Old Right (United States)

The Old Right was an informal designation used for a branch of the American conservatism, which never became an organized movement. Most members were Republicans, although there was a conservative Democratic element based largely in the South. They were called the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their New Right successors. Among the latter were Barry Goldwater, who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s and favored an interventionist foreign policy to battle international communism. The Old Right typically favored laissez-faire classical liberalism; some were business-oriented conservatives; others were ex-radicals who moved sharply to the right, such as the novelist John Dos Passos. Still others, such as the Democrat Southern Agrarians, were traditionalists who dreamed of restoring a pre-modern communal society. The Old Right's devotion to anti-imperialism was at odds with the interventionist goal of global democracy, the top-down transformation of local heritage, social and institutional engineering of the political Left and some from the modern Right-wing. The "Old Right" was unified by opposition to what they saw as the danger of domestic dictatorship by President Franklin Roosevelt. Most were unified by their defense of natural inequalities, tradition, limited government, and anti-imperialism, as well as their skepticism of democracy and the growing power of Washington.

The Old Right per se has faded as an organized movement, but many similar ideas are found among paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians.

...
Wikipedia