realize this alignment. As one such friend aptly put it, “It’s time to stop letting the Left and the neocons police our language and shrink the Overton Window until anyone outside their consensus is smeared as an extremist.” If we are to have any meaningful political debate in this country, we must recover a proper understanding of what paleoconservatism is and is not.
Paleoconservatism, properly understood, is grounded in several key principles: a strong emphasis on national sovereignty; a preference for a restrained, non-interventionist foreign policy; a belief in the necessity of cultural cohesion; and a deep skepticism toward mass migration and globalist economic policies. It maintains that a stable and flourishing society requires not just legal citizenship, but a shared national identity rooted in common language, traditions, historical memory, civic habits, and loyalty to the flag. Rather than embracing abstract universalism, paleoconservatives stress the particularity of the American nation: its unique culture, heritage, and institutions, which must be preserved and defended if America is to endure. To protect this inheritance, paleoconservatives argue that a mere legal process is insufficient; citizens must be bound together by a lived culture and a heartfelt sense of belonging to the American story.
This understanding of American identity is not based on race or ethnicity. It is based on assimilation into a common national culture that was inspired long ago by Anglo-Saxon political tradition (common law, enshrinement of private property protections, and local self-governance): a deliberate choice to adopt and uphold America’s traditions, values, and way of life. In this view, becoming American is not instantaneous nor purely transactional; it requires a genuine and lasting commitment to the nation’s particular civic and cultural fabric. To truly become American, one must learn and internalize the English language, study the nation’s history with reverence, respect its founding principles in their historical context, participate earnestly in its civic life, respect the role of Christianity in the development of American civilization and public life, and bear allegiance to the Constitution. It means embracing American holidays, symbols, and customs; not superficially, but as a sincere expression of belonging. True paleoconservatism thus rejects both racial nationalism and the naïve belief that anyone can become fully American simply by reciting a creed or obtaining a passport. It asserts that America is a real nation, not merely an idea: a living, breathing civilization that demands loyalty, rootedness, and an active embrace of its cultural legacy.
Neoconservatism, which is arguably far more damaging and dangerous than paleoconservatism, promotes the notion that America is purely propositional: that anyone from anywhere can arrive, assent to a set of abstract principles, and thereby instantly become fully American. This vision overlooks the reality that national identity is built not just on ideas, but on shared history, traditions, and cultural practices—things that require time, commitment, and assimilation to truly adopt. Neoconservatism also advances an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy, assuming that democracy and liberal values can and should be exported by force. In both its domestic and international forms, neoconservatism treats nationhood as a formula rather than a lived, organic experience, which is an approach that has consistently failed to account for the real complexities of human society.
That said, while I’ve come to embrace much of paleoconservatism and its modern offshoot, national populism, I cannot accept its economic program. Paleoconservative and national-populist economics mimics the Left’s disdain for markets and entrepreneurial success. It proposes state-directed investment, trade protectionism, and the politicization of capital. These policies betray the very foundations of economic liberty and innovation that have defined American strength. They may wear the trappings of nationalism, but at their core, they reflect the same redistributive instincts that animate communism. In rejecting Reaganite economics, the populist Right risks becoming little more than a reactionary mirror image of the socialist Left.
In what follows, I defend paleoconservatism on cultural and foreign policy grounds. At the same time, I critique its economic program, especially its populist drift toward protectionism and state intervention, as a betrayal of core conservative principles. I also draw on Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations to argue that cultural cohesion is not just a domestic necessity, but a global imperative in a world increasingly shaped by civilizational competition. In this context, defending the values, institutions, and traditions of Western civilization is not an act of chauvinism, but an act of preservation. Western civilization, for all its imperfections, has produced the most just, prosperous, and free societies in human history. To deny its superiority is to deny the very foundations of the American experiment.
The Case for Cultural Cohesion
Living in Los Angeles and watching demographic and political changes up close, especially at the city council and school board levels, has sharpened my understanding of how local politics and ethnicity are intertwined. Ethnic politics isn’t an abstraction here; it’s how Southern California works. In my own town of Cerritos, we have numerous immigrant populations that don’t get along politically: Portuguese, Filipino, Chinese, Indian, Central American, and more. While this racial and ethnic diversity is often touted as our “greatest strength” by most Democrats, the way it actually plays out on the ground is far more complicated and insalubrious to our democracy.
In practice, few of these groups identify as “American” in any meaningful civic or cultural sense. Some don’t even identify as “white,” even if they are technically classified as such on census forms (many Portuguese-Americans there, for example, despite being there since the 1920s, hold fast to their ethnic identity over any broader racial label). This matters. It challenges the optimistic neoconservative idea that identity can be melted down in a matter of years or generations simply through exposure to American values and culture. Though there are exceptions, neoconservative views on identity have generally not played out in practice.
Pat Buchanan, one of paleoconservatism’s most well-known and controversial standard-bearers, predicted all of this decades ago. He argued that too much immigration, especially without a strong push toward assimilation, would fracture national identity and destroy America. While I don’t agree with Buchanan on everything (especially his framing of this problem as uniquely tied to non-white immigration, which it’s not), I’ve come to see that his broader warnings weren’t entirely off-base (as I’ll explain shortly).
Indeed, white immigrants have historically had their own struggles with assimilation in America, but they overcame their struggles. The Irish, Italians, and Eastern Europeans of the early 20th century were seen as foreign, insular, primitive, and unassimilated by Anglo-Americans and German-Americans. Many of these immigrants did in fact refuse to assimilate and instead formed ethnic enclaves. It was only through aggressive immigration restrictions (such as the Immigration Act of 1924) and several generations of social pressure that they integrated into the American mainstream. Assimilation wasn’t automatic, it was imposed.
When my maternal grandparents immigrated to the United States nearly 50 years ago, they were encouraged to assimilate and did. They mastered English quickly and without any unintelligible accents, adopted American customs, and made a conscious effort to blend into the cultural mainstream. They did this not because they were forced to abandon who they were, but because they believed becoming American was something aspirational. Assimilation was not a betrayal of their heritage, but a necessary step toward unity and upward mobility.
Today, we seem to have lost both the will and the mechanisms to assimilate newcomers. Over the past 30 years (and arguably even longer than that), America has experienced immigration, both legal and illegal, at levels that strain our capacity to integrate. Many recent arrivals, whether they be from Central America, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, or elsewhere, settle in ethnic enclaves, speak nearly exclusively in their native languages, and remain more connected to the cultures they fled instead of the one they’re joining. There are, of course, exceptions, but those exceptions don’t disprove the trend.
The lack of assimilation is admittedly far worse in Canada and the United Kingdom when compared to the United States. Recent South Asian migrants, for example, import their political and ethno-religious conflicts and frequently riot against each other instead of assimilating and exhibiting loyalty to the country they moved to. What happens in Canada and the UK could very easily happen here in the United States if we continue to view assimilation with disdain and multiculturalism as the only acceptable solution. Furthermore, ethnic favoritism is a widespread reality within many recent immigrant communities. It’s common for individuals to prioritize hiring others from their own ethnic background: Hispanics hire Hispanics, Indians hire Indians, and so on.
What’s more, elite institutions, including universities, nonprofits, and the mainstream media, now actively discourage assimilation. Instead, they promote a kind of identity-first pluralism, urging immigrants to maintain and even prioritize their native customs, languages, and political orientations over any shared American identity. The narrative has flipped: adopting American values is treated as capitulation, while maintaining separatism is framed as empowerment.
Princeton is also guilty of contributing to the destruction of American identity. Princeton’s institutions, including the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding and the Effron Center for the Study of America, regularly push post-nationalism, criticize assimilation as “racist,” and advocate for literal open borders. In AMS 101, students were “taught” that only the salad bowl theory of multiculturalism—the idea that different cultures and ethnic groups should coexist instead of integrating or blending together—was the only acceptable theory, and that both assimilation and the melting pot theory are bad. We were also “taught” that open borders—not permissive immigration policies, but literal open borders, where people can cross at will—are culturally and economically beneficial, and that there are no good arguments against open borders. We were outright prohibited from including any counterarguments against open borders in our final exam because any such arguments, in the view of the instructors, would be “racist” or “xenophobic.”
The very idea of a unified American identity is eroding as we speak. Civic nationalism only works when there’s a shared civic culture, and that culture cannot survive if it’s constantly undermined by both mass migration and a post-national ideology that sees assimilation as a threat rather than a goal. Europe’s decades-long immigration crisis has made it quite clear that multiculturalism and open borders don’t work.
“But they’ll assimilate in the next generation.” Wrong. Recall that after World War II, Europe invited millions of immigrants to help rebuild their countries. Most of those immigrants chose to stay and form parallel societies instead of assimilating, which has led to economic tension and sociocultural decay. These parallel societies have persisted for at least four generations and have shown no signs of dissolving or integrating on their own. Now if only elite academia in America could learn from their mistakes and support much-needed immigration restrictions and forced assimilation.
Neoconservatism’s Foreign Policy Failures
Neoconservatives aren’t just wrong about American identity, they’re also dangerously wrong about America’s place in the world. Their foreign policy vision is rooted in hubris: a belief that the United States has both the moral obligation and the practical capacity to reshape the globe in its own image. They advocate for an aggressive, interventionist posture, often cloaked in the language of “freedom” and “human rights,” but in practice, this has meant endless wars, reckless nation-building, and the destabilization of entire regions.
From Iraq to Libya to Syria, neoconservative policies have left a trail of destruction. These misadventures were justified by lofty rhetoric about spreading democracy, but they have instead produced failed states, power vacuums, and humanitarian catastrophes. Even worse is that they have cost American lives, drained our treasury, and damaged our credibility abroad. Ask yourself, what have we gained in return? A chaotic Middle East, a resurgent Russia, a belligerent China, mass migration, and widespread global resentment.
Neocons’ obsession with maintaining “global leadership” really means subordinating American interests to an abstract set of internationalist ideals. Rather than pursuing a restrained, realist foreign policy rooted in prudence, sovereignty, and national interest, the neoconservative establishment pushes for perpetual involvement in conflicts that bear little relevance to the average American. Every potential hotspot, from Ukraine to Taiwan and beyond, is viewed through the same lens: as another opportunity for America to “lead,” no matter the cost.
Paleoconservatism and national populism, by contrast, offer an alternative rooted in restraint and realism. Buchanan and others in this tradition warned early on about the dangers of entangling alliances and the folly of military adventurism. They emphasized that foreign policy should serve the nation, not abstract ideals or global prestige. A strong defense, secure borders, and strategic autonomy, not global policing, should define our posture in the world.
Indeed, paleocons support maintaining Defense spending at current levels or slightly reducing it to cut waste, unlike the Left, which often advocates for drastic reductions in Defense spending due to the misguided belief that any money spent on the military can easily be redirected to other government departments.
Our approach is not isolationism, as neoconservatives often claim. It’s non-interventionism: the belief that America should engage with the world on its own terms, when doing so clearly advances its interests, not those of international NGOs, defense contractors, or foreign lobbyists. It also reflects a deeper philosophical difference. While neoconservatives see America as a universal nation with a messianic duty to export its values, paleoconservatives and national-populists see it as a particular nation with a culture and heritage worth preserving, not diluting or imposing elsewhere.
In a multipolar world where regional powers like China, Iran, and Turkey are asserting themselves, clinging to Cold War-era thinking is not just outdated, it’s dangerous. The time has come to abandon the failed idealism of neoconservative foreign policy and embrace a more grounded, restrained approach; one that prioritizes national sovereignty, respects cultural differences, and avoids the hubris of empire.
Populist Economics, aka Socialism
While I strongly support the sociocultural and foreign policy aspects of national populism, the economic populism that often accompanies it is an entirely different matter. On economics, national populism veers leftward, borrowing heavily from progressive rhetoric and policies that have long been antithetical to the conservative principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual responsibility. This form of populist economics is not conservatism; it is corporatist statism dressed in nationalist garb.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Vice President JD Vance have championed policies that would empower the federal government to pick winners and losers in the economy, punish corporations for political nonconformity, and subsidize specific industries in the name of “economic nationalism.” These proposals come with a heavy cost though: slower growth, reduced innovation, politicized markets, and ultimately, a weaker American economy. A Right that abandons market principles in favor of economic dirigisme is no longer Right; it simply becomes a mirror image of the progressive Left.
True conservatism recognizes that markets, while imperfect, are vastly superior to the government allocating resources, rewarding innovation, and generating prosperity. Economic populists claim that outsourcing, automation, and globalization have “hollowed out” the American middle class, which is true, but it’s not the complete story. The greatest drivers of economic stagnation in many parts of the country are not trade deals or immigration, but overregulation, broken schools, failed local governance, and labor market rigidities. Blaming free markets for the failures of bureaucrats and union-dominated institutions is both lazy and dangerous.
Moreover, the populist Right’s hostility toward Wall Street, venture capital, and the tech sector is economically suicidal. These are the engines of American innovation, productivity, and global competitiveness. Demonizing successful entrepreneurs and investors simply because they reside in blue states or hold progressive views is no better than the class warfare rhetoric of Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). If we cede the language of growth, prosperity, and entrepreneurship to the Left, we forfeit the economic foundation of American power. Populist House Republicans, especially Freedom Caucus members and fiscal hawks, understand this well: support cultural nationalism and border security, but do not abandon Reaganite economic principles in favor of left-wing grievance politics with a nationalist accent.
Working- and middle-class Americans have far more disposable income, living space, and accessibility to basic services than even their European counterparts because of conservative economics. Let’s keep it that way.
Civilizational Realism and the West’s Legacy
The failure of neoconservative foreign policy stems not only from strategic overreach but from a deeper misunderstanding of civilizational boundaries. In Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington famously argued that the post-Cold War world would not be defined by ideology or economics, but by culture and enduring civilizational identities. He was right. The idea that liberal democracy is a universal good to be exported by force is not only naïve, it’s profoundly ahistorical. Civilizations do not transform overnight, and many actively reject Western norms.
This is not an argument for relativism. On the contrary, Western civilization, rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Greco-Roman intellectual inheritance, and the political evolution of Anglo-American constitutionalism, has produced unparalleled achievements in liberty, law, science, and human dignity. To defend the West is not to denigrate others, but to acknowledge that not all civilizations are equally conducive to human flourishing. As Representative Brandon Gill (R-TX) recently noted, “while all people have moral equality, all cultures do not.” The survival of Western civilization, and by extension the American project, depends on our willingness to defend its moral and institutional superiority unapologetically.
Huntington’s insight offers a corrective to the delusions of neoconservatism and the self-loathing of the academic Left. Cultural humility is one thing; civilizational suicide is another. We cannot preserve our freedoms while importing illiberal values in the name of tolerance, nor can we advance peace by dismantling the cultural foundations that made the West strong. Civilizational realism, not globalist abstraction, must guide both our foreign and domestic policies.
Conclusion
The embrace of paleoconservative principles, especially in foreign policy and cultural cohesion, offers a much-needed correction to the failures of neoconservatism. A restrained, nationalist foreign policy and a return to the idea of a unified American identity rooted in cultural assimilation are essential for preserving the integrity of the nation in the face of global challenges and domestic fragmentation. In an era defined by deep civilizational divides between the West, the Islamic world, and Asian powers like China, as Clash of Civilizations predicted, America must recommit to the defense of its civilizational roots.
Western civilization, built on Greco-Roman philosophy, Christian ethics, and the political traditions of England, remains the most effective framework for securing individual liberty, rule of law, and human flourishing. If we allow this heritage to be diluted through multicultural relativism at home or neoconservative adventurism abroad, we risk forfeiting not only our national identity but also our place in history. The American Right must find the courage to defend the West unapologetically: to protect its culture, uphold its institutions, and preserve the civilizational legacy that made the United States possible.
Image credit: The Constitution and the Guerriere (1845), Thomas Chambers — Wikimedia Commons
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