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.
That always cracks me up.
Pres. Bush : "... and furthermore an invasion of Iraq will allow our special forces and human intelligence easier access into, and out of, Syria and Iran without them knowing. Just don't tell anybody, it's a secret."
Can' have much respect for a guy who endorses Viagra.
With all the vanities I have seen recently, I think perhaps you should consider making this paragraph into one.
Was this part of the sell before the invasion, and can you give me a link to what you've posted? Not calling your word into question, would just like to see what speech that came from prior to the invasion.
You're not series are you?
And here I thought it was the fact that he fought on our side in WWII that would be the sticking point.
No. But I'm not hurling accusations at him. You are! Where are the links to his purported anti-semitic writings, where are the quotes. For someone so sure that he is an anti-semite, you should have those links, those quotes at the ready. Defend your position!
You're unbvelievable! Demjanjuk was cleared by the Israeli Supreme Court. The court determined that there was insufficient evidence that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible. Why would Buchanan apologize?
Without claiming to guess your religious preferences, I just want to point out that by that logic one must consider, for example, Christianity to be an untenable religion. Jesus, after all, commands his faithful to (gasp!) love their enemies, and (quelle horreur!) pray for those who persecute them. But even assuming I hate someone's guts, it's entirely possible to respect them all the same.
I have not dug any holes. I have said nothing even remotely offensive to anyone who takes it at face value. YOU have created a controversy that never existed by completely ignoring anything that you didn't want to see. I suppose I could speculate on why you chose to do that, but I think it best not to pass judgment on anyone's motives. I am only accountable for my own heart. So let me say this: I do not apologize for what I said. Nor will I ever apologize for what I said.
I respect Bob Dole for that. But that doesn't give him a free pass. Just like John Kerry doesn't get a free pass.
Please don't pretend you are religious to me. It is so unseemly. Just leave it alone. You've done enough damage for one night.
I am serious. What speech is that from? I'd like to read it. I'm ready to admit I was wrong, but I would like to see the speech, and I would like to know that the speech was delivered prior to the invasion before doing that.
I know a cobra is venomous. I don't have to carry its poison and give it to you to prove it. Buchanan is a lost cause and has been for years. It's quite sad but we are fortunate he left the Republican Party. I wish all his fans would too.
What I don't get is that this is seen as a Bush-bashing book when he says that a sKerry presidency would be too dangerous to risk. He might criticize the current GOP, wrongly in many areas as his isolationist foreign policy is inconsistent at best, but he knows the stakes of this particular ball game.
I was trying to point out the absurdity of telling the world our secret plans and telling everyone not to tell anybody. But you didn't understand the absurdity of doing such a thing, so it didn't work on you.
Never meant to imply I knew your religion. I apologize if it came accross that way. What I referring to is how completely blind to the facts people become when the issue of anti-semitism comes up.
Look at the posts on this thread, people seem unable to get over this anti-semitism issue, but they really offer no proof of it. They come up with lame arguments like Buchanan thought John Demjanjuk was innocent and never offered an apology (even thought the Israeli Supreme Court let him off). Nobody ever mentions that Denjanjuk was a Soviet soldier who was captured by the Germans.
Jesus also kicked the moneylenders from the temple and told his followers to arm themselves. It is entirely possible to fight your enemy while praying that he/she will experience a true conversion and relationship with Christ that will lead them to the Lord's grace.
I do, however, agree that respect for Hitler is untenable. But for fairness, do you criticize Gov. Schwarzenegger for his comments on respecting Hitler?
They can't. They know that they can win by just screaming anti-semite.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.