Was the Holocaust Inevitable? ( Patrick J. Buchanan )

townhall.com ^ | June 20, 2008 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[Hacksaw]

He’s considereed an anti-semite b/c some Jews don’t like him.

He's considered one because he exposed the John Demjanjuk fraud. Those who were embarassed have never let up since.

[wtc911]

It’s commonly accepted that the Final Solution was decided at Wannsee in 1942.

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And it is fact that the Nazis were mass murdering Jews by the tens of thousands prior to that. One at a time by bullet was just too inefficient. Wannsee fixed that.

[elhombrelibre]

I bet they’d appreciate it the same way Cindy Sheehan’s son would appreciate her undermining of the war.

[sobieski]

Nope; p 310 Chapter heading “Hitler’s Pogrom”: For what happened to the Jews of Europe, Hitler and his collaborators in the unspeakable crimes bear full moral responsibility. The just punishment for people who participate in mass murder is death...

[sobieski]

Umm...WWII is over. Long over.

[elhombrelibre]

I think for a lot of real conservatives that’s page one stuff, not page 310.

[Peter Libra]

Churchill was a gentleman? Tell it to the Irish.

>> Whoa there. My statement was that Chamberlain was a gentleman. As a working class Englishman bought up on an absolute socialistic view of Churchill, I plead not guilty. Too long a tale here but, Churchill's put down of the impoverished working class at the General Strike of 1926, is something else. Chamberlain never wavered either, but he had more finesse.

I will not knock Churchill here, I have no brief for him. As has been stated, the man was a product of an unkind repressive class system- that is if one is of the underclass. The man was simply what they had carved out of him. IMHO

[sobieski]

The book is chronological, dating back to the 19th century. The book starts w/ a story from 1895, then moves back a bit more in time. The Genocides of WWII are not central to the thesis. A book about something else is not necessarily a book about the Jewish Holocaust. So, no, a conservative does not have to insist that every WWII book is about that one topic.

[sobieski]

Sorry; my mistake.

[Peter Libra]

Ok and thanks. This is an interesting thread. Please excuse a little digression.

The life of Winston Churchill is something that would indicate his life and times. He was beaten raw at the English so-called Public School. He became them. The superior class stance was pounded into him. The Nazi's probably used the same tactic with youth. They became what they first feared.

A contrast was Clement Atlee, his Socialist successor. The man dedicated his life to the poor of Stepney,London. He could have been a moderate playboy on a guaranteed income. He served in WW1. He went on to defeat Churchill. Alas, Britain was scuppered and austerity killed his new government. (1945-1951). For me, the man was a saint.

Please excuse this off topic rant.

[sobieski]

It’s an interesting addition to this American, since Churchill looms large (w/ Chamberlain) in the topic at hand.

[sobieski]

Thid most technological country couldn’t see that killing people one by one w/ bullets was inefficient until 1942, even though they had long planned that destruction? Doesn’t seem likely.

[elhombrelibre]

This thread is about a recent Buchanan editorial on the Holocaust and it's inevitability, not his book that reinforces his isolationist faith. You may want to talk about his book, but it's not what the thread is about.

[fieldmarshaldj]

The Civil War was bigger than just one General. It’s irrelevent where I come from to draw the conclusion that he would’ve indeed been betraying his state had he accepted Lincoln’s offer (which, as I stated earlier, in those days, ones state was viewed AS ones country). And I do not consider it misguided by any stretch.

My roots are mostly Northern (I only just missed being born and raised in NYC), aside from an ancestor who was briefly in the South in the very early 1800s but had moved to the midwest well before the CW started, so I don’t approach this with a pro-Southern bias. The CW was an awful situation we ended up in. As a fan of John Adams well above that of Jefferson, I wish that we had somehow been able to have put the issue of slavery to rest at the founding of our country (or at the very least, had a timed phase out). Sadly, I know that both sections of the country wouldn’t have been able to unite against the English had the issue not been set aside for later.

Back to Lee again, I’ll go so far as to say had he betrayed Virginia, he would’ve put himself at risk for assassination and his estate would’ve probably been burned to the ground in retaliation. His betrayal would’ve increased the anger of his Southern and Virginia countrymen rather than necessarily demoralized it. Had he survived the war, he’d have been one of the most reviled and divisive figures in our nation’s history. He took the only course of action that could be taken to keep his honor and reputation intact. I’ll also add that the same thing would’ve gone for Northern Copperheads undermining the Union, such as Ohio’s Clement Vallandigham. He may have been cheered on for attempting to cause dissension in Ohio by Southerners, but he was just as guilty of betraying his own state.

I do have to ask you why you consider standing with one’s state to be misguided (in the context of those times) ?

And, yes, I have been to Arlington and visited Lee’s home.

[sobieski]

Ok. The column derives from the book, so my mistake.

[elhombrelibre]

Hey, it's okay. The thread has wondered on and off topic. But the main thing is, and this is true of many “intellectuals” like Pat, that his ideas will have little bearing on what happens. The Arabs have a saying that “the dog barks, but the caravan continues.” Pat's didactic book to promote isolationism by undermining the war nearly everyone considered the "good war," as many have called WWII, is not going to matter in the long run. Few will buy it, and even fewer still will read it. Pat's efforts to stop the removal of Saddam failed. In essence, we made it possible for Saddam's people to try him, hang him, create a constitution, and begin self-rule, all against Pat's advice. We're going to stop Iran from becoming an emergeny threa no matter what Pat says. Pat can become apoplectic; it’ won't matter. He doesn't really matter to anyone now but the Liberals in the MSM as a way to embarrass conservatives. And his isolationism is like a Russian saying. “When a man only has a hammer, he treats everything as if it were a nail.” Pat only has his ideology of isolationism. Not even America matters as much. He's become a sad, bitter, 2.5% presidential wanna-be. He'll get a little money from his crank theories, but he's essentially done as an influence in America.

[sobieski]

I think you’re wrong on PJB The book is in the top 100 on Amazon; there are 46 reviews and 2 discussion boards. It’s making sales.

Paleo conservatism is a real and important part of the Right. GWB himself came into office saying we needed a more ‘humble’ foreign policy. Pat’s views that we risk our Republic when we run an Empire has more than a few adherents. He simply views foreign policy as: What is good for the most Americans. Nothing wrong with that.

He’s also saying that WWII was Unecessary, and that a war that killed 50million civilians is not exactly ‘good’, especially when it finished and we left one genocidal despot to hold half of Europe and another to control China. It was not good for the Jews nor for the Poles to be so devastated.

As for Iraq, clearly that was a mistake that has cost lots of money and lives, and hurt the Repulican party. There simply were no WMD. Whether Iraq is a dictatorship or democracy is not an American concern, certainly not enough to have people maimed or killed over. Pres. Bush made a big mistake. As for Iran, it does not threaten the US as much as high oil prices do. Pres. Bush won’t attack w/o an AUM resolution, and he simply won’t get it.

Say what you want, but PJB has been at the front lines for the Right more than I have (and I’m betting you have), whether w/ Nixon in Watergate times, or w/ Pres. Reagan, or in taking on the Rino GHWB, or in tilting FL to GWB. He’s far from a joke, just b/c some don’t like him.

[wtc911]

Believe what you will, The history is clear.

[annalex]

Minority opinions matter. Not all of them, buit some of them. All majority opinions that we now take for granted at one point were minority opinions. It was a minority opinion that Japan will attack the US; that arms race can be won for the West; that the Soviet Union will peacefully disintegrate; that ragtag mujahedeen militias are a global security threat; that the earth is not flat.

The Paleocon views have a long intellectual history in America; sometime they add to the conservative choir, sometime they are out of synch with it. I don’t think the notion that American should be a nation state like any other, serving its own national interest above lofty abstractions, is an idea that is going away.

[wardaddy]

because they saw Stalin as an ally aginst the Nazis. and they did not want to fight Hitler and Stalin at the same time

and so far at least Stalin’s territorial appetite had been less voracious