Wilson also takes issue with the most sacred of cows among many conservatives - the Reagan revolution. He says the revolution never occurred, that it was stillborn because of the meddling of Establishment (read Northern) Republicans, who are also sometimes neo-conservatives.

Nostalgists still hearken back to the Reagan Revolution, which never took place except in imagination. The Reagan Revolution was over before the nomination was formalized, when the bankers forced him to accept a "mainstream" Republican on the ticket. The crusade to restrain the federal government, to correct the fraud, incompetence, insolence, and extravagance of its departments, never even got out of port, much less sailed for the Holy Land. And whatever moral capital was left was picked up by the Establishment Republicans once more. Clearly Bush the Previous had no affinity for the social conservatives he had to pretend to care for. Like his son, his instincts on the social questions were pure northeastern Liberal Republican. Previous Bush's Liberal Republican appointee to head the National Endowment of the Artssubsidized Mapplethorpe and the other abominations. Out in the provinces there were many very talented, under-recognized artists who might have been encouraged, some of whom had even voted Republican, but of course they were not Establishment.

Not surprising, though I had no idea Wilson is interested in art other than renditions of Confederate flags.

His solution to the problem of the major parties not being reactionary enough is the same as Strom Thurmond's and George Wallace's during their heydays - a far Right third party.

The only hope for conservatism, that is, for preservation of some semblance of civilized order and liberty, is a populist party along the lines of the real Reagan coalition of 1980 - economic freedom and social conservatism. And the first essential objective of such a party must be to destroy and replace the Republican Party. All else is sound and fury.

I can already hear the Bush re-election bandwagon in the distance. "Get on Board! Vote Bush and Save America from Hillary Clinton!" Will the millions of our fellow citizens yet again clamber aboard and hosanna their way down the road to perdition? If so, I fear it will prove that we suffer not from bad leadership but from a fatal defect of national character.

I believe most of us who believe in progressive politics spend much of our time criticizing mainstream conservatives. But, from time to time, it behooves us to remember there is worse than the GOP.

Clyde Wilson is a history professor in South Carolina who has been a major proponent of maintaining a 'traditional' view of the history of the South. His opinions can be read regularly at LewRockwell.Com.

Note: This entry also appeared at Silver Rights.