Bill Kauffman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bill Kauffman (born November 15, 1959) is an American political writer generally aligned with the paleoconservative movement. He was born in Batavia, New York and currently resides in Elba, New York with his wife and daughter.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester, he went to work as an aide to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (which he would later describe as an "anarchist-making experience") in 1981. After leaving Moynihan's employ, Kauffman worked as Washington, D.C. editor for Reason before quitting, after which he and his family returned to Batavia. He is now a contributing editor to Chronicles and Liberty, and he has also written frequently for The American Conservative, The American Enterprise, The Wall Street Journal, The American Scholar, the Utne Reader, and CounterPunch.

Although he is known as a paleoconservative, his politics remain difficult to categorize, as he holds strong libertarian leanings with culturally conservative and isolationist inclinations. He is a critic of development, frequently writes approvingly of distributism and agrarianism, and is extremely anti-corporation. Kauffman himself has described his politics as "a blend of Catholic Worker, Old Right libertarian, Yorker transcendentalist, and delirious localist." He has also described himself as a "Jeffersonian," an "anarchist," a "cheerful enemy of the state," a "reactionary Friend of the Library," and a "peace-loving football fan." Although he remains a registered Democrat, he rarely supports their candidates or their platform and has voted a straight Green Party ticket since the collapse of the Reform Party in 2000.

Other positions adopted by Kauffman which are considered controversial to both the Left and the Right include his support for the Second Vermont Republic secessionist movement, his admiration for 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, his argument that Catholic Worker activist Dorothy Day had much in common with elements of the Right, and his contention that Philip Roth's controversial book The Plot Against America is "the novel that a neoconservative would write, if a neoconservative could write a novel." In 2004, he endorsed Ralph Nader for President of the United States.

His books include Every Man a King (1989), a novel about a young senatorial aide who, disgusted with politics, returns to his rural New York hometown to start a new life; Country Towns of New York (1993), a travel book; America First!: Its History, Politics, and Culture (1995), a history of American populist, isolationist, and anti-imperialist thought; With Good Intentions?: Reflections on the Myth of Progress in America (1998), a collection of (often approving) profiles of the opponents of school consolidation, child labor laws, a standing army, women's suffrage, and the Interstate Highway System, as well as the proponents of homesteading as a means of battling the Great Depression; and Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette: A Mostly Affectionate Account of a Small Town’s Fight to Survive (2003), the story of Batavia and its decline. His latest book, Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists was published in 2006 by ISI Books.