Paternalistic conservatism
The term right-wing socialism is a term used by some free-market right-libertarian movements and politicians to describe paternalistic conservatism as they see it supporting paternalism and social solidarity as opposed to individualism, commercialism and "laissez-faire" economics. They argue that paternalist conservatism supports state promoted social hierarchy and allows certain people and groups to hold higher status in such a hierarchy, which is conservative. The term is also used—more commonly, but distinctly—to refer to moderate social democratic forms of socialism when contrasted with Marxism–Leninism and other more radical left-wing alternatives. In "The Communist Manifesto", Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels criticised the "Philosophy of Poverty" by the anarchist writer and theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as representing conservative or bourgeois socialism. Military socialism, guild socialism, agrarian socialism and some forms of Christian socialism are also termed right-wing socialism by various authors.
Simon Burns
Despite his conservative views, Burns is a "proud" supporter of the more liberal-leaning U.S. Democratic Party. Citing the big tent nature of American political parties, he argues "You can't just say that, because you’re a British Conservative, so you have to be a [U.S.] Republican. American politics isn’t contained in that way. Turn the clock back to the 1970s, and the Democrat Party went from the liberal Kennedy wing right through to the out-and-out racists in the Southern states. The Republican Party had its liberal wing – people like John Lindsay, Chuck Percy and Nelson Rockefeller."