I just received this announcement from Nancy Martira over at Ketchum, following-up on my blog post with the big announcement that Frank Luntz is leaving Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research:

As you reported on your blog, the close of the 2008 Election Season also brings to a close Frank Luntz’s time as CEO at Luntz Maslansky, a non-partisan, market research and communications consulting firm.  As reported in Ad Age on Friday afternoon, Lutz Maslansky Strategic Research (LMSR) is pleased to announce that President Michael Maslansky will be taking over the role of CEO effective January 1, 2009.  The Luntz, Maslansky Method of Language Strategy, used recently by news organizations such as CNN and FOX News to track voter reaction to the presidential debates, is used to understand how target audiences “hear” messages and how to craft the precise language that resonates most powerfully with those audiences. 

Founder and outgoing CEO Frank Luntz will relinquish day-to-day responsibilities and assume the role of chairman emeritus.  Prior to his five years of service as the President of LMSR, Michael Maslansky was president of MarketResearch.com, a leading market intelligence company where he remains on the Board.  “Michael is the ideal person to take the firm to the next level,” said Luntz.  “At no time in recent history has the importance of clear, credible and persuasive communications been greater than it is today, with corporate American facing unprecedented financial challenges and a new era in Washington.”

I just received this email from Frank Luntz:

To: Friends & Family
From: Frank Luntz
Re: A New Beginning
Date: November 5, 2008

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The end of the most interesting election in modern times will also be the end of my career with Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research. Having sold my company to the good people of Omnicom, it’s time to move on.

When I hired my first employee and opened up an office in the basement of my townhouse in 1992, I never dreamed that I would someday have the honor of working for presidents, prime ministers, and CEOs of the world’s most successful companies and most influential foundations. Our roster of corporate and public affairs clients is unprecedented for a firm of our size, and I’m so deeply proud of them and the positive impact they have had on their customers, their communities, and the world at large.

I am also grateful for the privilege of analyzing the great events and social trends of our time in so many diverse public settings. While I may have a face for radio and a voice for newspapers, the willingness of so many network presidents and executive producers to give me the opportunity to apply the skills of public opinion to explain the who, what and why of the world are some of the most fulfilling and enjoyable moments of my career. I can never adequately thank them for making life so interesting and invigorating.

But a time comes in everyone’s career where it becomes important to tackle new challenges and scale new mountains. Now is as good a time as any to get out of DC and start examining more closely what is really happening in American life and culture. I also want to take my research of words to an entirely different level, applying it where it has never been applied before. There’s a lot I still want to learn and do – and staring at the Pacific Ocean from Santa Monica, California is as good a place as any to do it from.

So while I will be leaving my home and my company, I am certainly not retiring or disappearing. I’m much too young and much too excited about what’s ahead. But I don’t plan to work as hard – at least that’s the plan. Those of you who know me well know that I work 18 hour days, seven days a week. This year alone I will have flown more than 300 days and logged 300,000 miles … and frankly … I’m tired. I need this change of scenery and change of pace to recharge my batteries and extend my shelf life.

Not everything will change, however. I have been offered and accepted the privilege of serving as “Chairman Emeritus,” of LMSR, a title normally reserved for people who live past their sell-by date. And while I may be gone, the company name will remain the same, as will the team I have painstakingly assembled over the past decade. These are uniquely capable people with solid research experience and the most creative brains I have ever worked with. I recommend them highly for all your research needs.

And if you are looking for advice and guidance, I’m definitely still around and still in business.

To end on a personal note, I did not learn until the death of my father how much he enjoyed my frantic calls asking him for help or guidance – and that he missed them when I grew old enough to handle these tasks on my own. You don’t realize how much I appreciated the chance to serve you – even when the calls were late and the tasks were tough. While I have made my share of mistakes, I do not regret a single minute. You have given me a very fulfilling life, and I thank you for making it worth living.

Frank

Here’s a version of this email online.

This Fall there will be an important Energy Bill up for vote by Congress, a Bill that will take relatively aggressive steps towards reducing our reliance on foreign oil and foreign governments while increasing our dependence on renewable energy, such as wind power and solar power. Please sign the petition to help give your member of Congress a little incentive to pass the more aggressive version of the Energy Bill legislation, undiluted by the auto or the oil industry and their lobbyists. The following post was written by Lorna Li over at her blog. Via Chris Abraham Online and Memes.org.

Why CAFE and RES Matter for 2007 New Energy Bill

Currently, Congress is debating, behind closed doors, the adoption of 2 provisions to the 2007 Energy Bill that can greatly impact our ability to make America more energy independent, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce pollution, save consumers money, create jobs and spark economic growth.

The first is the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) Standard of 35 mpg for cars and trucks by 2020. The second is the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES), which calls for 15% of the nation’s electricity to be generated by renewable resources by 2020.

Why support the Renewable Electricity Standard?According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, renewable energy solutions are both sustainable environmentally and economically. The RES provision has the potential to jump-start new clean energy economy and create tens of thousands of new, good-paying jobs in things like wind and solar manufacturing and installation. For this reason, it has the strong support of the United Steelworkers.

RES will create thousands of megawatts of new clean renewable electricity generation, decreasing the amount of natural gas we use—lowering prices for consumers on their home heating bills and also benefiting industrial users.

Furthermore, RES is doable – two dozen states that have already put their own Renewable Electricity Standard into place. In fact, many states have moved to establish standards of 30 percent or more—demonstrating that the 15 percent plan proposed in this bill is an achievable compromise that all states can meet.

Why is supporting the 35 mpg CAFE standard important?

Supporting the 35 mpg CAFE standard will help us curb our addition to a fossil-fuel based source that is increasingly expensive, causes pollution, and is also from highly volatile areas such as the Persian Gulf. This dependence is both unstable and unsustainable.

Furthermore, improving CAFE standards to 35 mpg by 2020 – 13 years from now – will give us better gas mileage, thus, more bang for the buck. This way we can keep more money in our wallets, drive cleaner cars, and thus become less dependent on war and pollution causing oil.

According to the UCS study on Clean Vehicles and Fuel Economy, far from destroying auto jobs, CAFE would create 22,300 jobs in the auto industry alone by 2020—and a total of 170,800 jobs by 2020. The CAFE provision would also save consumers nearly $25 billion at the pump in 2020, according to UCS.

Auto-Industry Lies – Et Tu Toyota?

The Big Three automakers and Toyota are lobbying to kill the Senate version and replace it with a loophole-laden compromise called the Hill-Terry bill that calls for 32 to 35 m.p.g. by 2022. Rather than innovate their fleets to become more fuel efficient, they would rather spend $ millions in advertising to convince the public that attaining the 35 mpg standard is bad for consumers and the environment, and that CAFE kills.

While the auto industry has argued for years that fuel-efficiency would compromise public safety due to the need to build smaller, lighter vehicles, according to an October 2007 article in Scientific American, new engine and transmission technologies could enable manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency without significantly cutting vehicle weights.

In spite of the fact that Toyota currently has the technology to make cars that achieve 55 mpg, Toyota’s refusal to step up to the plate and support the 35 mpg CAFE standard has evoked the wrath of environmentalist groups like the NRDC who now question “How Green is Toyota?” That the maker of the Prius could support the Hill-Terry compromise, which according to UCS, would actually cause us to use 700,000 more barrels each day, feels like sheer betrayal.

Is the auto industry genuinely concerned about the economic well-being of American consumers and our ability to get around as cheaply as possible? Hmmm.

In 1922, General Motors dismantled mass transit across the U.S., bought up trolley systems through its subsidiary National City lines, gutted them and tore up all the tracks. GM joined tire manufacturers, construction companies, and oil companies to lobby for Congress for development of a national highway system, which has defined urban development over the last 90 years. It helped that GM’s president Charles Wilson became secretary of defense and Frances DuPont became the federal highway administrator. Thus America became a oil-addicted, nation of drivers.

With Bush and his Big Oil cohorts in power threatening veto, ordinary Americans may be up for another round of seriously getting screwed. Therefore, it’s up to us to take action and DEMAND a clean, energy future NOW.

Take Action and Support a Strong, Clean Energy Bill for 2007

Instead of making the richest companies in the world richer, this energy bill will benefit consumers and working Americans, make us less dependent on foreign oil and better global citizens. Here are simple actions you can take to lobby Congress for a cleaner, greener future:

1. THIS IS IMPORTANT! Sign this petition and pass it on: Energy Bill 2007
2. Meet other clean energy activists online: Energy Bill 2007 Group on Facebook
3. Tell Toyota, “Shame On You” and get your friends to tell Toyota to support 35 mpg now.

By lobbying Congress to adopt strong energy efficiency measures in the 2007 Energy Bill, we can lower emissions and use less energy in the years to come —saving governments, businesses, schools, and consumers money. Energy efficiency is an energy resource just like anything else and is much cheaper than even coal-fired power generation. We must look to energy efficiency as another solution for our energy needs, while at the same time ramping up the amount of electricity we get from renewables. This is our only way we can guarantee a clean, green future for ourselves and future generations.

Technorati Tags: new energy bill, energy bill 2007, cafe, cafe standard, corporate average fuel economy, renewable electricity standard, res, hill-terry, clean tech, fuel efficiency, fuel economy, global warming

I love my big car but I also love American independence more and think that we rely way too much foreign oil and don’t spend nearly enough on energy innovation. Since coal and oil is still plentiful and cheap enough, there isn’t any reason, really, to dump R&D funds into alternative and renewable fuels, energy, and electricity. We need to in-source and work on ways to stop depending so heavily on foreign oil and the whims of kings and their kingdoms.

Congress is working on passing an energy bill that contains two major provisions, one that would up a fuel economy standard to 35 mpg — Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards — and another that would evolve our energy dependence more heavily on renewable electricity to 15% — Renewable Electricity Standards (RES). Together, these would end our Nation’s security-threatening dependence on Middle East oil, stop our money from flowing to terrorists, and keep our dollars at home growing the American economy.

Unfortunately, lobbyists and PACs are working hard to tear the bill apart, rendering it impotent and incremental instead of powerful and transformative.

I am working with a coalition to make sure the energy bill doesn’t get derailed. I need your help in making sure that the final bill makes it through before we get ourselves into even more of a mess. Check out Energy Bill 2007 and sign their petition.

Congress is working on passing an energy bill that contains two major provisions, one that would up a fuel economy standard to 35 mpg and another that would evolve our energy dependence more heavily on renewable electricity to 15%. Together, these would end our Nation’s security-threatening dependence on Middle East oil, stop our money from flowing to terrorists, and keep our dollars at home growing the American economy.

Unfortunately, lobbyists and PACs are working hard to tear the bill apart, rendering it impotent and incremental instead of powerful and transformative.

Michael Bernstein popped me an IM after reading my article, The Culture of “Acting White” Anti-Intellectualism Will Kill America, with a link to Cosby, Race and Escaping The Downside, which reveals America’s dirty secret, “in America, being poor, ignorant, desperate and unable to escape your situation has absolutely nothing to do with the color of your skin. It is universal.”

“Party strategists and nonpartisan pollsters credit the operative, Mara Vanderslice, and her 2-year-old consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, with helping a handful of Democratic candidates make deep inroads among white evangelical and churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

Via the New York Times

“The Strategist : Mara Vanderslice of the consulting firm Common Good Strategies, who works the campaign trail, helping candidates build relationships with diverse religious communities.”

Via The Washington Post

“‘There’s been a huge sea change,’ says Mara Vanderslice, former religious outreach adviser to defeated presidential candidate John Kerry. ‘When we started this work on the Kerry campaign there was a lot of disagreement over how much to emphasise reaching out to religious Americans… there’s almost universal understanding now that we need to do a better job of reaching out.’”

Via the BBC

“Casey is “pro-life,??? and Strickland a minister, but similar shifts occurred in other races featuring more-traditional Democratic candidates. Michigan’s Jennifer Gran­holm, for instance, a “pro-choice??? and relatively liberal governor, won 35 percent of the white evangelical vote, a percentage significantly higher than the House Democratic average. All in all, about a half-dozen races impressed Green as scrambling many of our culture-war assumptions. In each of these races, you can argue about the strength of the opponent and other local dynamics, but all of them turn out to have one thing in common: the winning candidate worked extensively with a small political consulting outfit called Common Good Strategies.

Mara Vanderslice, a thirty-one-year-old born-again Christian, founded Common Good in 2005 and later brought on Eric Sapp, thirty, as a partner. Both belong to the small but growing club of evangelicals who are also Democrats. Vanderslice had worked on a couple of Democratic presidential campaigns, and she had found that the reactions of many campaign staffers around her ranged from “ambivalent to hostile??? when she suggested reaching out to religious voters or constituents. But she and Sapp suspected that while the machinery resisted, the candidates themselves might be amenable. This year, Common Good worked closely with seven candidates, testing a new strategy for Democrats trying to court religious voters. All of these candidates won in November.

In each race, Vanderslice and Sapp began by helping candidates build the infrastructure necessary to reach religious voters, often from scratch. “In many cases our party had completely written them off,??? says Sapp. In none of the states in which they worked did the Democratic Party have a complete list of pastors, for example, so Common Good staffers created those lists. In Michigan, they met with about 500 conservative and moderate members of the clergy; in many of the meetings, particularly with evangelical ministers, they would hear something like “Where have you all been???? According to Sapp, “At a fundamental level they just want candidates to give God his due, more than they care about specific issues.???

Common Good helped recruit pastors to write op-eds in response to criticisms and arranged for campaigns to buy mailing lists of religious-minded voters. Vanderslice and Sapp encouraged candidates to buy ads on Christian radio, a medium considered more intimate than television. Strickland did a large radio buy in July—early enough to look like more than an afterthought. For ten years he’d had a quote from Micah on his office wall: “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.??? With uplift-y music in the background, he talked in his ad about how that quote had guided his career and would guide him as governor.

Vanderslice and Sapp helped the candidates create a new language to use in talking about faith and values, aimed in part at neutralizing hot-button issues. On abortion, for instance, they banned the word choice and pushed reduction, going one step further with Clinton’s idea that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare???: “We must work together across our differences to reduce the need and numbers of abortions by reducing unplanned pregnancies and helping women and families get the support they need when facing a crisis pregnancy,??? read a brochure for Sherrod Brown, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio. The idea was that a lot of voters who oppose abortion don’t actually want it to be criminalized; they just want the issue to be recognized as important.

The two consultants also advised candidates to attack Republican positions on moral grounds, from the left. Where anti-gay-marriage amendments came up, for example, they expanded the issue and talked about how many marriages were disintegrating because of financial stress, which they name as the No. 1 cause of divorce in America.”

Via Atlantic Monthly by way of Faith in Public Life

“Should Kerry run for president a second time, such values-based defenses of Democratic policies would no doubt play a greater role than in 2004 when the candidate paid little attention to Casey or evangelical adviser Mara Vanderslice—despite the pair’s involvement with the campaign.

Vanderslice has since proved her counsel is worth heeding. From her new role as director of Common Good Strategies, an independent consulting firm she founded in 2005, the born-again strategist significantly boosted the Democrats’ midterm landslide. Exit polls showed that the candidates she advised pulled in an average of 10 percent more evangelical voters than other Democrats.

Fellow Common Good Strategies consultant Eric Sapp told WORLD such results could signal the beginning of a grand reshaping of the political landscape: “My hope would be that Christians become a perennial swing vote.”"

Via World Magazine by way of Faith in Public Life

I responded in-depth to a question from Charles Edward Frith that was asked over at Strumpette, in response to my long comment,

“a huge portion of the population that are social media averse; gadget allergic even. How do you propose to get your message to this group?” I misunderstood his question and replied as though he asked, “a huge portion of the PR, advertising, and marketing population…” as opposed to the “general” population, and so my response is based on that misunderstanding and premise… “You really can’t — the main reason that I only lasted at Edelman for 90-days is because they never used me for my expertise in Linux, RSS, SEO, geek culture, geek cred… they really just wanted someone else who “got blogs” Blogs are also the Web 2.0 platform, too. The gulf between Communication School and the MIT Media Lab is too deep.”

Here is the comment from Charles Edward Frith in full:

“I’m not sure if you’re responding to me Chris. It is OK to address people directly in orums; we call it the conversation. If you are, I am saying that there is a huge portion of the population that are social media averse; gadget allergic even. How do you propose to get your message to this group?

And here is my long, ranting, and misdirected response:

“You really can’t — the main reason that I only lasted at Edelman for 90-days is because they never used me for my expertise in Linux, RSS, SEO, geek culture, geek cred… they really just wanted someone else who “got blogs” Blogs are also the Web 2.0 platform, too. The gulf between Communication School and the MIT Media Lab is too deep.

They didn’t even see what I was, which was a geek first, a marketer second. I don’t know if I can share this here, but here are some of my ideas on the subject… http://www.cabraham.com/ideas — to me, it is really about both the community and also the platform.

One needs to blog — message — at both the people in the blogosphere but also to the semantic web. When I realised that www.edelman.com was anti-SEO-optimized (it didn’t care at all about search engine optimization at all!), and really didn’t care (and they were afraid of upsetting IT and the people who ran the site) I was pretty sure I had made a terrible decision.

New Marketing needs to understand ping servers, online communities, cirtual worlds, RSS, RSS2, ATOM, GData, tags, labels, Google juice, the semantic web, gadgetization, what “slashdotted” is, why del.icio.us and digg and reddit and Newsvine and Stumbleupon are important. They need to grok Revver and Vox and Facebook and they need to know what “WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal, Xoops, Joomla, phpBB, etc” are.

This isn’t just “how to IM Kos” — this is about Internet Forensics and fisking and unintended consequences and blowback and counter-messaging.

There is a lot more going on than just “activating email lists” and “creating a blog.”

And we have not even talked about Prediction Markets, we have not talked about message boards, we have not talked about YouTube (it is a community, not a video site, at its heart), or Flickr (same thing, it is a community and it is not Photobucket).

New Media Marketing and New PR needs to know what Web 2.0 is, not as a buzz word or as hocus pocus. It is a platform, it is an emergence, it is a honey pot. It is “build it and they will come,” but only if it is cool and and compelling, and always in beta, and never loses focus of the users’ needs.

Actually, Yahoo and AOL are getting their game on again. Google gets it in its source code. Why are PR and marketing firms so risk averse? Why, to quote you, Mr, Charles Edward Frith, why is there a “huge portion of the population that are social media averse; gadget allergic even?”

And when I say that, I am talking about Edelman, I am talking about NMS, I am talking about Ogilvy. It is our responsibility as media professionals to be so expert in the technology, the protocol, the culture, and the passion (called passion chamber, as another term for the blogosphere’s echo chamber — and I own www.passionachamber.com, actually) so that this population doesn’t have to.

A population that universally adopts iPods, Plasma HDTVs, and DirecTV with TiVO is not gadget allergic.

What Old PR and Old Media might be really great at is taking an ubergeek like me and working with me to translate all of this cool stuff to the 7th grade reading ease so that new media and web 2.0 can better connect. This will be more and more important.

Unfortunately, when it comes to influencing the influencer, that person is not the “population” — that is a person who thinks that “salesmen” and “PR executives” and “advertising folks” are a bunch of wankers who don’t get it, wouldn’t know cool if it hit ‘em in the face, who are too focused on what people think about them to ever allow people to get to know them, to be authentic, and to be open.

The bad PR that PR has felt for years: snake oil salesmen, hustlers, pretty boys, spin-doctors, and inauthentic, opportunistic liars is exacerbated in the rarefied web where all of these things are not tolerated at all — and to be honest, nobody has to.

Lots of PR people I know tell me that they have to be risk-averse and they have to pull punches because the PR world is incestuous and to be honest, burning bridges is a death blow to one’s career. I am told the same thing by folks in the Valley who are afraid of insulting the silicon Gods.

Coming from a place of fear is just plain unacceptable. At the end of the day, I am a Linux SA who loves to hack PHP and MySQL and so really, I am neither a Valley wag nor am I am PR lifer. Most of my consulting deals with my niche of genius and I don’t see myself as ever getting too tarred or feathered — never to the point where people will cease hiring my counsel… even if it is on the down low after my name is mud.

So, I am not really tolerant when it comes to this PR sycophantism. The Internet and the bloggers and the people who matter now don’t play that. I know reporters and they do surely covet and protect and are jealous of their career arcs. And this fear for career and for immortality is easy to coerce and control.

Web 2.0 is not about control. The X factor in new marketing is that people really have no career arc, people online really cannot be kept in the kind of sycophantic blackmail that is common on Capitol Hill, on Madison Avenue, on K Street, and also in Silicon Valley.

When Edelman has to block Strumpette from 2,000 laptops and desktops held in their worldwide network, then maybe Edelman and the like aren’t as new media and new public relations as they would like to preach.

You can’t have it both ways. The only two things that the Internet doesn’t suffer: fear and hypocrisy. And from what I have been seeing, there seems to be a lot of both of them, both in Old PR and Marketing as well as in “new marketing” and “new media PR.”

Anyway, I am ranting. I have a call soon so I am going to stop now and click on “Submit Comment.” Thanks in advance for indulging me. I am going to rewrite this a little and post it on my blog… cheers for making me thing and making write! I have been way too busy to take the time to really download.”

According to Louise Story, “consumer brand companies have long wished they could find a way to eavesdrop (legally) on customer conversations. Marketers can easily read Internet blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites, but what people say over coffee or across their cubicle remains largely unknown.” Conversation over coffee or across the cubicle isn’t special and here’s why…

After doing word-of-mouth marketing and brand intelligence — and having spent over ten years invested in online communities — I can say that online conversation is as intimate, honest, and revealing as it may be “over coffee or across the cubicle.”

In fact, I would posit that online conversation, in general, is more authentic because either anonymity is possible or people have a false sense of security when they are in bunny slippers and jammies all comfy at their computer.

Online, people feel safe and are relaxed and spending some time with people they are really intimate with — coworkers and and coffee dates are never that close, really.

Leveraging the Intelligence, market research, and collected polling data culled from “Internet blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites” is almost like researching chimps and apes from the point of view of Jane Goodall — close, without barriers and walls, accepted in the tribe — instead of in a nature reserve, a zoo, or on the dissection table.

Want me to paint my analogy against the wall, well, check this out:

My Online Brand Intelligence Analogy

Let’s consider the chimpanzee. There are several ways to learn more about the chimpanzee: through dissection, in captivity, and in the wild.

Although dissecting the chimpanzee to see how the physiology works is essential as a form of training and education, dissection doesn’t help with knowing the behavior of the chimpanzee.

You might be able to make assumptions about how intelligent it is or what it eats, but in terms of behavioral studies, its irrelevant. This is similar to posthumous studies of market data — there is no life there, only corpse.

Polling and focus groups are like observing the behavior of the chimpanzee in capacity — you have a living, breathing, chimpanzee, but you have one that is under stress, duress, and has been partially acclimatized to appeasing its handlers — it wants to keep safe, it wants to be fed, and it wants to get out — so observing chimpanzee behavior in captivity is like observing consumer or market behavior in focus groups — you have real-live response, but you have the response of something that is beholden to you, that is wondering what’s in it for me — you have corrupted behavioral data.

If you want to really know the true behavior of the chimpanzee, you need to observe it in the wild. And to get the best concept of the behavior of the chimpanzee, you need to become — or at least be accepted as — a chimpanzee.

Jane Goodall was a pioneer in the behavioral study of primates because she was accepted over time into the community of chimps. Online brand intelligence can study and report on brand and consumer behavior in the wild, in the wilderness.

Where behavior is true, honest, and living.

One of the reasons I truly enjoy attending Renaissance Weekend is hanging out with pollster Mike O’Neil of O’Neil Associates. Brilliant and funny and cool. Recently, I asked Mike how he was doing and he replied, “Embarked on a partime/fun career/recreation as TV Commentator. Have done election Analysis since 1980; commentary is new.” Mike is really good. Brilliant, in fact. Check out his analysis and commentary for Arizona’s ABC 15 News.

“Paleoconservatism (sometimes shortened to paleo or paleocon when the context is clear) refers to a branch of American conservative thought that is often called Old Right. Paleoconservatives in the 21st century often focus on their points of disagreement with neoconservatives.” Via Wikipedia

Many paleoconservatives also identify themselves as “classical conservatives” and trace their philosophy to the Old Right Republicans of the interwar period who successfully kept America out of the League of Nations, successfully reduced immigration with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924; opposed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Immigration Act of 1965 and Civil Rights laws of the 1960′s.

Paleoconservatives are most easily distinguishable from other conservatives in their emphatic opposition to open immigration, their strong opposition to affirmative action, and their general disapproval of U.S. intervention overseas.

Most paleos are concerned with the “culture-eroding” effects of popular culture. Economic issues are not high on their agenda, and they are divided. Many reject the ideology of free trade and laissez-faire economics, arguing that it leads to the deterioration of America’s industrial base. Other paleos, however, support laissez-faire economic policies articulated by classical liberals such as Frédéric Bastiat in the nineteenth century.

In America, the Southern Agrarians, Charles Lindbergh, Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett, Robert R. McCormick, Felix Morley, and Russell Kirk, among others, articulated positions that have proved influential among contemporary paleoconservatives. Some paleos enthusiastically embrace the extreme decentralizing tenets of the Anti-Federalists, such as John Dickinson and George Mason. The southern conservative thread of paleoconservatism embodying the statesmanship of nineteenth-century figures such as John Randolph of Roanoke, John Taylor of Caroline and John C. Calhoun has proven influential as well, and has found a modern expositor in the late Mel Bradford. These American conservatives often embraced the Irish-born Edmund Burke. The German-born Johannes Althusius and his tract Politica with its core emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity has proven influential, as well.

Historians such as Paul V. Murphy and Isaiah Berlin have traced the paleoconservatives’ intellectual ancestry to anti-modern writers who defended the hierarchy, localism, ultramontanism, monarchy and aristocracy. European precursors to paleoconservatives include Joseph de Maistre, Donoso Cortes, Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and Pope Pius IX, though they tend to carry influence limited to the Roman Catholic traditionalist subsect of paleoconservatism.

Some modern European continental conservatives, such as Frenchmen Jacques Barzun, Alain de Benoist, and René Girard, have a mode of thought and cultural criticism esteemed by many paleoconservatives. The idea of the Nouvelle Droite have had an influence on some paleoconservatives.

Paleoconservatives consist of a disparate pool from all walks of life, including Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholic traditionalists, libertarian individualists, Midwestern agrarians, Reagan Democrats, and southern conservatives. The most prominent paleoconservative is Pat Buchanan. The two leading paleoconservative publications are Chronicles and The American Conservative, which Buchanan helped to create. Other contemporary luminaries include Donald Livingston, a Professor of Philosophy at Emory; Paul Craig Roberts, an attorney and former Reagan administration Treasury official; commentator Joseph Sobran; journalist Chilton Williamson; classicist Thomas Fleming (author), and historian Clyde N. Wilson. There are many followers of the late Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell who embrace paleolibertarianism, and being culturally conservative, espouse many of the same themes of paleoconservatives, but they are wholly committed to economic laissez-faire. While Congressmen Rep. Ron Paul (R -TX) and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R -CO) are not avowed paleoconservatives, their political positions are consistent with a great number of paleos.

Many American paleoconservatives see themselves as iconoclasts, breaking what they regard as liberal taboos. Particular targets of their ire include “Political correctness”, Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights Movement, the Frankfurt School, and Franklin Roosevelt. Some paleo figures, especially the late Samuel Francis, have been accused of having ties to allegedly racist groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, American Renaissance and the journal The Occidental Quarterly. Many of these views are also championed by the John Birch Society, which is considered a paleo group.

Paleoconservatism has recently become the principal operating philosophy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). In its publications and conferences it often champions pre-WWII Old Right ideas, such as isolationism, limited government and cultural regionalism. While they favor free-market solutions they tend to recognize the limitations of the market, or as economist Wilhelm Roepke says, “…the market is not everything.” ISI promotes various agrarian and distributist works, and the idea of a humane economy.

The deaths in 1951 of publisher William Randolph Hearst and in 1955 of Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick cost the movement its most important newspapers.

Since the end of the Cold War, the rift within the conservative movement has deepened with the ascent of the neoconservatives and the fading from power of the paleos. There are no prominent paleos in the Bush administration. Harsh words have been exchanged between David Frum of National Review and Patrick Buchanan of The American Conservative. Frum charged that paleocons, in their sometimes harsh criticism of President George W. Bush and the war on terror, have become unpatriotic and, at times, anti-Semitic. Buchanan and others have retorted that neocons influence the U.S. government toward the pursuit of global empire and for the exclusive benefit of Israel and multi-national corporations with whom they have close ties.

The phraseology “paleoconservative” (“old conservative”) was a rejoinder issued in the 1980s to differentiate traditional conservatives from “neoconservatism”. The rift is often traced back to a dispute over the director of the National Endowment for the Humanities by the incoming Reagan Administration. Reagan nominated paleo leader Mel Bradford. He was dropped after neocons argued that his hatred of Abraham Lincoln ill suited a Republican nominee. The origins of the schism between paleo and neocon can be traced back decades. In the 1960s the new neoconservative movement articulated a vision much different from the Old Right. Neoconservatives were not opposed to the New Deal, but they thought LBJ’s Great Society went too far. Neoconservatives embrace an interventionist foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. They espoused especially strong support for Israel and believe the United States should ensure the security of the Jewish state. What made this movement so potent was the number of influential neoconservative intellectuals who attained positions of power in the federal government and in the mass-media, in sharp contrast to the marginal status of the paleos.

The paleoconservatives argued that neoconservatives were illegitimate interlopers in the conservative movement. The paleos feel they are purists who have been crowded into a corner by a corrupt element tied to special interest groups and to globalization.

Paleoconservatives esteem the principles of subsidiarity and localism in recognizing that one must surely be an Ohioan, Texan or Virginian as they are an American.

They usually embrace federalism within a broader framework of nationalism and are typically staunch supporters of states’ rights. They tend to be critical of overreaching federal power usurping state and local authority. For example, they did not support the Religious Right’s efforts to federalize the Terri Schiavo case in 2005. On the other hand, they joined with other conservatives in denouncing Kelo v. City of New London, even though the Supreme Court came down on the side of local decision-making.

Many paleoconservatives are sympathetic to the critiques of economist Wilhelm Roepke and sociologist Robert Nisbet. Roepke was critical of political and economic centralisation, and “the cult of the colossal.” Roepke recognized the interplay between the political and economic order, and held that a decentralized political federal polity was conducive to the ideal economic order most compatible with the human condition. Nisbet posited that the preoccupation with community was a result of the displacement of the intermediary institutions between the individual and the state whether the family, neighborhood, guild, church, or voluntary and civic associations. The corps intermédiaries—that is the intermediary institutions between the individual and the state—served as the only effective restraint against the centripetal forces of centralized political and economic power. The displacement of these institutions so vital to civil society and the accompanying obsession with community was precipitated by the activities and structure of the modern state. Nisbet held that the centralised state has dissolved the natural bonds and allegiances of civil society. And with totalitarian movements in Europe, there was actually a conscious effort by the state to dissolve those allegiances. Much of the later twentieth century social pathologies, dependency, poverty, and rampant crime perhaps owe to authentic community being grinded in the millstone of central state authority. As a result, paleoconservatives hope to restore authentic community by devolving power and authority back to the corp intermediaries while curtailing state power.

The ideas of Culture War and Political Correctness have played a large role in paleoconservatism. Culture War has been a major subject of the writings Robert H. Bork and Patrick J. Buchanan among others. In Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, Bork argues that the social movements of the 1960s, such as the sexual revolution, led to dangerous and moral decline and eliminated the morality necessary for civil society, and are inherently opposed to the ideals Western civilization. Buchanan delivered a controversial keynote address at the 1992 Republican National Convention which has since been dubbed the culture war speech, in which he declared a “Cultural War for the Soul of America??? was being fought in the U.S..[2]

Paleoconservatives often attack “political correctness,??? which they see as a form of censorship and social control. Many conservatives such as William S. Lind claim “political correctness??? is a form of “cultural Marxism??? and a product of the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory

Paleoconservatives have often urged people to push against what they call “the limits of permissible dissent,” on such topics as immigration and race relations. In some cases this has led to strife among the Paleoconservatives themselves.[4] For example some paleoconservatives have attacked the Civil Rights Movement and called for the repeal of all anti-discrimination laws.[5] Such statements have led many to accuses some paleoconservatives of promoting racism or White nationalism. The Charles Martel Society calls for a “third school” to emerge from paleoconservatism in the from of an ideology of European identity politics. Some paleoconservative, such as Samuel Francis and Virginia Abernethy and groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, American Renaissance and the journal The Occidental Quarterly, embrace this idea and others, such as Thomas Fleming, reject this idea.

No issue divides paleos more than trade policy. Many paleoconservatives hold protectionist conceptions of trade policy. Pat Buchanan, author of The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy, and William R. Hawkins, of U.S. Business and Industry Council Education Foundation, are the chief expositors of economic nationalism in our time. They warn of the peril posed by free trade and globalization. They see an erosion of America’s industrial base unfolding and they lament the exorbitant trade deficits between the United States and its trading partners, particularly China.

However, the southern conservatives and paleolibertarians are generally in favor of economic laissez-faire and free trade. They may even concede America has some economic ills, but they do not scapegoat foreign competition, as they recognize the value of free trade, economies of scale, comparative advantage, and specialization of labor. Many among them place culpability for America’s economic ills on bad fiscal, tax and monetary policy, as well as over-regulation by the government, and accept the Austrian Theory of Trade Cycle. Nonetheless, its adherents concurrently reject the edifices of globalization such as the WTO, GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, and FTAA.

Thus, both paleo free traders and protectionists tend to recognize the sovereignty-eroding effects of globalization, and they are generally opposed to so called free trade treaties, and the machinery of international finance.

In relations with other nations, paleoconservatives are more willing to question the logic of globalization, they are more critical of immigration policy and the lack of enforcement against undocumented immigrants and they characteristically embrace an isolationist foreign policy.

A central pillar of paleoconservatism is a foreign policy based upon non-interventionism or isolationism. American isolationists have opposed political and military commitments, or alliances with, foreign powers (or for that matter international bodies,) particularly those in Europe. They find support in the wisdom of the founding fathers and a subsequent generation of antebellum statesmen. George Washington had declared, “It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” John Quincy Adams avowed, “America does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

In the 1930s, paleo predecessors joined with the isolationist left, including Charles Beard, to oppose American entry into any European war. Similarly, they saw no interest worth protecting in Asia. In the eyes of isolationists of the 1930s, for the United States to commit itself to the Dutch East Indies and Singapore, it served as a back door to war, and it antagonized the Japanese. Paleoconservatives often esteem the America First principles of 1940 as being commensurate with those of the founding fathers as embodied in the Neutrality Act of 1794. During the Cold War a few paleoconservatives supported overseas commitments as necessary to the defense of the United States against communist aggression. Though Senator Taft and most paleos opposed NATO almost from the impetus, and this was a central issue in the contest between Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower for the 1952 Republican nomination. But Taft lost; his death early in 1953 deprived the Old Right of its most articulate leader.

In his 1995 book Isolationism Reconfigured, Eric Nordlinger, a Brown University scholar, observed, “[t]here is virtually no disagreement about isolationism having served the country exceptionally well throughout the nineteenth century” and he further surmises “the strategic vision of historical and contemporary isolationism is one of quiet strength and national autonomy.” In the eyes of paleos, foreign interventionism is demonstrably counter-productive, and “[t]he United States is strategically immune in being insulated, invulnerable, impermeable, and impervious and thus has few security reasons to become engaged politically and militarily.” Thus, while many paleos may echo old republican concerns about large standing armies, most conceptualize a foreign policy based on strategic independence, armed neutrality, and non-interventionism.

Where immigration allows foreigners into a nation, it then becomes a domestic policy concern. Cultural cohesiveness and some degree of cultural homogeneity are important factors for paleoconservatives. Though some celebrate differences and vibrant regional cultures in America, most are opposed to multiculturalism and runaway Third World immigration. They see non-European immigration as being averse to their interests because it threatens to displace the historic European cultural homogenity of the United States. Thus, many they tend to reject the aphorism E Pluribus Unum since it has been co-opted into a mantra for diversity and multiculturalism.

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan’s recent book The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization, the late Samuel Francis’ anthology of essays entitled Revolution from the Middle and Chilton Williamson’s book The Immigration Mystique are contemporary expressions of similar views. Paleoconservatives perceive Balkanization, social and ethnic strife will be the end result of runaway immigration, and the attendant failure to cope with illegal immigrants, and the myth of America being the universal nation.

Prominent paleoconservatives

* Virginia Abernethy
* Mel Bradford
* Peter Brimelow
* Pat Buchanan
* James Burnham
* T. Kenneth Cribb Jr.
* Mark Dankof
* Lou Dobbs
* Rowland Evans
* Thomas Fleming (author)
* John T. Flynn
* Samuel Francis
* Paul Gottfried
* Kevin Michael Grace
* Michael Hill
* Russell Kirk
* William S. Lind
* Donald Livingston
* John Lukacs
* Scott McConnell
* Jason C. Miller
* Thomas Molnar
* Robert Novak
* Michael Peroutka
* Jerry Pournelle
* Charley Reese
* William Regnery II
* Paul Craig Roberts
* Claes Ryn
* Steve Sailer
* Joe Sobran
* Jared Taylor
* Srdja Trifkovic
* Benjamin Wetmore
* Chilton Williamson
* Clyde Wilson
* John Zmirak

Paleoconservative organizations

* Abbeville Institute
* Breaking All the Rules (BATR) News
* Charles Martel Society
* Council of Conservative Citizens
* Free Congress Foundation
* John Randolph Club
* Rockford Institute
* Intercollegiate Studies Institute
* National Policy Institute
* New Century Foundation
* VDARE
* John Birch Society
* The St. Thomas More Society
* Mark Dankof’s America

Today is my last day as Technology Strategist at New Media Strategies. On Monday, I will be joining the interactive team at Edelman.

I am going to miss NMS like mad but look forward to all the exciting new opportunities at Edelman.

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Let’s consider the chimpanzee. There are several ways to learn more about the chimpanzee: through dissection, in captivity, and in the wild.

Although dissecting the chimpanzee to see how the physiology works is essential as a form of training and education, dissection doesn’t help with knowing the behavior of the chimpanzee.

You might be able to make assumptions about how intelligent it is or what it eats, but in terms of behavioral studies, its irrelevant. This is similar to posthumous studies of market data — there is no life there, only corpse.

Polling and focus groups are like observing the behavior of the chimpanzee in capacity — you have a living, breathing, chimpanzee, but you have one that is under stress, duress, and has been partially acclimatized to appeasing its handlers — it wants to keep safe, it wants to be fed, and it wants to get out — so observing chimpanzee behavior in captivity is like observing consumer or market behavior in focus groups — you have real-live response, but you have the response of something that is beholden to you, that is wondering what’s in it for me — you have corrupted behavioral data.

If you want to really know the true behavior of the chimpanzee, you need to observe it in the wild. And to get the best concept of the behavior of the chimpanzee, you need to become — or at least be accepted as — a chimpanzee.

Jane Goodall was a pioneer in the behavioral study of primates because she was accepted over time into the community of chimps. Online brand intelligence can study and report on brand and consumer behavior in the wild, in the wilderness.

Where behavior is true, honest, and living.

In response to On Accusations of Secret Prison Camps, a faithful reader just sent me an IM via Skype,

“It’s important to remember that the security forces are not our friends. They are our tools. They are like pitbulls. Pitbulls are not friends. They are tools. You have them do what you want – serve your purposes. If they start to do what you don’t want, you yank them back. If they prove to be non-heeding, you put a bullet in their heads. Tools, not friends. They do what we desire, when they stop doing so and refuse to heel, they are meant to be eliminated. The role of the people and their representatives in government is to decide when that point has been reached and pull the trigger on the dogs that are not acting according to your desires.”

“If the Europeans have decided that this particular dog needs shot, that is their right, and their duty. The rest of the pitbulls will continue to do what they’re trained to do, but perhaps note the step-too-far that got their packmate put down.”

“But how can a Christian be involved in politics – either as a citizen or a politician – and not compromise core convictions?” My dear friend Roy Herron has an amazing little book you have to read called How Can a Christian Be in Politics? Being faithful and political is essential in today’s moral and ethical climate.

Here’s a lovely passage that shows Roy’s insight and sensitivity:

Faithful Frustration

Many of us feel we have all the government we can stand and more than we can afford. We strongly, instinctively react against politics when we consider waste, fraud, corruption, deception, arrogance, misuse of authority, and burdensome taxes. Many people of faith hold this view of politics and government, and they also believe that government in recent decades has contributed to moral decline and the weakening of traditional values.

Anger and frustration toward government today are very high. But if you find yourself frustrated with government, imagine how frustrated we elected officials feel when we try to make government work and often cannot. Time and again, my task is not, as I would wish, to pass needed laws or set up helpful programs, but rather to try to stop bad bills and simply make existing laws and programs work. Often I work to get government to help people, but perhaps even more often I try to keep it from hindering or even harming citizens.

“The U.S. death toll in Iraq hits 2,000.” Of course, that does not include all the healthy pink American hands and feet that have perished. Via Salon

America is known throughout the world to have neither class nor caste; therefore, the concept of going out of our way to draft the upper class is pure rhetoric, Paul Stiles.

Here’s the latest comment from the reigning king of Memes.org as it existed before it died, Zorro.

Before Memes.org died on the vine, Zorro was king. He single-handedly populated Memes.org with his man-behind-the-man insight into what’s going on behind the curtain.

(and I am afraid Zorro sees me as a complete sell-out. He’s not the only one, I assure you!)

’44 magnums and back hair. it’s woefully apparent this web site is making radical attempts to distract attention from the fact tha an entire “Maryland/DC/Langley” worldview is collapsing, chris. Rove soon to be indicted, Sentaor Frist under formal investigation by the SEC, DeLay just indicted. Hastert “hamstrung” by thoughtless comments about Katrina survivors! You see it’s the complete and entire “succession” to the US Presidency…every last mother fucker! right down to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. All being “compromised”…is it Bush attempting a takeover. If Bush is “impeached” who will be his suck-cessor? The Valerie Plame/CIA outing now clearly attached to Scooter Libby..as well as VP Cheney. Cheney/Halliburton now under investigation for Army Corps of Engineers corruption and negligence in New Orleans Levee Disaster. What? you didn’t know that “Halliburton IS actually the Army Corps of Engineers. Moslem minister for NYPD “resigns” because he believe that Airplanes couldn’t have brought down the WTCs. FDA (Bush biz partner) just resigned for conflict of interest just 2 months after he was approved! Food For Mass Murder inquiry getting closer and closer to Chevron”. You shut down “memes”..er i mean “frank-en-stein” too early. Then again, we were ALWAYS about 18 months ahead of the rest of the world. That’s what freaked you out. It’s all coming true! and the Polar Caps melting. I think if you look carefully, you’ll see that a US/Chinese/Russian syndicate is well on it’s way to executing a contract reported about 18 months ago. They agreed to utilize high technology atmospheric “weapon” systems to melt a mammoth path through the Artic ice cap to create the REAL North West passage. Chris…you world view? “Got Faith?” release “memes” to us…you will be a hero/heroine! at least to others. The “republicans” haven’t blown it? A Group of 139 Global Cartel members have taken over Federal Govt. Function. If i’m wrong..i’m just another “hack” in the night…if i’m wright…there’s still time to save America. Not much…you are about as ready, willing and able to help America as “FEMA”! see any correlations? “America” can NEVER smell the coffee brewing…if you dont plug the coffee pot back in. You can ignore me…you can play the “corporate” slow-poke game! You can “tease” the world, misdirect it from “memes” to “ca.com” til the cows come home…but you can’t turn your back on what you know is the right thing to do.

zorro

curious, two weeks ago, a pair of “mating foxes” appeared in my back yeard. Two Foxes! as you said…”Zorro means Fox”! Plug it in..i promise..if you do…”the Wikipedians” of the world will make you their “king”!’