Posted by
Gamecock on Saturday, July 29, 2006 1:38:27 PM
Looking back, it is clear that Pat Buchanan played a huge role in my eventual conservative epiphany in June 2001.
But it seems that when the Berlin Wall fell in the early 90's, Pat must have been standing nearby, as it appears some large pieces landed on his head and affected brain activity in certain hemispheres thereof, especially those that affect thinking about Israel and threats to American security.
He helped introduce couch potato America to intellectual conservative thought in his co-starring role on CNN's "Crossfire" in the 1980's, especially to those that had trouble picking up the ETV/PBS signal on UHF channels for William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" or who couldn't deal with WFB's huge vocabulary in any event.
Buchanan, who escaped the Nixon White House with his integrity fully intact, was also one of the few openly devout Bible-believing Christians on the major networks, and, while Roman Catholic, he was also obviously sympathetic to and an ally of Evangelical Christians, and especially those below the Mason-Dixon line.
Even though I was a self proclaimed liberal Democrat and even a county official of that party in South Carolina throughout the 80's and 90's, I came to love Pat as I found myself agreeing with him most of the time, especially on social issues, but also on many economic issues and the Cold War.
I consider all of his books to be extremely well written and well documented, and his biographical "Right from the Beginning" was an inspiration to try my hand at writing for publication, as he was one of the youngest syndicated columnists in U.S. history.
I agreed with his "Culture War" speech at the 1992 Republican convention, even as I prepared to vote for Bill Clinton.
I have always defended him against charges of antisemitism, given his obvious personal affection and behavior toward many Jews in the public arena and given the participation of many in his presidential campaigns.
However, I have always found his views towards Israel (as well as Robert Novak's and some other conservatives) to be quite ridiculous and grossly inconsistent with his other views on foreign policy with respect to allies of the United States. I have written it off to his "isolationist" America First upbringing and a liberal utopianism clinging to a youthful philosophy that was first blown up at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and than in N.Y., VA.. and PA on September 11, 2001. Even his citations of the Founding Fathers on the subject of isolationism are to my mind taken out of context if not outright illogical.
I have also found myself in disagreement with Pat's evolving protectionist economic bent, even though he does raise important issues that need to be addressed. But I do agree with much of his cultural and other arguments on immigration, even though I am much more optimistic concerning America's ability to assimilate large numbers of LEGAL immigrants.
My most profound disagreement with Pat has been his seeming blindness to the threat of Islamo-facism since 1979, but especially since 911. He was such a staunch Cold Warrior and Reaganite. Moreover, the modern conservative movement was defined by anticommunism more than any other issue. He supported the Vietnam War as a noble effort to oppose the USSR proxy, yet he was willing to allow Saddam Hussein to take over Kuwait, harbor terrorists that attacked America in 1993, fund terrorists and openly defy the US after 911.
Despite his recent rantings and my disagreements with Pat on policy, I still love Pat, and find him a brilliant man from whom I hardly ever come away from his public debates and books without having learned something valuable and delighting in his good nature and strong faith in Jesus Christ, and love for America.
But his recent columns are testing my admiration and those on Israel are testing my love. One can see a stark decline in the quality of his 700 word columns over the past 5 years, and especially the past year. I also see a stark difference in the angry tone of his columns versus his MSNBC, McLaughlin Group or talk radio appearances, even on Israel and the Iraq War.
I have also been very disturbed by his recent column, discussed below by James Taranto, in which he seems to try and gin up enmity between Jews and Christians. Does Pat consider the United States to have been "unchristian" in our war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan?
I do not agree with David Frum's characterization of paleocons as, of whom pat is the most prominent, unpatriotic, but I do think his 2003 piece below does raise questions that need to be answered.
And finally, I link to a piece by Fred Barnes that echos my bewilderment at Pat's misunderstanding of the current terror threat. It seems, as Rush Limbaugh has stated, that Pat, and to a certain extent WFB and other paleos, think that there can be no threat worth defeating after Cold War.
They sound like liberals, Chamberlain-like dangerous liberals. Do they think we can wait till... when? We already had a non-nuclear 911. Germany and Japan never had nukes, and we, thanks be to God, got nukes before the Communists.
What would a world be like with Islamic nukes? Not just nation-states that might(?) wish to not be nuked like the former USSR but who would still be able to use the possession of same to exert their will in the Middle East oil fields and beyond, but also their NGO terror group allies that seem perfectly willing to see a Worldwide Caliphate rise from the asses of a nuclear holocaust? Pat seems not to have given it a serious thought, and his columns indicate he may have stopped thinking when the Berlin Wall fell, and that his heart needs to be open to, if not Holy Scripture, then at least to common decency visa vis the treatment of American allies, whether they be Britain, Australia or Israel.
1 - Frum excerpt from 2003 piece and link
IN August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded and annexed Kuwait. Iraq plus Kuwait and prospectively Saudi Arabia would possess the world's biggest reservoir of oil. With this vast new oil wealth, Saddam could at last acquire the nuclear weapons he coveted — and thus dominate the entire Middle East. President George H. W. Bush quickly decided that the conquest of Kuwait "will not stand" and assembled a global coalition against Saddam. The paleo-conservative repudiation of the Gulf War would be their first major independent ideological adventure.
Three weeks after the invasion, Pat Buchanan declared his opposition to war in one of his regular appearances on The McLaughlin Group: "There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East — the Israeli defense ministry and its amen corner in the United States."
It would be hard to come up with a more improbable idea than that of George H. W. Bush of Kennebunkport as war-making servant of the interests of International Jewry. Yet over the next six months, Buchanan and the Chronicles writers would repeatedly argue that America was being dragged to war in the Gulf by a neoconservative coterie indifferent to true American interests: the "neoconservatives," as Buchanan said, "the ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyists who signed on in the name of anti-Communism and now control our foundations and set the limits of permissible dissent."
http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum031903.asp
2 - This excert from James Taranto's WSJ "Best of the Web" blog illustrates the seriousness of Pat's verbal attacks against Israel:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008688
'Un-Christian'
The other day Pat Buchanan published a despicable attack on Israel:
What Israel is doing is imposing deliberate suffering on civilians, collective punishment on innocent people, to force them to do something they are powerless to do: disarm the gunmen among them. Such a policy violates international law and comports neither with our values nor our interests. It is un-American and un-Christian.
Some observers are amused that Buchanan is accusing a Jewish state of being "un-Christian." (Glenn Reynolds: "Well, duh.") But we're with John Podhoretz: This is anti-Semitism. Buchanan is clever enough that he is not unwittingly applying an inapplicable standard; rather, he is accusing the Jews of not being Christians, thereby attempting to turn Christians against Jews.
For evidence of Buchanan's cleverness, consider his statement that Israel "is imposing deliberate suffering on civilians." This is artfully worded indeed. The implication is that Israel is targeting civilians, which is false, but this is only an implication. Buchanan's actual words are consistent with the truth, which is that Israel is targeting Hezbollah with the knowledge that some civilian casualties are inevitable, given that (as Buchanan fails to acknowledge) terrorist groups deliberately put civilians in harm's way in the hope that civilized countries like Israel will either be restrained from attacking or will be blamed for the civilian casualties.
Buchanan also fails to acknowledge that Israel's enemies do target civilians, as Voice of America notes:
Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav told VOA that among the rockets that have hit Haifa are some clearly designed to cause massive civilian casualties.
"The specialty of these rockets is that they contain thousands of metal bullets which are going to be spread around when the rocket hits the ground," he said. "In this respect, it has the same effect as the belt of a suicide bomber."
Would Pat Buchanan call this "Christian"?
In any case, Buchanan's effort to turn Christians against Jews won't work. Christian anti-Semitism has a long and ugly history, but it is largely a thing of the past, especially in this country. Anti-Semitism today is chiefly the province of the Muslim world and the secular, multicultural left.
Yesterday the House voted 410-8 in favor of a resolution "condemning the recent attacks against the State of Israel, holding terrorists and their state-sponsors accountable for such attacks, [and] supporting Israel's right to defend itself." Here's a list of the 12 congressmen who declined to support Israel:
Voting "no" Voting "present"
Neil Abercrombie (D., Hawaii) Marcy Kaptur (D., Ohio)
John Conyers (D., Mich.) Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio)
John Dingell (D., Mich.) Barbara Lee (D., Calif.)
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D., Mich.) Maxine Waters (D., Calif.)
Jim McDermott (D., Wash.)
Ron Paul (R., Texas)
Nick Rahall (D., W.Va.)
Fortney Hillman Stark Jr. (D., Calif.)
Except Ron Paul, who was the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee in 1988 and who essentially opposes all foreign policy, all of these are liberal Democrats. Similarly, look at blogospheric reactions to Buchanan's screed, and you'll find that most of his defenders are on the left. They're welcome to him.
3 - Fred Barnes excerpt and link:
It's on foreign policy that liberals and conservatives find common cause. Patrick Buchanan, rehearsing the pieties of the political left, argues that Bush has turned the world against America. The "endless bellicosity" of Bush and his neoconservative advisers, he recently argued, "has produced nothing but ill will against us. This was surely not the way of the tough but gracious and genial Ronald Reagan."
Of all people, Buchanan ought to know better, having served as Reagan's communications director from 1984 to 1986. Reagan generated massive antiwar and anti-American demonstrations around the world, far larger and more numerous protests than those Bush has occasioned. He famously denounced the Soviet "evil empire" headed for "the ash-heap of history." He was treated by the press as a cowboy warmonger, just as Bush has been. Ill will? Reagan produced plenty--all in a noble cause.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/454kauku.asp?pg=1