Buchanan Asks, "What Do We Offer the World?"

WND.com ^ | 05-19-04 | Buchanan, Patrick J.

[A. Pole]

Which he demonstrably is in this piece, when he wonders why the Imam is wrong to deny liberty to those he ostensibly protects and represents.

Before the war, Christians in Iraq were free to worship. If this mess ends well, Iraq will resemble closer our friend - Saudi Arabia (or Iran if it ends bad). BTW, even in Iran there are some churches allowed to exist as opposed to Saudi Arabia.

[Texas_Dawg]

Anyone who professes to be a Christian that says we should stand with Islam is beyond human help.

I've yet to see anything from Pat Buchanan that would lead me to believe he has been saved by Jesus Christ.

He is religious though, for whatever that's worth.

[MEG33]

It is not possible to separate us into good and evil...all Germans and Japanese were not evil,all Americans or even soldiers were not "good"..We nevertheless had a duty to defeat the countries.
We did not do it because our country was perfect...We had segregation,Jim Crow, and other wrong laws...but we did it because it was necessary. We were better, and still we had to cooperate with the murderous Stalin.

This enemy is not concentrated in one country...they are here and everywhere and our useful idiots give support to the notion that they are not really that dangerous..They forget the ideology driven zeal,the devastation they inflict and the fact the Islamofascists truly do want us under sharia or dead.

Getting a democracy in the middle east is a hope and a vision to enable that 7th century part of the world to concentrate on bettering their lives instead of ruining ours. Our country,warts and all, is head and shoulders above Saddam's Iraqi government and the people of Iraq may have a chance at much better days.

We are fighting those who do not want freedom for the Iraqis..They want power. Some are tied to Al Queda.

[A. Pole]

If you were a Christian in Syria or Iran, you would be in the minority. And your life would constantly be in danger.

You know next to nothing about Syria.

[rdb3]

For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.
He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.
A murderer is less to be feared.
The traitor is the plague."

That's what I call apropos.

[normy]

O.K so substitute Syria with Saudi Arabia and my point works. Would a Christian in Saudi Arabia want to move to America if given the chance? Give me a freakin break with that response.

[rdb3]

I think what unites Buchanan and the Islamofacists might be a mutual distrust of a certain persecuted people from the middle east [and New York city].

Heh! I follow. Believe me. And you're right.

[MEG33]

Syria has a way of dealing with their enemies inside the country...They kill them. If they find a nation next door that is troublesome..They occupy it and give it "stability".

[Fraulein]

St. Thomas Aquinas knew the distinction between morality and ethics. They are *not* necessarily the same thing at all.

[normy]

To force the Islamics into a mold, that hasn't worked yet, under the catchphrase of 'spreading democracy' is not 'freedom'

Thats fine, but my response was to the statement of not wanting to move to America because I see how our culture is. True we have some nasty things that go on in America but we also have a lot of good things. In America at least you have a choice of what you want to be.

I could care less about spreading 'democracy' and more about killing terrorists.

[azhenfud]

"They see what is prevalent here in this nation of states. And unfortunately, it's not Christianity."

That's what I was trying to get across in my lame, awkward manner. What THEY see as Christian being represented by the developments (or more appropriately, setbacks) of late is NOT what Christian really is. They try to tell us that strapping bombs to one's waist isn't Islam and probably it isn't. But proof is in deed and perception is everything in the eye of the beholder.

[A. Pole]

O.K so substitute Syria with Saudi Arabia and my point works. Would a Christian in Saudi Arabia want to move to America if given the chance?

Yes. "Substituting" one country with another is not a trivial thing. After Pearl Harbor, America did not fight against Korea. In Syria Christians can worship freely, in Saudi Arabia no churches are allowed and Christian converts can be beheaded according to the law.

If Syria is attacked and changed into Islamic regime it will show how Christian our leadership is.

[ex-snook]

Another great Buchanan article. He speaks truth to power. Pat is right about this as he is right about illegal immigration, NAFTA deals bring job loss, abortion, homosexual practices, and foreign entanglements bring war to our shores. Pat speaks for a conservative America first in defense, first in economy and first in morality.

Krauthammer saw anti-Semitic happenings from the Passion of Christ - so much for his acumen.

[steve-b]

I think what unites Buchanan and the Islamofacists might be a mutual distrust of a certain persecuted people from the middle east [and New York city].
Heh! I follow. Believe me. And you're right.

Is there a "J", Alex?

[billbears]

Agreed. I assumed, wrongly, that Syria would be the same as other parts of the Muslim world. After I typed that, I started thinking about some of the articles posted here, which I think you've even pinged me to, about the Syrian Christians.

[general_re]

Before the war, Christians in Iraq were free to worship. If this mess ends well, Iraq will resemble closer our friend - Saudi Arabia (or Iran if it ends bad).

If, in the process of attacking the current administration, you find yourself defending the Saddam Husseins of the world, perhaps you ought to step back and very carefully consider whether you actually give a damn about the Iraqis at all, or if you simply consider them a convenient stick to use in beating those with whom you happen to disagree. It is difficult to see how anyone interested in actually improving the Iraqi lot in life could proceed from the essential thesis that the tyrant wasn't really so bad after all.

[Paladin2b]

The article is ridiculous on so many levels, but one especially: Buchanan is utterly deluded is he believes that his beloved Middle Class America of the 1950s was anything but HATED by Islamists as much as Britany Spears' America of 2004.

Try googling another anti-Western intellectual: the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, who took a trip to the USA from 1948-1950 and came back convinced that the US was a den of vice. Or check out his book The America Which I Saw (Amrika Min Al Dakhil) in From the Outer World, Harvard UP.

Materialism, violence, attitudes towards death, lack of the spiritual in American churches, lack of art, lack of taste in food and clothing...and not really a whole lot about sex. Some obvious misreadings -- I really have to wonder how anyone living in small town Colorado in 1950 could deduce that homosexuality was about to subvert the Western world -- and there is one sentence where it's obvious that he spent a little too much time studying the female student body: "in the glances of their eyes, their thirsty lips and bodies, the swelling breast, the plump thigh, the fat posterior, the smooth leg left entirely unconcealed." (there is a persistent topos in Islamic writing about the West regarding the babeliciousness of our self-reliant devil-whores, dating back to at least Crusader times.)

But what really seemed to shock him were American death customs. He couldn't believe that someone could make a grim joke about a severe injury in an emergency room, for instance, or that a widow could calmly discuss insurance three days after her husband's passing. And joking at a wake, forget it.

[normy]

If I were a heathen of a foreign land with the knowledge of what America's "freedom" represents today, should the offer of such "freedom" be given, I think I'd just say "No, thank you

That is what I was responding to originaly. I used Syria in my response but you say Syria is a great place for Christians and Saudi Arabia isn't. O.K. substitute Saudi for Syria and the statement " If I were a Christian living in (Syria) Saudi Arabia I would love to live in America.

[Luis Gonzalez]

If Buchanan was black, he'd be Louis Farrakhan.

[A. Pole]

It is difficult to see how anyone interested in actually improving the Iraqi lot in life could proceed from the essential thesis that the tyrant wasn't really so bad after all.

Tell me, where Christians had more freedoms - in Saudi Arabia or in Baath ruled Iraq? Do you care at all?