Posted on 09/18/2004 6:07:04 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
Where The Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency. By Patrick J. Buchanan. 264 pp. Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin's Press. $24.95.
Underneath the pugnacious hide of Patrick J. Buchanan beats a heart of pure nostalgia. He longs to return to the high-tariff reign of William McKinley, mourns the passing of such budget-slashing icons as Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater and dedicates his new book to Ronald Reagan, who, he says, ''never took precipitate or rash action'' abroad. Buchanan's reverence for late, great conservatives is unbounded by epoch or nationality. He even praises Urban II, the ''extraordinarily eloquent'' French-born pope who inspired the First Crusade.
The former presidential candidate and longtime journalist has a mission, of course. He wants to marshal this glorious past against ''impersonators'' in and close to the Bush administration who have ''hijacked'' his movement. His enemies list of neoconservatives has unsurprising names: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Irving and William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg. He detests them most of all for promoting the invasion of Iraq, for arrogantly believing it would spark a democratic revolution throughout the Middle East. But the self-described populist conservative is still fighting a war against un-Christian cultural elites. And he charges most of the same neoconservatives with abetting the godless enemy on nearly every major issue -- from gay marriage to abortion to immigration. To save the nation, the right must be cleansed.
Characteristically, Buchanan blasts away at more targets than he hits. His manifesto includes a stirring, if familiar, call to revive America's heavy industries; those who've allowed the manufacturing base to wither, he declares, are guilty of ''economic treason.'' Elsewhere, however, he writes that China poses little threat of war because its ''prosperity depends on us.'' That confident free trader needs to talk to his agitated protectionist alter ego. When not running for president, Buchanan is a regular participant in the shouting matches the networks call public affairs. In his many illogical moments, it shows.
Such belligerence weakens the main thrust of his book: a vigorous argument against the war in Iraq. A traditionalist to his core, Buchanan despises policy intellectuals who would ''define morality for all peoples for all times.'' He points out, correctly, that devout Muslims do not hate the United States because they envy our wealth and freedom, as President Bush would have it. They resist the erotic, feel-good popular culture Americans celebrate and sell around the globe and don't like being occupied by a military whose definition of evildoers clashes with theirs. But Buchanan's defense of the original crusaders negates his cautious relativism. The religious warrior makes an unconvincing apostle of peace.
Alert readers will have spotted another troubling flaw in Buchanan's worldview. His roster of warmongers is made up exclusively of Jews. But it was Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and the president himself -- good Christians all -- who sent all those armed Americans into Iraq. Aside from Wolfowitz, the Jewish neocons could only cheer them on from their op-ed pages, think tanks and talk shows.
Buchanan thinks he can explain this discrepancy between conservatives who decide and those who merely advocate. The neconservatives, he claims, saw that George W. Bush was ignorant about world politics and cleverly persuaded him to think like them. At one point, he compares Richard Perle's ''delight at first meeting the future president'' with Fagin's ''initial encounter with the young Oliver Twist.'' After four decades of close political combat, Buchanan seems unwilling to abandon such abusive rhetoric. It may be as essential to him as God and the flag, even while it confirms his status as a political pariah. Strangely, he doesn't realize that the president, a born-again Christian, needed no special prompting after the attacks of Sept. 11 to declare a new world war between good and evil.
Pat Buchanan's perpetual irritation with American Jews suggests a larger problem with his style of conservatism. The past to which he would like to return is full of imagined, often contradictory tales. High tariffs under the old G.O.P. were a giant subsidy to industrial companies and the regions they dominated, which is why most foes of big government abhorred them. And to claim that Reagan favored using force only to ''defend the country he loved'' ignores the proxy armies his administration sponsored in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Angola and Afghanistan and the 5,000 American troops who overwhelmed tiny Grenada.
Since the mid-1950's, when William F. Buckley Jr. created National Review, most prominent conservatives have sought to remake the world in the image of the America they cherish. The fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Market-Leninism in China and Vietnam seemed to vindicate their labors. To demand that they give up this habit now -- when the United States has many enemies but no true rivals -- is naive. Buchanan writes that ''a rebellion is brewing among principled and populist conservatives'' against the quisling hierarchy that rules the Republican Party. But who are these people and why is their revolt so quiet?
The ideologue is caught in a bind of his own choosing. Antiwar liberals can applaud when he writes: ''In 2003, the United States invaded a country that did not threaten us, did not attack us and did not want war with us, to disarm it of weapons we have since discovered it did not have.'' But we cringe at every aspect of his cultural politics. Christian traditionalists love his stands against abortion and gay marriage, but they burn, like President Bush, to convert the benighted. Buchanan is thus left with a casual audience in the millions but a following that is probably a good deal smaller than the 449,000 votes (including those excuse-me ones from Palm Beach County) that he drew in the 2000 election.
In his call to emulate an ideal right that never existed, this tough-talking Jeremiah neglects the practice of leaders from Disraeli to Reagan who managed to thrive in a modern age. Conservatives have prospered only when they adapted their principles to the flow of history. As Tancredi, the young aristocrat in Giuseppe di Lampedusa's great novel, ''The Leopard,'' put it, ''If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.''
Michael Kazin, the co-author of ''America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960's,'' is writing a biography of William Jennings Bryan. He teaches history at Georgetown University.
Let me get this straight. We give Israel billions of dollars, even though Israel has plenty of weapons to fight their incessant war. But Israel can't use their weapons because of PR? PR for who? The whole dang region already hates them. And if they have plenty of weapons, what are they using our billions of dollars for?
Yes, yes, yes, you have to keep saying over and over again how much you respect Adolph Hitler and the other adversary. You have a real fan club going.
What I'm doing is telling the truth, and stating it in such a way that it shouldn't even be controversial.
I think this has turned into something completely different than what we thought we were discussing.
We may pull this Iraq thing out, and I hope we do because I supported it and still do, even if begrudgingly so. Our Soldiers well-being demand my support, and they'll always have it, but that doesn't mean that this Iraq invasion was a good thing. It may turn out to be that it was the absolute only and best thing to do, but only time and distance will reveal that.
Either way though, President Bush will go down in History as a man who tried to change the course of History for the betterment (sp?; word?) of man.
I understood your post perfectly. And I agree, it's clear others here are taking some of your words completely out of context.
You lose all credibility referencing Bill Buckley. Might as well quote Bob Dole. Talk about losers.
The truth is, "respecting Adolph Hitler" is an untenable position. When you are digging a hole you don't want to be in, you should stop digging.
Ok the real reason comes out.
Glazov is dishonest about Demjanjuk. Buchanan was heroic in saving his life. He was indeed NOT "Ivan the Terrible" and it has not been proven that he was a guard at another camp. Even if he was, that's not what he was charged with and being a guard is not necessarily a war crime. "Ivan the Terrible" was a monster. Demjanjuk was not "Ivan" and Americans should be ashamed that this frame up took place here and that only the Israeli courts had the integrity to do the right thing.
Bob Dole is an American patriot. I respect Bob Dole and thank him for his service.
The voices in your head.
Thank you for acknowledging that. Sometimes a little reassurance goes a long way. Forgive me if I sound polemic, but I think this thread provides some excellent examples of how the conservative movement has sold its soul--and its mind--to the G.O.P.
My blood's beginning to boil again. I'd better go to bed soon.
Like I said, Pat is a stopped clock. It is really sad because he was a powerful and charismatic conservative until some spring went sproing and tweaked his thinking.
I've always wondered what caused it, or if it was always there, brooding under his surface and it just finally bubbled to the top.
LOL....
What is a losing proposition is your assumption that there is no way you could be wrong about Pat. Do you know him personally? Can you quote his anti-semitic writing? Even Buckley wouldn't call him an anti-semite, and he was quite displeased with some of his ramblings. But you put an accusation like that out there, it's incumbent upon you to prove it.
And I completely agree.
Succinct and germane
Do you know him personally?
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