From Patrick Buchanan (born 1938), American politician, author, syndicated columnist, and broadcaster, The Death of the West (2002):
The West is dying. Its nations have ceased to reproduce, and their populations have stopped growing and begun to shrink. Not since the Black Death carried off a third of Europe in the fourteenth century has there been a graver threat to the survival of Western civilization.
Politico magazine does an extensive, and surprisingly fair, profile of Patrick Buchanan. From Tim Alberta at politico.com:
Pat Buchanan won after all. But now he thinks it might be too late for the nation he was trying to save.
His first date with his future wife was spent in a New Hampshire motel room drinking Wild Turkey into the wee hours with Hunter S. Thompson. He stood several feet away from Martin Luther King Jr. during the “I Have a Dream” speech. He went to China with Richard M. Nixon and walked away from Watergate unscathed. He survived Iran-Contra, too, and sat alongside Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavík Summit. He invaded America’s living rooms and pioneered the rhetorical combat that would power the cable news age. He defied the establishment by challenging a sitting president of his own party. He captured the fear and frustration of the right by proclaiming a great “culture war” was at hand. And his third-party candidacy in 2000 almost certainly handed George W. Bush the presidency, thanks to thousands of Palm Beach, Florida, residents mistakenly voting for him on the “butterfly ballot” when they meant to back Al Gore.
If not for his outsize ambition, Pat Buchanan might be the closest thing the American right has to a real-life Forrest Gump, that patriot from ordinary stock whose life journey positioned him to witness, influence and narrate the pivotal moments that shaped our modern world and changed the course of this country’s history. He has known myriad roles—neighborhood brawler, college expellee, journalist, White House adviser, political commentator, presidential candidate three times over, author, provocateur—and his existence traces the arc of what feels to some Americans like a nation’s ascent and decline. He was 3 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and 6 when Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now 78, with thick, black glasses and a thinning face, Buchanan looks back with nostalgia at a life and career that, for all its significance, was at risk of being forgotten—until Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States.
To continue reading: ‘The Ideas Made It, But I Didn’t’
Posted in Foreign Policy, Government, History, Immigration, Politics
Tagged Patrick Buchanan
Justin Raimondo uses Donald Trump to slam the neoconservatives and their foreign interventions. From Raimondo at antiwar.com:
The return of dreaded “isolationism” is cause for celebration
At the end of the cold war, a cadre of neoconservative intellectuals surveyed the debris of the fallen Soviet colossus and boldly proclaimed “the end of history.” The West, said Francis Fukuyama, writing in The National Interest, had won not only the cold war but also the war of ideas – for all time. We were inevitably embarked on a pathway to a “universal homogenous state,” and although the pageant of History (always capitalized!) would continue to “unfold” along a rather bumpy road, in the end it would prove to be a highway to US hegemony over the entire earth. In a symposium commenting on Fukuyama’s thesis, the ever-practical Charles Krauthammer nevertheless insisted that it would be necessary for the United States to hurry History along by force of arms. In a subsequent polemic in Foreign Affairs, he argued that we ought to take advantage of “the unipolar moment” to “integrate” the US, Japan, and Europe into a “super-sovereign” global empire united by a “new universalism” – which, he averred, “is not as outrageous as it sounds.”
Blinded by hubris, enthralled by the possibilities of unlimited power, the neocons – and their liberal internationalist doppelgangers on the other side of the political spectrum – didn’t see the nationalist backlash coming.
That rebuke was prefigured by a stinging rebuttal from the pen of Patrick J. Buchanan in the pages of The National Interest, who wrote that Krauthammer’s vision was “un-American,” pure and simple. In Buchanan’s view, this militarized universalism was nothing less than treason. Invoking the Founders, he wrote that this globalist fantasy failed “the fundamental test of any foreign policy: Americans will not die for it.” A nation’s purpose, he added, cannot be ascertained “by consulting ideologies, but by reviewing its history, by searching the hearts of its people.” So what, if not the “benevolent global hegemony” dreamt of by the neocons, would and should Americans fight for? Buchanan’s answer was to quote these stanzas from Lord Macaulay:
“And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?”
Buchanan’s answer to Krauthammer’s globalism was a foreign policy of “enlightened nationalism”: “total withdrawal of US troops from Europe,” and a rejection of the idea – nowhere authorized in the Constitution – that the President and/or Congress has the power to sacrifice its sons on the altar of some crazed crusade for “global democracy.” Prophesizing the declaration of President George W. Bush some fifteen years later that we would seek to “end evil” in the world, Buchanan raised the banner of non-interventionism in the pre-9/11 world: that is, in a country that was primed to hear his message.
He took that message to the Republican party, and the country, in three campaigns for the White House, all the while warning that the “unipolar world” dreamed of by Krauthammer and his fellow neocons was a dangerous fantasy, and that the rising tide of nationalism, from Beijing to Biloxi, would make short work of it. A multi-polar world was on the horizon, and the best we could hope for was to adapt to the new reality by tending to our own garden, which had – after a long global struggle with the (alleged) Soviet threat – by this time become choked with weeds and in need of emergency care.
The same nationalist tides that were sweeping the post-cold war world in Europe and Asia were roiling the waters in America, but they took on a different shape and coloration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Whereas Buchananism was inward-looking, anti-interventionist, and anti-globalist, the ultra-nationalism utilized by the neocons to mobilize the American people behind a crusade to transform the Middle East was and is aggressive, militaristic, and explicitly hegemonist – a bid to create the “unipolar world” of Krauthammer’s Napoleonic imagination.
To continue reading: Nationalism and Its Discontents: The Meaning of Trump
Posted in Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, War
Tagged Neoconservatives, Patrick Buchanan
The video is a “discussion” between Sean Hannity and Patrick Buchanan on Fox News. The point of this post is not to delve into the substantive merits of Iranian nuclear negotiations, the contentious subject under discussion. Rather, it is to demonstrate what mainstream media news has become. Keep in mind that Buchanan is a guest on the show and Hannity is his host. The two were on the air for 6 minutes and 2 seconds. Buchanan has written numerous columns on Iran, some of which have been featured on SLL (“Did We Vote For War?” 11/18/14, “The Persians Are Coming!” 1/27/15, “Does Iran Really Want A Bomb?” 3/10/15). Given his output on the subject, it is fair to say that not even if he had been allowed to speak the full 6 minutes and 2 seconds would he have been able to elucidate his underlying assumptions, make his argument, and counter potential objections.
However, Buchanan’s time fell far short of that 6 minutes and 2 seconds. Hannity spoke, sometimes over Buchanan, for 3 minutes and 31 seconds, or 58 percent of the time. He interrupted Buchanan at least 12 times, so Buchanan was rarely able to complete his thoughts. Buchanan handled the situation about as well as it could be handled, but Hannity’s rudeness was appalling. He made no effort to question Buchanan in such a way that would allow his guest to make his points, rather the host turned it into a nonstop argument. He told Buchanan he was “dreaming,” twice, and that he was “dead wrong.” Somewhere, if we were brought up right, we were taught to be gracious to our guests, and to take turns talking. Hannity’s act would be an embarrassment to any well-mannered first grader (and yes, they do still exist).
Why was Buchanan even invited on to the show if Hannity was just going to regurgitate Fox News’ well-known position on the Iranian negotiations? Why would Buchanan subject himself to Hannity’s abuse? Hannity is by no means an anomaly. He has a partner in pompous, preening, presumption in Bill O’Reilly. Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, and other “celebrity” television journalists (who are, after all, just glorified news and propaganda readers) are often just as uncivil and outright rude. There are obviously viewers who want to see opposing views shouted down, but this kind of display is an insult to most viewers’ intelligence, and has to be one of the reasons why so many now get most of their news and analysis from the Internet.
An instruction manual for Republicans: how they can shoot themselves in both feet come 2016. From Patrick Buchanan at buchanan.org
With Hillary Clinton scrambling to explain her missing emails, much of America is wailing, “Please don’t make us watch this movie again!”
Why, then, would the Republican Party, with a chance to sweep it all in 2016, want to return us to the nightmare days of George W., which caused America to rise up and throw the party out in 2006 and 2008?
Do Republicans really believe that America wants a return to the Cold War with Moscow and new and larger hot wars in the Middle East?
With President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry seemingly about to conclude a deal to freeze Iran’s nuclear program, House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to use the State of the Union podium to call Obama and Kerry naive and trash their deal as paving the ayatollah’s way to an atomic bomb.
For the U.S. House to invite a foreign leader to come into its chambers and see that leader, on national television, mocking U.S. foreign policy to wild cheering was something few of us expected to see in our lifetimes.
Came then the astonishing letter drafted by Tom Cotton, a 2-month-old senator who makes Ted Cruz look like Ramsey Clark, that was signed by 47 Republicans. Sent to the ayatollah and mullahs, the Cotton letter instructed Iran that any deal signed by Kerry might not be worth the paper it was written on.
Congress could reject the deal, said the 47, and a new president in 2017 could cancel it with “the stroke of a pen.”
The letter’s purpose was the same as Bibi’s purpose — to scuttle, sabotage and sink any U.S. nuclear deal with Iran. But if there is no deal and Iran returns to enriching uranium to 20 percent, we are on the road to war.
Is this what America has to look forward to if it votes GOP?
To continue reading: Will the GOP Kick It Away?
Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, Other Views, War
Tagged 2016 election, Iran, Patrick Buchanan
From Patrick Buchanan at buchanan.org:
“The Iranians are on the march,” warned John McCain Sunday.
“Iran is building a new Persian Empire,” echoed Col. Ralph Peters.
So alarmed is Speaker Boehner, he invited Bibi Netanyahu to come and challenge U.S. policy toward Iran from the same podium where the president delivered his State of the Union address.
Bibi will make the case for new U.S. sanctions on Iran; sanctions that Obama has said he will veto as they would sabotage talks on Iran’s nuclear program and potentially put us on the road to war.
Why are Bibi’s insights needed?
Because, says Sen. Robert Menendez, the outgoing chairman of foreign relations, White House statements sound like “talking points from Tehran.” This beloved poodle of AIPAC is always a strong contender for best in show.
“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence … a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”
So warned our first and greatest president in his Farewell Address.
But this column is not about how Washington would weep at what has become of this Republic, nor a polemic against the corruption of a capital where the currency is campaign cash and national policy is the commodity bought and sold.
The issue is whether Iran represents a threat to our security worth risking a war. For that is where many, including Bibi, want us to go.
To continue reading: The Persians Are Coming!
From Patrick Buchanan, 11/18/14:
“How do you like the Journal’s war?”
So boasted the headline of William Randolph Hearst’s New York flagship that week in 1898 that the United States declared war on Spain.
While Hearst’s Journal, in a circulation battle with Joe Pulitzer’s World, was a warmongering sheet, it did not start the war.
Yet the headline comes to mind reading the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages seem to have concluded that on Nov. 4 America voted for new wars in the Middle East, and beyond.
On Nov. 13, the Journal’s op-ed page was given over to Mark Dubowitz and Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Assuming nuclear talks with Iran conclude unsuccessfully by the Nov. 24 deadline, they write, we have four options.
Two involve continued or tougher sanctions. The other two are a preemptive war featuring U.S. air and missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, or a U.S. attack to bring down Bashar Assad’s regime.
“Taking Mr. Assad down would let Tehran know that America’s withdrawal from the Middle East and President Obama’s dreams of an entente with Iran are over.”
It would surely do that.
But taking down the Syrian regime could also lead to a slaughter of Christians and Alawites, an al Qaida-ISIS takeover in Damascus, war with Iran, and attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and across the Middle East.
Which raises a question: What is this FDD?
Answer: A War Party think tank that in 2011, according to Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss website and Eli Clifton of Salon, took in $19 million from five rabidly pro-Israel givers. Continue reading
Posted in Foreign Policy, Government, Other Views, Politics, War
Tagged Middle East war, Patrick Buchanan
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