3-winged beast

In his LRC piece on the American Right's reactions to contemporary visions of the ancient Crusades, historian Scott Trask gives the following political taxonomy:

There are three kinds of American conservatives: the neoconservatives, who supply the brains for the Republican governing coalition; the theoconservatives, more commonly known as the religious right, who supply the votes (and much of the cannon fodder); and the paleoconservatives, a dissenting minority, intellectually formidable, who are without much influence.

What's interesting to me is the shifting allegiance of the "theos". Back in the 1990s, the Religious Right was willing to ally with the libertarian-influenced, decentralist minarchists known as the paleoconservatives. This was in large part because the theos saw a Big Government Leftist at the helm and believed that their interests were best served by devolution of federal power.

(I'm a bit foggier on this part, but I think the theos split on the Israel question, some thinking the Holy Land had to be protected from dark heathens and therefore supporting the globalist neocons, some thinking Israel was fundamentally none of our business and recognizing that an activist foreign policy helped grow the big central government whose cultural agenda they feared, and some probably just plain old-fashioned Jew-haters.)

But now that their guy is in the Whitehouse, the theoconservatives just love them some big central government. The more arbitrary the authority, the better for God's agent on earth. Never particularly steadfast on foreign policy, they've now fully embraced the Old Testament bloodlust of the administration.

I know more than one Rothbardian who now regrets ever having had anything to do with these people. And I find even the paleocons a little creepy.