From paleoconservatism to evolutionary conservatism

Evolutionary conservatism retains the basic insights of conservatism as explained by Clyde Wilson in writing about M.E Bradford (Chronicles, Dec 2019), but then evolutionary conservatism adds to and deepens paleoconservatism.

Basic paleoconservatism: One: “The American War of Independence was not a revolution made, but a revolution forestalled. Unlike the French Revolution, the Founders acted to preserve their existing self-governing societies, not to overturn society and launch a global revolution for equality.” Two: “Bradford showed that Lincoln abandoned the moderate aspects of the Founding, at least rhetorically. In an attempt to give the Union invasion of the seceded South a universal justification, this wartime president appealed to a transformed America that would engage in a “continuing revolution” for the delusive goal of equality. This, in a more radicalized form, is the regime that we continue to live under today. ” Three: “American writers have generally considered themselves to be alienated rebels against a defective society. The great Southern writers of the 20th century, from Faulkner on down, as Bradford showed, were the faithful, non-alienated bards of the South. They might criticize the folk back home but always, until very recently, identified with their kin and region.” Four: “In the march of life, the Agrarian vision has never lost its relevance when we speak about a genuine American “conservatism” that is rooted in a sense of place.”

Evolutionary conservatism agrees with the paleoconservative condemning of the bigness which was “sought by Americans eager to stretch the republic into an empire, as another false idol that turns us away from the local and humane...”and a culture “poured in from the top” in the modern American way is no culture at all.”

But paleoconservative 's are also very skeptical of human progress and “shun the worship of material progress, particularly when that progress is linked to government efforts to improve human nature.” Evolutionary conservatism sees progress as life infused with the upward climb of evolution toward ascending levels of real Godhood at the zenith of material evolution, which we can and should aid with the evolutionary sciences.

Evolutionary conservatism adds to and deepens basic paleoconservatism by affirming the biological origin of social behavior as defined mainly by the science of sociobiology. Human nature is biologically kin-centered and ethnic-centered, even xenophobic, as well as being genetically gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual, marriage-making, hierarchical, and religious-making, with group-selection and ethnic selection as the primary unit of successful selection. Like the liberals and neoconservatives the paleoconservative's block or conceal the ethnic-centered and xenophobic parts of human nature due it seems to universalist religious edicts. 

My view of the absolute importance of human evolution kept me away from the brilliant seduction of the Traditionalist School which is where the Alt-right turned from their old racialism. Many have now gone over to the school of Guenon, Evola, and the Russian Dugin, and embraced a non-populist, old spiritual religious, imperialist, hierarchy of rule, and have downplayed or even rejected the idea of science and evolutionary progress. Why didn't the Alt-right feature more Western geniuses, men like the brilliant British/American psychologist Raymond Cattell, or the great Neo-Darwinist field of sociobiology, rather than converting to the West-disparaging Russian imperialist Aleksandr Dugin and his Traditionalist School teachers, Guénon and Evola, who did not find science (a jewel of the West) nearly as important as Eastern spiritualism (a jewel of the East).

Evolutionary conservatism believes that if real kin and ethnic-centered human nature was allowed to be what it is, it would naturally lead to regionalism, localism, general conservative values, eventually ethnostates, and finally an ethnopluralism of ethnostates for all groups, black, white, brown, yellow, or red, with each ethnostate protected from marauding imperialists, global businesses, supremacists, Marxists, etc., and defended by a defensive federalism. An ethnopluralism of ethnostates could be established legally in the United States with our constitutional separation of powers and states... Then we can all get on with evolving toward Godhood.