I won’t be wasting my time and the time of my readers slogging through the second installment of Mr. Feser’s attack on paleoconservatives at Right Reason. As far as the question of right intention is concerned, I addressed that in my first post responding to Mr. Feser. The third installment deserves an answer, but not much of one.

Right off, Mr. Feser loses a certain amount of credibility when he includes among paleoconservatives the four “categories” of “anarchist,” Third Positionist, isolationist and so-called “cultural pessimist.” The “anarchists,” by which he means the paleolibertarians chiefly associated with Lew Rockwell, are not paleocons. They are also not anarchists (and more than a few would, I suspect, take offense at this label), and to call them this shows a certain tendentiousness that we can see in the other installments as well.

Paleocons and these libertarians often see eye to eye on a great many things and often collaborate with each other, but if the critique here is aimed at paleocons it should be aimed at what paleocons say about the relation of Catholic social doctrine and economics and not what “Rothbardians” say about economics (which, it should be duly noted, most paleocons do not endorse and often will criticise precisely because it is not in keeping with their understanding of moral theology). This is important, if only because it underscores the consistency of those paleocons who do privilege Catholic social doctrine in their understanding of economic and social questions while also remaining, as far as I can see, more faithful to the just war standards of Catholic tradition. It is this consistency Mr. Feser proposes to disprove in his third installment, and he can only achieve this by pointing to those exact areas in economics where paleocons and paleolibertarians have their strongest disagreements and imputing the paleolibertarian view to the paleocons.

Third Positionists have nothing to do with us, and we have nothing to do with them. I’m quite confident in saying that. If their inclusion is not to smear the paleo position still further, I don’t know what purpose it does serve. Without this bunch and the “Rothbardians,” he has basically failed his final test, which was to show how paleoconservatives actually contradict Catholic doctrine in their other assumptions. While he made some half-hearted and not very convincing arguments why “isolationism” is not a permanent, core conservative commitment (as if bringing democracy to Iraq or interfering in the internal affairs of other nations is even remotely close to anything resembling conservative commitments), he did not show how such a view actually contradicts anything in the deposit of the Christian tradition. The lame affirmation of empire at the end of that section shows Mr. Feser thrashing around looking for anything he might use against this foreign policy view. I confess to not understanding the inclusion of the “cultural pessimist” category, either, except that it allows Mr. Feser to whine a bit about tactical support for European politicians who opposed the invasion of Iraq. This is not a serious argument. No one could possibly confuse paleocons for friends of the Euro-left, but paleocons are not so foolish as to imagine that Mr. Bush is that far removed from the Euro-left politicians Mr. Feser throws in our faces. Some European governments happened to oppose the invasion for what were fairly good and intelligent pragmatic reasons, and on occasion paleoconservatives cheered these isolated voices of reason, but to mistake this for some sympathy for them or their worldview is a gross error, and not one a careful reader of paleo writings could make. No Americans despise the European Union more than paleoconservatives, who see in it the sort of destructive, anti-national, anti-Christian cultural hegemony we oppose here, though we are not so foolish as to identify the EU with the peoples whom it enslaves and ruins, nor do we possess the small-minded chauvinism that inspires hatred of all things European.

For the record, the right and center-right of most European countries opposed the war in Iraq as much, if not more in some cases, than did the left. It was partly an accident of history that three major allies in Iraq were led by center-right governments, just as it was something of an accident that the governments of those same countries (Spain, Italy and Denmark) were of the center-left while NATO was bombing Yugoslavia. Isn’t it convenient that the centers of support and opposition for that war were consequently the reverse of what they are today on Iraq? Mr. Bush also supported the unprovoked attack on Yugoslavia when he was a candidate, which demonstrates a precedent of disregard for international law and the Constitution that reasonable critics can assume informed his decision to attack Iraq. Indeed, more than once defenders of an invasion cited the bombing of Yugoslavia as proof that U.N. approval was irrelevant and the Constitution was likewise unimportant–these, and not the Catholic just war teachings Mr. Feser dusted off and trotted out for this particular purpose, were the sorts of arguments actual proponents of the war were using. If just war theory was invoked in the debate at all it was by the opponents of the war, who refused to allow the question of justice to be ignored. Once it had been raised and consistently stressed by opponents of the war, the War Party had its house theologians invent rationalisations for engaging in a war of aggression, and it may be worth noting that Mr. Weigel, foremost of these apologists, did not retreat to referring to these marginal justifications (almost all of which, I will remind readers, have no application whatever to Iraq).