Buchanan: Greenland is Trump's 'MAGA' idea

The Winchester Star ^ | August 23, 2019 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[2ndDivisionVet]

To those of us of who learned our U.S. history from texts in the 1940s and ‘50s, President Donald Trump’s brainstorm of acquiring Greenland fits into a venerable tradition of American expansionism.

The story begins with colonial officer George Washington’s march out toward Fort Duquesne in 1754 and crushing defeat and near death at Fort Necessity, where, according to myth, he fired the first shot of what would become the French and Indian War.

With the British victory, Washington went home to Virginia, only to be called back in 1775 to lead the Continental Army in America’s War of Independence, which lasted six years, until the victory at Yorktown.

With the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the Americans won title to all the land between the Atlantic and Mississippi, from Canada to Florida.

[Equine1952]

Greenland is a great idea. I want it. I hope DJT brings it home. It’s a lot of land, low overhead, and last I saw great people living there. Bet they could learn America’s history. Hell I’d live there and help them learn it. Bring it, I’m ready

[plain talk]

“President Donald Trump’s brainstorm of acquiring Greenland fits into a venerable tradition of American expansionism.”

Harry Truman pushed the idea in 1946. Trump admitted as much.

[Oscar in Batangas]

At the VERY least, it is the troll of the year (so far) by my Troller-in-Chief.

What’s not to like?

[faithhopecharity]

I like. A lot.

[taterjay]

He needs to make sure when he talks about it that he always says it was Democrat Harry Truman’s idea before his.

[lee martell]

Slightly off topic:
I like Pat. Buchanan. I have appreciated him since he was on the John McLaughlin Show. I think Mr. McLaughlin has been deceased for two years now. Pat is now 80. If he were even 10 years younger, I say he would make a great addition to the Trump Team. Although perhaps it is as with Newt Gingrich. Both are very independent, outspoken and spontaneous men, who often seem to stray off party message.

[aquila48]

Great history lesson!

[wastoute]

Tradin it for Puerto Rico is the best idea I have heard in a long time.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

Puerto Rico.....sucks, but for one reason and one reason only....the crooked, criminal, low life Democrat Party scum & vermin, which has looted, stolen and failed miserably at developing this gem of the Caribbean Basin.

Millions of Puerto Rican American citizens have fled their home island, PR for bright opportunities & productive lives in New York, New Jersey, Florida.

It is a tragedy that so many folks from Puerto Rico cannot see what a great friend and ally they have in our POTUS, Donald J. Trump. Puerto Rico could dominate the Caribbean Basin in Tourism & Manufacturing...if it just got rid of the entire Democrat Party that has filled their greedy pockets...but, have done nothing, zilch, for this great island and its people!!! “SAD”!!!

[Does so]

Denmark lost a tropical paradise when they sold us their Caribbean islands. Making up for it with a Puerto Rico trade would make a sunny return to the Caribbean. :)

[wastoute]

I have lived in some Latin American countries. They are pretty much all like PR. “La Mordida” is a way of life.

[SkyPilot]

I have lived in some Latin American countries. They are pretty much all like PR. “La Mordida” is a way of life.

Bribery is also pretty much the ONLY way in most African countries. You can't drive from one village to the next without being stopped by road blocks with "police" and "officials" who will "check your paperwork." None of your paper work, of course, will be "correct."

Bribe them, and then you can pass. Until you get to the next check point 2 km down the same road.

[SkyPilot]

At the VERY least, it is the troll of the year (so far) by my Troller-in-Chief.

One aspect that must really infuriate the Left is that Greenland is very much a Norse and European nation.

The population (as small as it is at around 56,000) is mostly 88% Greenlandic Inuit, with the remaining 12% ethnic European. However, almost all of the infrastructure and working culture is direct Norse and Dutch.

Remember when Trump had a closed door meeting with Democrats, and he asked them: "Why are we letting in people from Sh_thole nations? Why not let in more people from Norway?"

Boy, did that pi$$ them OFF!

Trump's pursuit of Greenland has to be really breaking their chops.

[nathanbedford]

We are fond of fixing labels on people so I will label Pat Buchanan: Paleoconservative; probably, like my family, supporters in 1954 of Senator Taft when all the neighbors and the rest of the nation liked Ike.

Prewar, these people were called isolationists, during Vietnam they were called non-interventionists or doves when their opposites were called hawks and afterwards, neoconservatives.

The pendulum always swings with black swan events like the Alamo, the sinking of the Maine, the Lusitania, the Zimmerman telegram, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and so on. Pat Buchanan makes very good arguments, for example, that World War I was folly as was America's involvement in it. He tries to make the same argument, unpersuasively, about World War II but more persuasively about Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

He's been a very insightful observer over the decades and one of the few to emerge unscathed from Nixon's inner circle. He is, of course, writing this article tongue-in-cheek. He is actually rueful that we would draw on our history to conduct an aggressive foreign policy yet he surely must know that aggressive progressives are determined to write American history in such a way as to so thoroughly discredit our story that we will withdraw from doing that which only we can do in and for the world. That is why, for example, President Polk, the author of the Mexican War which added the Southwest, is ranked so low on their list of good presidents.

To give a Paleo conservative perhaps more than is his due (a class in which I count myself), we understand that the law of unintended consequences applies to foreign interventions as well as to domestic social engineering but the alternative in a Hobbesian world is to turn the streets over to the thugs as and when America withdraws from its role as policeman. The balance is key, not whether never to intervene but when and why and how.

Those of us who fancy ourselves possessed of a realistic foreign policy approach ought to remind AOC and her gang that a nation's right to exist ultimately depends not on Wilsonian notions of self-determination (often imposed by elitist top-down) but on a nation's capacity to defend its geographical sovereignty. Israel is not a nation state today because of the Balfour Declaration but it is a nationstate because it won a series of wars. Manifest destiny did not extend our borders from sea to shining sea because of kismet, the continent was won by right of conquest.

When Benjamin Franklin observed that the constitutional convention had given us a Republic if we could keep it, his words applied to keeping it safe from foreign enemies no less than from domestic enemies.

[snoringbear]

Also; The United States’ interest in Greenland is not new. In 1867, secretary of state William Seward, then of the Andrew Johnson administration, showed interest in purchasing Greenland and Iceland from Denmark. He also negotiated the Alaska Purchase with the Russian Empire for $7.2 million, which was finalized on March 30, 1867.

[EEGator]

“...for bright opportunities & productive lives in New York, New Jersey, Florida”

There’s a bunch in Reading & Allentown PA, and I wouldn’t call most of them productive.

[Carry me back]

How many liberals can we encourage to move there ?

[Alas Babylon!]

However, almost all of the infrastructure and working culture is direct Norse and Dutch.

I don't think the Dutch have anything to do with Greenland.

[SkyPilot]

Sorry, Danes. Typing early today.