# Pat Buchanon..Wow. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 16, 2004, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343 "2004-05-16T00:32:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/21 "2004-05-16T04:21:51Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I don’t understand this statement. The Vietmnam war was the successful struggle for Vietnamise self determination in the face of outside ideological opperession, while the fall of the Berlin wall was the beginning of the reunification of the German People, 1870 and Bismark all over again. If anything, they mark the _re-emergence_ of nationalism, Well, I am speaking from an American point of view. The two events in and of themselves may have (arguably) been successful examples of Nationalism (Vietnam was mroe the defeat of Imperialism than Nationalism), but they symbolized and end to an age of Nationalistic thinking, at least for the West (much of the planet, sadly, trails far behind). ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/22 "2004-05-16T04:25:22Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > Sadly, I disagree with you. All of these things can and have happened for at least short periods. The government controls the press by not allowing access. That happens at Dover Airforce Base. It happens in Iraq. It happens when they do not release all photos of abuse to the press. These are just corrent examples. Fair enough. However, those examples to leak out, and when they do, they reach a much larger audience much more quickly than ever possible before, and that audience is able to speak back with a louder voice. This is one of the things that sped the downfall of the Soviets - the government couldn’t censor the news as easily with things being faxed and stuff. > [@](#): > > Just last night on Bill Moyers, a woman discussed the potential for rising nationalism in this country because of the blending of religion with patriotism in the extreme. That is simply for the extreme. We are also in an age where things are questioned more openly and easily than ever before. I mean, nationalism won’t die overnight, and it will probably always be around - it always HAS been around, before it was defined as a specific way of thinking - but it won’t have the same kind of polarizing power it held in Nazi Germany or the Cold War. ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/23 "2004-05-16T08:03:22Z")
> [@Frostillicus](#): > > You know, I was wondering why I rarely see Pat Buchanan on TV anymore, and I guess I now know why. He isn’t talking from the approved script. He’s on Joe Scarborough (another conservative Republican who has often come out against Bush’s lack of fiscal responsibility and lately, against how Bush is mismanaging Iraq) on MSNBC regularly. Pat has also acted as guest host when Joe is off. And occasionally, Pat shows up on Hardball also. ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/24 "2004-05-16T10:28:14Z")
> [@](#): > > Is he wrong? > > Of course he isn’t. We need to get the United States back on the course we were on for 200+ years. Before Bushco usurped power and veered us off course. But that’s not what Buchanan believes. He believes we need to get back on the course this country was on before, say, McKinley took office. He’s not attacking Bush so much as he’s continuing his attack on the past century of American foreign policy. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/25 "2004-05-16T15:01:17Z")
Bachanan is an isolationist. And just a hair shy of being a white nationalist. There are plenty of people from all over the political spectrum who were and are against the war. Pat is hardly unique. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/26 "2004-05-16T15:10:23Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Bachanan is… just a hair shy of being a white nationalist. Do you have a good citation for this? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/27 "2004-05-16T15:20:12Z")
> [@SimonX](#): > > Do you have a good citation for this? Not handy. Have you never heard him talk about immigration? He’s on record as wanting to allow immigration from European countries but not from other [non-white] areas. Maybe saying he’s just a “hair shy” is an exageration, but his overall political philosophy has a lot of overlap with standard WN thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Salviati](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Salviati](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salviati)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/28 "2004-05-16T15:30:03Z")
> [@Frostillicus](#): > > You know, I was wondering why I rarely see Pat Buchanan on TV anymore, and I guess I now know why. He isn’t talking from the approved script. Doesn’t he have his own show on MSNBC? You can add me to the chorus of people thinking that this doesn’t mean much. On the other hand, the man has already [deposed on corrupt POTUS,](http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/17/deep.throat.facts/) , so you never know ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/29 "2004-05-16T16:02:29Z")
Why does everybody keep calling Buchanan a “fascist” and saying he is not a “real conservative”? Yes, he is a racist and an anti-semite, but that doesn’t make him a fascist. Fascists believe in the totalitarian power of a centralized national state; Buchanan is a states’ rights decentralist. Fascists believe in aggressive military imperialism; Buchanan is an isolationist. And not a conservative? No, he just represents a different stream in the American conservative tradition than the big-business conservatism and foreign-policy neoconservatism that are now in the ascendant in Washington. Buchanan and his new political organization, the America First Party ([http://www.americafirstparty.org/](http://www.americafirstparty.org/)), are **populist, nativist, isolationist, paleoconservatives.** They represent a tradition that goes back to the Know Nothing Party of the early 19th Century, the Populist Party of the late 19th, and the America First! isolationist movement of the pre-WWII years, plus the Catholic “radio priest” Father Coughlin. (Buchanan is Catholic – which probably explains why he doesn’t just find a home in the religious-conservative Constitution Party – it’s dominated by evangelical Protestants.) The America Firsters hate Wall Street as much as they hate Washington. They oppose immigration – ostensibly for economic and cultural reasons, but you don’t have to get very close to smell the racism in their thinking. They oppose all American military adventures abroad except in cases of clear self-defense – Buchanan has even written a book, _A Republic, Not an Empire,_ arguing that in World War II, the U.S. should have stayed out of Europe and let Hitler do his thing. They oppose all internationalist thinking and even believe the U.S. should pull out of the U.N. – and, of course, NAFTA and WTO. Well, a lot of leftists believe we should pull out of them, too. If you look closely, you’ll find the America Firsters do have some common ground with some streams of the Republican Party – but they also have common ground with some leftists and even some common ground with the Libertarians. Once their party really gets off the ground, assuming it ever does, who can say where they will seek allies? Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/30 "2004-05-16T16:28:24Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Yes, he is a racist and an anti-semite, but that doesn’t make him a fascist. Do you have good citations for these charges? ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/31 "2004-05-16T16:52:48Z")
> [@Reeder](#): > > We need to get the United States back on the course we were on for 200+ years. Before Bushco usurped power and veered us off course. Just nother nitpick but what is this course you are alluding to? Are you saying, _you_ **Reeder** , that US foreign policy was all nice and honest before Bush? **Reeder** are you ill? ---
**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:** [May 16, 2004, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/32 "2004-05-16T16:59:04Z")
> [@Zagadka](#): > > (Vietnam was mroe the defeat of Imperialism than Nationalism) What’s the difference, as you see it? ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/33 "2004-05-16T18:41:35Z")
> [@SimonX](#): > > Do you have good citations for these charges? [FAIR on Pat Buchanan](http://www.fair.org/reports/buchanan-bigot.html): > [@](#): > > Buchanan referred to Capitol Hill as “Israeli-occupied territory.” (St. Louis Post Dispatch, 10/20/90) > > During the Gulf crisis: “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.” (“McLaughlin Group,” 8/26/90) > > In a 1977 column, Buchanan said that despite Hitler’s anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was “an individual of great courage…Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.” (The Guardian, 1/14/92) > > Writing of “group fantasies of martyrdom,” Buchanan challenged the historical record that thousands of Jews were gassed to death by diesel exhaust at Treblinka: “Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody.” (New Republic, 10/22/90) Buchanan’s columns have run in the Liberty Lobby’s Spotlight, the German-American National PAC newsletter and other publications that claim Nazi death camps are a Zionist concoction. > > Buchanan called for closing the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which prosecuted Nazi war criminals, because it was “running down 70-year-old camp guards.” (New York Times, 4/21/87) > > Buchanan was vehement in pushing President Reagan – despite protests – to visit Germany’s Bitburg cemetery, where Nazi SS troops were buried. At a White House meeting, Buchanan reportedly reminded Jewish leaders that they were “Americans first” – and repeatedly scrawled the phrase “Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews” in his notebook. Buchanan was credited with crafting Ronald Reagan’s line that the SS troops buried at Bitburg were “victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.” (New York Times, 5/16/85; New Republic, 1/22/96) > > After Cardinal O’Connor criticized anti-Semitism during the controversy over construction of a convent near Auschwitz, Buchanan wrote: “If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O’Connor of New York seeks to soothe the always irate Elie Wiesel by reassuring him ‘there are many Catholics who are anti-Semitic’…he speaks for himself. Be not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests ready to assume the role of defender of the faith.” (New Republic, 10/22/90) > > The Buchanan '96 campaign’s World Wide Web site included an article blaming the death of White House aide Vincent Foster on the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad – and alleging that Foster and Hillary Clinton were Mossad spies. (The campaign removed the article after its existence was reported by a Jewish on-line news service; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2/21/96.) ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/34 "2004-05-16T18:50:07Z")
On African-Americans > [@](#): > > After Sen. Carol Moseley Braun blocked a federal patent for a Confederate flag insignia, Buchanan wrote that she was “putting on an act” by associating the Confederacy with slavery: “The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance,” Buchanan asserted. “How long is this endless groveling before every cry of ‘racism’ going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?” (syndicated column, 7/28/93) > > On race relations in the late 1940s and early 1950s: “There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The ‘negroes’ of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours.” (Right from the Beginning, Buchanan’s 1988 autobiography, p. 131) > > Buchanan, who opposed virtually every civil rights law and court decision of the last 30 years, published FBI smears of Martin Luther King Jr. as his own editorials in the St. Louis Globe Democrat in the mid-1960s. “We were among Hoover’s conduits to the American people,” he boasted (Right from the Beginning, p. 283). > > White House advisor Buchanan urged President Nixon in an April 1969 memo not to visit “the Widow King” on the first anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, warning that a visit would “outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse… Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.” (New York Daily News, 10/1/90) > > In a memo to President Nixon, Buchanan suggested that “integration of blacks and whites – but even more so, poor and well-to-do – is less likely to result in accommodation than it is in perpetual friction, as the incapable are placed consciously by government side by side with the capable.” (Washington Post, 1/5/92) > > In another memo from Buchanan to Nixon: “There is a legitimate grievance in my view of white working-class people that every time, on every issue, that the black militants loud-mouth it, we come up with more money… If we can give 50 Phantoms [jet fighters] to the Jews, and a multi-billion dollar welfare program for the blacks…why not help the Catholics save their collapsing school system.” (Boston Globe, 1/4/92) > > In a column sympathetic to ex-Klansman David Duke, Buchanan chided the Republican Party for overreacting to Duke and his Nazi “costume”: “Take a hard look at Duke’s portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against white folks.” (syndicated column, 2/25/89) > > Trying to justify apartheid in South Africa, he denounced the notion that “white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this.” (syndicated column, 2/7/90) He referred admiringly to the apartheid regime as the “Boer Republic”: “Why are Americans collaborating in a U.N. conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions?” (syndicated column, 9/17/89) On Immigrants And People Of Color > [@](#): > > In a September 1993 speech to the Christian Coalition, Buchanan described multiculturalism as “an across-the-board assault on our Anglo-American heritage.” > > “If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?” (“This Week With David Brinkley,” 1/8/91) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/35 "2004-05-16T18:54:55Z")
> [@SimonX](#): > > Do you have good citations for these charges? I was curious, myself, about whether Buchanan deserves to be called a racist, as he often is, so I started a GD thread: “Does Patrick Buchanan get a bad rap?” – [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=220541](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=220541). The consensus was that he is, indeed, a racist; several posters provided cites to relevant statements of Buchanan’s. However, last time I visited the America First Party’s website, there was a link to an organization called “Jews for gun ownership,” or something like that. Strange bedfellows, you know. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/36 "2004-05-16T19:07:33Z")
[QUOTE=Alessan] [QUOTE=Zagadka] Even the age of Nationalism is over. It ended with Vietnam, and its death knell was that of the Berlin Wall. > [@](#): > > I don’t understand this statement. The Vietmnam war was the successful struggle for Vietnamise self determination in the face of outside ideological opperession, while the fall of the Berlin wall was the beginning of the reunification of the German People, 1870 and Bismark all over again. If anything, they mark the _re-emergence_ of nationalism, American Nationalism seem to be meant, in context. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/37 "2004-05-16T21:04:32Z")
I’m not sure Americans ever truly grasped the concept of nationalism, actually. You guys love your country because it represents freedom, or democracy, or capitalism, or the Constitution, or some other abstract ideal. _Real_ nationalists love they’re country because it’s their country. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/38 "2004-05-16T21:10:44Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I’m not sure Americans ever truly grasped the concept of nationalism, actually. You guys love your country because it represents freedom, or democracy, or capitalism, or the Constitution, or some other abstract ideal. _Real_ nationalists love they’re country because it’s their country. Pfft, how can you love a country that was _given_ to you by some supernatural sky-creature. _Real_ nationalists love a country because they have built it themselves and took it from the sea. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/39 "2004-05-16T21:16:44Z")
> [@Zagadka](#): > > You can not win. The tighter you close your fist, the more systems will slip through your fingers. 😛 Do you ever get the feeling that Rumsfeld, Cheney et al. were probably rooting for Governor Tarkin in that movie? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343/40 "2004-05-16T21:23:38Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > _Real_ nationalists love a country because they have built it themselves and took it from the sea. Atlantis? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pat-buchanon-wow/245343.md?page=3)