Posted on 02/13/2005 2:58:54 PM PST by sharpink
I hate NPR....and their use of our tax dollars. However, I must tell you (completely different subject than this thread), yesterday I saw a 4-member panel debate that involved someone from NPR. The individual was asked about journalists who receive hate-mail/email, etc. He had to admit that the angriest and most threatening mail they get is when they write or speak such things as "there is no evidence that Kerry would have won Ohio." In other words, it is the looney Left that is actually the most hateful, mean, and even dangerous.
They are in different leagues. Best indication is that apparently a society (and her prez) cannot simultaneously be realistic and idealistic.
MR. BUCHANAN: The president of the United States was profoundly mistaken. He has misdiagnosed the malady. He has misdiagnosed the reason for the attack, Tim. The United States was not attacked because we are free. Bin Laden was not attacking the Bill of Rights. We were attacked because ... the United States' military and political presence is massive over there. Bin Laden in his fatwah, his statement of declaration of war on the United States, said the infidels were standing on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia. They want us out of the Middle East. They don't care whether we have a separation of church and state.
If we agree with the demands of Bin Laden, the logic dictates that we should get out of any place they would call sacred. Those terrorists who attack Spain did not stop with Spain's withdrawal from Iraq, but continue, because they want back what they lost 600 years ago. Nigeria that was mostly Christian about 30-50 years ago is a battlefield on the Islamists bloody borders. Same as Philippines, same as many other places from Africa to Asia, and Europe soon to be. Appeasement has an unbanding logic of never stopping. You might think that one small demand is reasonable, but then there will be another, and another, and another...
Newt Gingrich calls them well: Irreconcilable wing of Islam. Pat is making a huge mistake going from understanding the enemy to agreeing with the enemy. If you can't reconcile the differences with the enemy you should defeat it. There are different ways of doing it smartly including diplomacy, promoting democracy, using force, threatening using force, allying with moderates, etc, etc. There is only one that must be absent there: don't cut and run to hide.
There is exactly one which is democratic: Iraq. No thanks to Pat.
You've got it.
That surprises me not at all. A couple quick trips to DU would show anyone, why.
There were 2 heads expolding when Buchanan made that remark about Israel. I almost didn't survive the above either.
It always circles back to the Jews, doesn't it Pat.
But I think Buchanan's problem is greater than that. He's declared war upon the "neo-cons" that he perceives have hijacked conservatism in America. They're for US intervention (e.g., Iraq) in an era where we're the only superpower, and believe in "American exceptionalism." In order to take issue with the neo-cons, Buchanan, fighting for the "paleos," is isolationist. His viewpoint wasn't realistic in the 1930s; it's certainly no realisitic now. I'm not so sure Buchanan is guilty of anti-semitism; it's simply that most of the neo-cons are Jewish, and pro-Israel.
The fact that a man suffers for his beliefs does not add anything to the logic of his position. It only attests to his courage.
Pat Buchanan has also suffered for his beliefs, and has gone from being one of the favorite spokesmen for Republican Conservatives to one isolated from many Republicans as a result of a vicious smear campaign against him in 1999. (See Fair Play For Pat Buchanan.)
Shransky's argument is platitudinous. Nowhere in the transcript does he even discuss the qualifications for suffrage in the future he envisions. The idea of turning much of the world over to an unknown class of decision makers--for that is the practical aspect of what he proposes--is looney-tunes. Can you imagine running a company by hiring people at random to take the major decision making positions? Of course not! This "Democracy" mantra is a form of cant that needs to be challenged, not genuflected before.
Democracy works in Switzerland, for the same reason that it works in a small New Hampshire town. It does not work in many Third World countries, where the same combination of factors are not present. In fact, it can result in some incredibly cruel results. (See Democracy In The Third World.)
William Flax
Please. Buchanan suffers from self-inflicted wounds.
He was viciously smeared. But just what is the point? Shransky, then, also suffered from self-inflicted wounds. If being punished for your opinions is sauce for the goose, it is sause for the gander, as well. (Please, now, I am not suggesting either disputant is effeminate, I am simply invoking a familiar cliche.)
Neither am I convinced that he is anti-semetic.....though with each passing year, I question it more. I'd like to think he's simply caught up in the persona and position he has staked out in order to maintain a profile. In other words, I really wonder how fervently he believes his own stuff.....vs how fervently he wants a platform, a paycheck, a legacy, and/or relevance.
I think he's sincere in his ideology, but his ideology represents a minority wing of modern American conservatism. Buchanan wants to harken back to a time when conservatism wasn't simply a minority viewpoint in America, but a minority viewpoint within the Republican Party. Buchanan's brand of conservative never won any elections of signficance, and never even won a nomination within the Republican Party. Reagan came along and gave conservatism a new face -- a positive one, one based on possibilities, not the dour, negative face that Buchanan would put on it. It's no coincidence that the "neo-cons" whom Buchanan is at war with broke with old liberalism and came over to the conservative way of thinking mainly because of Ronald Reagan. Without them, and without Reagan, the conservatism of Pat Buchanan would be a backwater community of political cranks who would continue doing what they do best -- complain.
marking for later
I see that I'm not the only one who views populism and conservatism as mutally exclusive terms. You can't be both at the same time.
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