# Pat Buchanan **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 7, 2009, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169 "2009-01-07T00:58:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/21 "2009-01-07T04:40:31Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > What is he concerned with, in your estimation? The decline of the white race in America and the world, in proportional numbers and, I am quite certain, in blood-purity. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/22 "2009-01-07T04:46:27Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Put these attitudes together with his extreme political philosophy and it’s amazing he has crawled into some vestige of respectability among right-wingers. It is because he speaks for a lot of Americans who think the same way. Let’s not be in denial here. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/23 "2009-01-07T04:53:52Z")
If there is any doubt, please read [this.](http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2553) It’s all there . . . racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, sexism . . . even anti-democracy. And that’s not including the past 13 years. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/24 "2009-01-07T05:03:11Z")
Also clearly in the paleocon lineage: George Wallace’s [American Independent Party.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Independent_Party) (Not that that has anything to do with Buchanan, who was working for Nixon at the time.) ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/25 "2009-01-07T12:55:25Z")
I like Pat but have never voted for him. He’s a man of principle, but his principles are too far Right, and while not outrightly racist or anti-Semitic, I admit flirt a little too close for comfort for me. I do not at all believe he is a Holocaust-denier, but is skeptical of some claims & accusations. Most of all, he neglects to see it as a uniquely evil horror and puts it alongside the slaughters & oppression of Communism and other historical horrors. Most of my disagreements with Pat, I will admit, are more a matter of tone than substance, tho to some extent the harshness of the tone is the substance. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/26 "2009-01-07T15:58:46Z")
I still remember Pat at the Republican convention stating that we are in a religious war for the soul of the nation. I wonder what side Pat believes he is on? His latest book makes the case that the USA should have stayed out of WW2, and if that meant the death of every Jew in Europe that’s just the breaks. In his youth he assaulted a police officer and his family of many brothers had the reputation of being a big bunch of thugs and bullies in the Washington area. Still I enjoy listening to him for some odd reason. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/27 "2009-01-07T16:23:43Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > I like Pat but have never voted for him. He’s a man of principle, but his principles are too far Right, and while not outrightly racist or anti-Semitic, I admit flirt a little too close for comfort for me. > I do not at all believe he is a Holocaust-denier, but is skeptical of some claims & accusations. Most of all, he neglects to see it as a uniquely evil horror and puts it alongside the slaughters & oppression of Communism and other historical horrors. > > Most of my disagreements with Pat, I will admit, are more a matter of tone than substance, tho to some extent the harshness of the tone is the substance. I disagree completely. His column directly printed material denying that thousands of Jews could have been murdered at Treblinka. That is indeed holocaust denial. That is not skepticism. To my knowledge he has never admitted that he was wrong nor has he apologized for his behavior. That is Neo Nazism and has no place in public discourse. His latest book was [promoted](http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/07/09/pat-buchanan-advertises-his-book-on-neo-nazi-radio-show.aspx) on a Neo Nazi racist radio show. He is the Father Coughlin of our time. It perpetually astonishes me that he is treated as a respectable public figure. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/28 "2009-01-07T16:31:35Z")
For a minute I thought Pat wasn’t so bad, but during the congressional page bruhaha with Foley, I remember him on Hard Ball espousing some fallacious homophobic reasoning for why gay men shouldn’t be in office. His logic was based on stats that supposedly showed that gay men were more likely to be convicted pedophiles than straight men. Um, by that logic, men _period_ shouldn’t be in office and women should rule the world. Of course Chris didn’t point that out. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/29 "2009-01-07T16:48:21Z")
The world could definitely use a bit of tidying up. Some drapes. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/30 "2009-01-07T16:53:49Z")
I enjoy his presence on television. He’s an interesting spokesman for the opposite side regarding many of my opinions. He does sometimes have an appallingly nonprogressive ingredient to his views, which reinforces my own belief that one of the best things for the progress of the human race is that each of us hold stagnant principles that will die with us. Sometimes I think he’s old fashioned and sometimes I think he’s abhorant. ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/31 "2009-01-07T16:59:16Z")
> [@Icerigger](#): > > His latest book makes the case that the USA should have stayed out of WW2, and if that meant the death of every Jew in Europe that’s just the breaks. I am not sure that is a fair characterization. I remember his argument to be that by avoiding all-out war, the greatest good could have been done for the greatest number – he certainly would include the subsequent victims of communism among that calculus, but I don’t recall that he just said F the European Jews and their plight. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/32 "2009-01-07T17:40:19Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > I do not at all believe he is a Holocaust-denier, but is skeptical of some claims & accusations. Most of all, he neglects to see it as a uniquely evil horror and puts it alongside the slaughters & oppression of Communism and other historical horrors. There’s nothing to choose in value between a life lost under Hitler and a life lost under Stalin; nevertheless, a political commentator who cannot see plainly and clearly that fascism is **even worse** than Communism is hardly worth listening to. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/33 "2009-01-07T17:48:59Z")
> [@LavenderBlue](#): > > His latest book was [promoted](http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/07/09/pat-buchanan-advertises-his-book-on-neo-nazi-radio-show.aspx) on a Neo Nazi racist radio show. He is the Father Coughlin of our time. It perpetually astonishes me that he is treated as a respectable public figure. Same reason Coughlin was: He has a real mass constituency and there’s no denying it. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/34 "2009-01-07T18:09:57Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > . . .nevertheless, a political commentator who cannot see plainly and clearly that fascism is **even worse** than Communism is hardly worth listening to. I don’t know if that’s as clear cut as you’re putting it. Both are pretty horrific, but I’d probably rather live in 1960s Spain than 1960s Poland. ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/35 "2009-01-07T18:19:23Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > I do not at all believe he is a Holocaust-denier, but is skeptical of some claims & accusations. Most of all, he neglects to see it as a **uniquely evil horror** and puts it alongside the slaughters & oppression of Communism and other historical horrors. Bolding mine. There is as principled an argument to be made against insisting that any one horror is “uniquely evil” vis a vis others as there is to be made against “hate crime” laws. Which is to say, a fairly substantial one. First, who judges? Second, how do you make such a declaration without essentially issuing a free pass to all future evildoers – they can never qualify for more than the silver medal? Do the Rwandan thugs – who acted out of very similar evil motives of ethnic resentment and dehumanizing the “inferior” tribe – get an oh, well, it could have been worse, 'cause nothing’s as bad as what the Germans did to the Jews? I kind of think it was pretty much just as bad, which is to say, very. Finally, how do you single out unique evil without devaluing the lives of those who suffer evil deemed less unique.? Dead is dead. Thank God I’ve never been in the position, but I have a very firm conviction that being told you and your family are about to die because you’re filthy subhumans, and being told you and your family are about to die because you’re peasants and we’re shelling your village, or you are going to die because you’re wearing the wrong army’s uniform, feel almost indistinguishably equally crappy. (I’ve harped on this before when people stress the atrocity of killing women and children – Hell, the accident of birth that left Hans or Tommy male and 20 wasn’t exactly his doing, and I’d suppose he valued his life against unfair deprivation as much as anyone else). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/36 "2009-01-07T18:23:13Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I don’t know if that’s as clear cut as you’re putting it. Both are pretty horrific, but I’d probably rather live in 1960s Spain than 1960s Poland. Franco was not strictly speaking a fascist, though he came to power in part with fascist [(i.e., Falangist)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falangism) support; he was a traditionalist, where fascism is really as revolutionary as Communism. (See [_Fascism: A History,_](http://www.amazon.com/Fascism-History-Roger-Eatwell/dp/071399147X) by Roger Eatwell.) (Pinochet was not a fascist either.) Fascism is even worse than Communism because, among other reasons: 1. Communism has high, noble ideals and usually fails to live up to them, or ignores them on “the ends justify the means” grounds; fascism has not even any ideals or goals that are not evil. 2. Communism (like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, BTW) is in the Enlightenment tradition of Voltaire that exalts rationality; fascism is in the Romantic tradition of Rousseau that exalts irrationality. (See the [Pournelle Chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart); see also Bertrand Russell’s _History of Western Philosophy.)_ Both are flawed approaches to public affairs when taken to the extreme, but any thinking person can see irrationality is essentially far worse. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/37 "2009-01-07T18:36:48Z")
1. Communism is at least in principle internationalist. Communists in power tend to act like nationalists, of course, as national leaders generally do; nevertheless, Communism and, more broadly, socialism are almost the **only** political movements that proclaim internationalist ideals. (The only other movement now current that can lay any claim to some form of internationalism is [neoliberalism,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism) of which the less said the better.) [Fascism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist) is essentially nationalist in the worst possible sense, in theory and in practice. ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/38 "2009-01-07T18:38:42Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > fascism has not even any ideals or goals that are not evil. If the definition of fascism were “Government’s only function is to kill Jews,” that would be true. But Wiki tells me, in the first sentence, that fascism was “ideology focused on solving economic, political, and social problems .” Solving problems? That doesn’t sound evil to me in itself as a goal. That fascism as applied identified the wrong problems and tried to solve them the wrong ways is amply true – but that doesn’t mean the jokers who came up with it (and remember that political theorists more often resemble ivory tower jerkoffs than they do leering Lex Luthors) were devoid of (misguided) optimistic and idealistic (run when you hear that word) aims. > [@](#): > > 1. Communism (like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, BTW) is in the Enlightenment tradition of Voltaire that exalts rationality; fascism is in the Romantic tradition of Rousseau that exalts irrationality. There’s nothing remotely rational about thinking, after thousands of years of human history, that human nature is going to change so as to make one dude work on behalf of another dude he never met, on a system wide basis. And when he doesn’t, he’ll change his mind after oh hey ten years in the gulag. In short, there is as much basis for saying “fascism gets a bad rap because no one’s really practiced it the right way” as there is for saying that of communism, which is to say, little. In short, neither of them is any great shakes and I think this tends to support my point that awarding “most evil” in a world where man’s inhumanity to man is one of the few constants reduces to angels on pins in the worst instances. It’s kind of like that forensic psychologist who had the gimmicky “Most Evil” show on Discovery, ranking serial killers using his “scientific scale.” Ya know what? 50 way tie for first in my scientific scale. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/39 "2009-01-07T18:46:25Z")
> [@Huerta88](#): > > If the definition of fascism were "Government’s only function is to kill Jews, that would be true. But Wiki tells me, in the first sentence, that fascism was “ideology focused on solving economic, political, and social problems .” That’s **every** ideology; it doesn’t mean they’re all the same. [Fascism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism) is based on the core tenets of radical (even mystical) nationalism; “third way” economics; authoritarianism and totalitarianism; and militance and militarism. The second element is the only one that is in any way defensible and it can be practiced in a non-fascist setting. > [@Huerta88](#): > > There’s nothing remotely rational about thinking, after thousands of years of human history, that human nature is going to change so as to make one dude work on behalf of another dude he never met, on a system wide basis. And when he doesn’t, he’ll change his mind after oh hey ten years in the gulag. I didn’t say it’s rational, I said it **exalts** rationality; that is, it is rational **ist;** which at any rate is better than irrationalist or romantic. Michael Lind explains the difference in [this article:](http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2001/which_civilisation) > [@](#): > > On the secular side of the civilisational divide, there have been three major traditions: humanism, rationalism and romanticism. These three traditions originated in Europe but now have adherents around the world. All three are essentially secular worldviews which do not need to invoke the authority of divine revelation or mystical gnosis (though some romantics are mystics or pantheists and some humanists have been religious believers). In respects other than their common secularism, the three traditions are fundamentally different from one another. > > Humanist civilisation crystallised in Renaissance Italy, before spreading to the Netherlands, Britain, and the US. This liberal, commercial, increasingly democratic civilisation has spread to other nations by emulation (Lafayette’s France, Atatork’s Turkey, Yeltsin’s Russia) and by conquest and conversion (post-1945 Germany and Japan). Humanists seek to ameliorate the problems of social life with the guidance of practical wisdom, derived chiefly from history, literature and custom, with little or no reference to supernatural religion or natural science, with the possible exception of the emergent sociobiology. Humanists tend to be modest as philosophers and cautious as reformers. Examples of great humanist thinkers and statesmen are Petrarch, Erasmus, Bacon, Montaigne, Voltaire, Franklin, Hume, Burke, Smith, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison. > > Rationalism, a world view underlying a number of secular creeds, first crystallised in 17th and 18th-century France. Rationalists reject the humanist distinction between practical wisdom and natural science. The goal of rationalists of all kinds is to devise a science of society, modelled on natural science, which can serve as the basis for the construction of a “rational” social order. Stephen Toulmin makes a useful distinction between the “reasonableness” of Renaissance humanists and the “rationality” of Enlightenment philosophes. The rationalist pantheon includes social engineers like Condorcet, St Simon, Comte, Fourier, Bentham, Marx, Lenin and Ayn Rand. (The “secular humanists” who support world federalism and utopian social reform are really rationalists). > > Romanticism, the third major secular world view, has spread widely from its original homeland, late 18th and early 19th-century Germany. Romantics reject both reasonableness and rationality, they exalt the inspired unreason of the artistic genius, the child, the primitive uncorrupted by civilisation. Rousseau, Emerson, Wagner, Nietszche and Frantz Fanon should be on a list of romantic prophets, and idealist philosophers like Kant and Hegel arguably are closer to romanticism than to humanism or rationalism. > > The American revolution, and the French revolution in its constitutional phases, were humanist. The French terror and the Bolshevik terror were rationalist. The second world war was a struggle of three secular civilisations: humanism (Roosevelt and Churchill), rationalism (Stalin) and romanticism (Hitler). The war by Islamic radicals against the US, Europe and Israel is, among other things, a conflict between religious and humanist civilisation. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169/40 "2009-01-07T19:05:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 1. Communism has high, noble ideals and usually fails to live up to them, or ignores them on “the ends justify the means” grounds; fascism has not even any ideals or goals that are not evil. National renewal, community, national unity, patriotism, discipline, order, social conformity? Those are all fascist “ideals” or fascist “values”, and none of them are neccesarily evil. I’m not entirely convinced that the ideals of Communism are entirely high and noble either. Equality certainly can be a virtue, but the idea that you can reduce all of human behavior to economic and commercial factors seems overly simplistic, and the idea that private property shouldn’t be respected is a justification for theft. > [@](#): > > 1. Communism (like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, BTW) is in the Enlightenment tradition of Voltaire that exalts rationality; fascism is in the Romantic tradition of Rousseau that exalts irrationality. (See the [Pournelle Chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart); see also Bertrand Russell’s _History of Western Philosophy.)_ Both are flawed approaches to public affairs when taken to the extreme, but **any thinking person can see irrationality is essentially far worse.** (Bolding mine.) Why? it’s not obvious. Remember, when Pournelle mentions rationality and irrationality on his chart, he’s talking about the belief that human beings are rational. It’s the idea that society is mechanistic, and that it’s possible to solve societal problems by changing the laws or economic conditions by which people live. So, on that chart, for instance, Communists believe that if you get rid of economic inequality and private ownership, people will live in harmony with each other. Ayn Rand believed if you got rid of limitations to the free market and the idea of selflessness being a virtue, society would become great and everyone would live up to their true potential. (I don’t know why Max Steiner is on there…apparently he thought that the world would be perfect if everyone had a summer place.) Or, as Pournelle himself put it: > [@](#): > > “Attitude toward planned social progress” can be translated “rationalism”; it is the belief that society has “problems,” and these can be “solved”; we can take arms against a sea of troubles. > > Once again we can order the major political philosophies. Fascism is irrationalist; it says so in its theoretical treatises. It appeals to “the greatness of the nation” or to the volk, and also to the fuhrer-prinzip, i.e., hero worship. > > Call that end (irrationalism) the “bottom” of the spectrum and place the continuum at right angles to the previous “statism” variable. Call the “top” the attitude that all social problems have findable solutions. Obviously Communism belongs there. Not far below it you find a number of American Welfare Liberals: the sort of people who say that crime is caused by poverty, and thus when we end poverty we’ll end crime. Now note that the top end of the scale, extreme rationalism, may not mark a very rational position: “knowing” that all human problems can be “solved” by rational actions is an act of faith akin to the anarchist’s belief that if we can just chop away the government, man truly free will no longer have problems. Obviously I think both top and bottom positions are whacky; but then one mark of Conservatism has always been distrust of highly rationalist schemes. Burke advocated that we draw "from the general bank of the ages, because he suspected that any particular person or generation has a rather small stock of reason; thus where the radical argues “we don’t understand the purpose of this social custom; let’s dismantle it,” the conservative says “since we don’t understand it, we’d better leave it alone.” And it might be that Pournellian “rationalism” is inherantly preferable to Pournellian “irrationalism” (Pournelle wouldn’t agree, I don’t think, knowing his political views, but…), but that’s not something that’s going to neccesarily be obvious to “any thinking person”. Edited to Add-I looked at the chart more closely, and saw that he was referring to Max Stirner, which makes more sense than Max Steiner. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanan/480169.md?page=3)