Like most leftists, I’m against practically everything Patrick Buchanan believes in, but it still seems to me he gets a bad rap. Everybody thinks he’s a racist and an anti-semite. Some even assume he’s a Holocaust-denier.
I’ve only read one of Buchanan’s books: The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invations Imperil Our Country and Civilization (Thomas Dunne Books, 2001). From this book I get the impression that Buchanan longs for the days before the immigration reforms of the '60s, when we had national-origin quotas that made sure practically all our immigrants were white Europeans. But he never actually comes out and says that nonwhites are inferior or undesirable; he seems to be talking about preserving our nation’s present cultural character, not its racial character; same with Europe. He does harp some on the African-American crime rate, but only to make the point that the American media underreports it and therefore must be biased in a liberal direction.
I know Buchanan wrote a book I’ve never read, A Republic, Not an Empire, which argues the U.S. should have stayed out of World War II. I can see how that attitude would disgust Jews, but does it make him an anti-semite? What he is, is a consistent isolationist. He is also opposed to the current U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Is that necessarily because we are there to, among other things, defend Israel?
It seems to me Buchanan is staking out a new independent position in American politics: conservative nativist-isolationist populism. (A very old position, actually – it goes back to the prewar America First! movement and even to the 19th-century Populists – but it has gone a long time without its own institutional representation.) He’s against liberals of all kinds (with the possible except of Libertarians, if they count), but he’s also against the pro-big-business Republicans, and the foreign-policy neoconservative warhawks – the latter two, of course, being the principal forces in the Bush Administration. He might even be willing to make strategic alliances with leftist pacifists to oppose the war. How racist is that?
Just goes to show that the lefties and conservative nativists are equally wrong!
PB argues for the superiority of Western European culture over other cultures. This is contrary to the cultural relativism popular with much of the left. You won’t be hearing PB talk about celebrating diversity. And he’s staunchly anit-Affirmative Action, which is often equated with racism.
PB represents the kind of conservatism that a libertarian minded person such as myself finds very distasteful. His religious, nativist, populist positions are not the kind of freedom promoting conservatism that I can support.
Is he racist? I don’t know. I somehow suspect he’d be less than thrilled if his daughter married a non-caucasian. But that’s just a guess. If the guy was a religious, nativist, populist, maybe he’d be OK with it.
Gee, I dunno. Read all the awesome things he has said and decide youself. I don;t think they note in the article that he asked, and was nominated to be, U.S. Ambassador to South Africa under Ford.
He has tried to reform his image, most notably in 2000, when he ran for Prez with Ezola Foster as his running mate:
“Foster, 62, is a retired public school educator and a little-known conservative political activist. She was also not Buchanan’s top choice to be his runningmate. Buchanan freely admitted he settled on Foster only after Teamsters Union President James P. Hoffa, Congressman Jim Traficant (D-OH) and several others all rejected his invitation to run on his ticket. Buchanan said his choice of Foster – an African-American woman – as a runningmate should end the “myths and nonsense” alleging bigotry, sexism and racism on his part.”- this site
Though I disagree with his position on the war on drugs, I like Pat. And heres why: I think that he truely, and deeply believes in the issues he’s pushing. He’s not wishy/washy on anything. But what’s significant is, he believes in those issues because he personally believes in them, not because some PAC gave the most money to his campaign fund or because the public winds are blowing one way or another. I’ve observed that while many politicians have core beliefs, those beliefs can be swayed by special intrest or polls. Not Pat. He believes in these things and sticks by them. Love him or hate him, I have to respect him for being that way.
Also, I’ve been to campaign rallays going all the way back to Ford.
PB’s were the most fun I’ve ever been to. A blast! I went to one in '96. The cracks he was making about Clinton were a laugh riot.
I think he shook up the Republican party when it needed it.
I checked out 'possum stalker’s cite (http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/2437) – and, my word! Looks like Pat might actually be a Holocaust-denier after all! A moderate one, anyway. From the cited article, by Jeff Cohen of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, which ran in the Baltimore Sun on October 3, 1999:
And regarding African-Americans:
All this is a long, long way from lobbying to bring back Jim Crow or deport the Jews – but still!
I really wonder how deep these attitudes run among others in the conservative-populist movement Buchanan is trying to lead.
I also wonder if Buchanan is at all bothered by historical memories of a time – a long, long time – when Roman Catholics were a despised minority in the United States! What say you, Pat, you lousy papist mackerel-snapper?
He’s an interesting person, especially when you consider that he might very well be Deep Throat. But he is bigot. There is just no way to be a rational human being who lived as an adult during the middle of the 20th Century in the USA – and deny that the Holocaust happened.
The key word there is “trying”. Considering Buchanan’s performance in the last election–in which he barely beat Harry Browne despite spending $13 million and getting help from the Butterfly Ballot–the movement he’s trying to lead doesn’t appear to exist. So it’s kind of hard to say what attitudes the people in the “movement” hold.
I’ll always remember that speech where he glorified the “locked and loaded” status of the riot police facing down the mobs of angry blacks in So. Central LA. The inference was that only a real man could fire into a crowd of unarmed civilians.
That having been said, I find him a compelling speaker and he’s one of the few conservative talking heads whose opinions I’ll respect and entertain. Nobody can argue that he’s a genuine patriot. Plus he did such a great job screwing up the Bush '92 campaign, and is certainly no fan of Junior.
Yeah, that evil POPULISM! OOOOOOOH! How DARE he actually think that those MERE COMMONERS have any RIGHT AT ALL to political representation. Everybody with the least bit of morals and intelligence knows in their hearts that only the INTELLECTUAL ELITE deserves to have things like a right to vote! Why, populism is EVIL! It gives us things like trade unions, The Grange, and other horrid travesties.
As the above cites indicate, Buchanan has taken some stands over the years that make it pretty hard to defend him against charges of anti-semitism. At the very least, it seems to bias his selection of grievances: the only criminals’ rights I’ve ever heard him express concern for are those of Nazi war criminals.
I’ve also marveled at his faux-populism: here’s a guy born in Washington, privately schooled in Washington, went to college (Georgetown) in Washington, worked for the Nixon White House, portraying himself as a peasant with a pitchfork, out to get those nasty beltway insiders.
One thing you invariably hear from his colleagues of liberal ideology: he’s a very nice guy in private, but starts breathing fire when the cameras turn on. Some interpret this to mean that his true personality is the nice guy, and his nastier side is an abberation.
However, (and I know this is totally anecdotal), I heard differently from a woman I dated a few years ago. She was related to Buchanan by marriage (her mother had married one of his brothers). She claimed the public Buchanan was much more like the one she knew, and it was the nice-guy persona that was an act.
I may be the only person on the boards to have met him.
He’s very funny in person. Joking and friendly. Seems very open. I disagree with a great many of his stands but I’ll tell you this…the man believes. He believes with such a large belief that it makes you long for politicians who are just in it for the money and girls.
And you should have seen his eyes get wide when I said, “Well, your politics are to the right of most of mine. But on the other hand you’re well left of me on several issues.”
Think of this: George W won the election despite kicking Buchanan to the curb. Buchanan (and Nader to an extent) efffectively marginalized the third party concept out of the mainstream.
