Italy’s PM Meloni proposes extending NATO’s Article 5 to Ukraine without full membership

“You are freaking nuts.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I’m not the one having political power. I forwarded what Meloni said. She is Europe’s most rightwing leader a good friend of Elon Musk. Trump has repeatedly congratulated her for her conservatism and courageous stance on many issues - including har efficient anti- illegal immigration polices.

Meloni knows that the only way to obtain peace is to confront the bully. It’s PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH ! A great woman. Finally someone with some guts!

It probably means that Ukraine would not have to financially contribute to NATO, would not have to spend a minimum 2% of GDP towards its own defense and would not need to abide by NATO rulings.
How nice!

No way we bring Ukraine in NATO. Biden flirting with adding Ukraine to NATO is one of the reasons Putin invaded. Putin does not want to share any more border with a NATO member. Secretary of State under Reagan (James Baker) had a “not one more inch eastward” policy towards Russia. It has worked.

USA exit by late morning would be preferable

All that is certain is Meloni is pro force-the-USA-to-bail-out-Europe-yet-again

Seems like Zeepers (Zelinskyy toadies) and Peepers (Putin bootlickers) are the biggest and most useless loudmouths on Free Republic these days

what an idiot.
such BS would.nt be binding and would risk ww3.
stupid,stupid,stupid

“””””would not have to spend a minimum 2% of GDP towards its own defense”””””

Ukraine will not be in danger of spending less than 2% of GDP on national defense.

"“Right-Wing” to Europe is to the left of JFK."

Yep.

In fact "right wing" is a very imprecise term even to people who are on the right, not just in Europe, but everywhere.

In America we have the term "conservative" that has some foundation in our history and our philosophers. But even so it's not a completely understood term.

This is pretty different than the Left. They have a very consistent definition and understanding of their beliefs. They are all based in Marx and his critique of the Capitalist system, they all favor the anti-colonialist movements of the 1960s. they are mostly explicitly materialist and atheist, they are all "libertines" favoring maximum personal liberty in matters of morality, and they like group rights. "Black rights" "Gay Rights" etc.

"Conservative" isn't nearly as locked down. Reagan was the ideal conservative of the 20th Century, but Trump has repudiated two of the three legs of the "Conservative tripod" that guys like the National Review used to write about. Strong Defense, Free Markets and Free Trade, and the Religious Right.

The mainstream conservative movement, as typified by William Buckley set out to purge anyone who disagreed with him on things. Over time the positions that would get you purged, that is kicked off the pages of National Review, probably no longer welcome at many right-leaning daily papers, kept expanding.

Here's Grok's list of prominent writers purged from National Review:

John T. Flynn
Background: An anti-war libertarian and Old Right figure, Flynn contributed to National Review in its early days.
Reason for Purge: His non-interventionist stance clashed with the magazine’s increasingly hawkish Cold War posture. By the late 1950s, Buckley and the editorial board, favoring a muscular anti-communism, sidelined Flynn and other doves. His views were seen as out of step with the fusionist conservatism Buckley championed.
Murray Rothbard
Background: A libertarian economist and writer, Rothbard helped Buckley with his 1957 book Up from Liberalism and wrote for National Review early on.
Reason for Purge: Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism and opposition to militarism (especially during the Cold War) put him at odds with the magazine’s pro-defense stance. By the late 1950s, he was no longer welcome, part of a broader push against anti-war libertarians.
Revilo P. Oliver
Background: A classicist and early contributor to National Review, Oliver was also a member of the John Birch Society.
Reason for Purge: His virulent anti-Semitism and extreme conspiracy theories became untenable for Buckley, who wanted to distance conservatism from overt bigotry. Oliver was cut loose in the early 1960s as Buckley sought to make the movement more respectable.
Robert W. Welch Jr.
(and the John Birch Society as a whole)
Background: Welch founded the John Birch Society, an anti-communist group that initially had some overlap with National Review’s readership. Buckley even offered Welch publicity in the magazine’s early years.
Reason for Purge: Welch’s wild claims—like calling President Dwight Eisenhower a communist agent—drew Buckley’s ire. In 1962, Buckley denounced Welch in National Review, calling him "far removed from common sense," though he stopped short of fully rejecting the Society’s rank-and-file members. This was a high-profile move to purge the "kooks" from conservatism’s mainstream.
Ayn Rand
Background: The Objectivist philosopher and novelist wasn’t a staff writer but had ideological ties to some early National Review contributors.
Reason for Purge: Buckley and his team, particularly Whittaker Chambers in a famous 1957 review of Atlas Shrugged, rejected Rand’s hyper-capitalist, atheistic philosophy as incompatible with the magazine’s fusion of traditionalism and faith-based conservatism. She was persona non grata by the late 1950s.
Joseph Sobran
Background: A longtime National Review editor and columnist starting in the 1970s.
Reason for Purge: Sobran’s increasingly vocal anti-Israel stance and comments veering into anti-Semitic territory (e.g., questioning Jewish influence in U.S. policy) led to a public rebuke from Buckley in 1993. Buckley eventually fired him that year, ending their professional relationship over what Buckley saw as a breach of ideological decorum.
Pat Buchanan
Background: A conservative commentator and politician, Buchanan wrote for National Review in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Reason for Purge: His paleoconservative views—protectionism, isolationism, and flirtations with nativism—clashed with Buckley’s free-market, internationalist leanings. By 1992, during Buchanan’s presidential run, Buckley distanced National Review from him, criticizing his rhetoric (e.g., calling Congress "Israeli-occupied territory") as divisive and outside the conservative mainstream.
John Derbyshire
Background: A contributor to National Review starting in the late 1990s.
Reason for Purge: In 2012, Derbyshire wrote a racist article for Taki’s Magazine, prompting National Review (under editor Rich Lowry, post-Buckley) to sever ties. While Buckley had died by then (2008), this reflected his legacy of purging overt bigotry—Derbyshire’s views were too far afield from the magazine’s standards.
Christopher Buckley
Background: William F. Buckley’s son, a humorist and writer who contributed to National Review.
Reason for Purge: In 2008, Christopher endorsed Barack Obama in The Daily Beast, leading to his resignation from National Review after backlash from readers. Though not a direct "purge" by his father (who had died earlier that year), it showed the magazine’s intolerance for ideological deviation, a trait Buckley Sr. instilled.
Peter Brimelow
Background: A British journalist who joined National Review in the 1990s under editor John O’Sullivan.
Reason for Purge: Brimelow’s focus on immigration restriction and nativism (later crystallized in his book Alien Nation) grew too controversial. After O’Sullivan’s departure in 1997, Buckley and new editor Rich Lowry moved away from this stance, and Brimelow was phased out by the late 1990s.
John O’Sullivan
Background: Editor of National Review from 1988 to 1997, hand-picked by Buckley.
Reason for Purge: O’Sullivan’s openness to immigration skeptics like Brimelow and Steve Sailer rankled Buckley and the magazine’s neoconservative wing. In 1997, Buckley replaced him with Lowry, signaling a shift toward a more establishment-friendly line.
Groups
Anti-Semites: Buckley explicitly barred anti-Semitic voices from National Review in the 1950s and 1960s, a broad purge targeting figures like Oliver and others tied to fringe publications. This was part of his effort to cleanse conservatism of bigotry.
Segregationists (e.g., George Wallace): While Buckley initially sympathized with Southern states’ rights, he turned against segregationists like Wallace by the late 1960s, denouncing their populism and racism in National Review.
Old Right Isolationists: Beyond Flynn and Rothbard, the broader Old Right—skeptical of foreign entanglements—was marginalized as Buckley built a Cold War-focused conservatism.
John Birch Society Members: Beyond Welch, Buckley kept the Society’s more extreme elements at arm’s length, though he tolerated its grassroots support until it became a liability.
Caveats Not Always a Clean Break: Some, like Rothbard or Flynn, simply stopped appearing in the magazine without a public denouncement. Others, like Sobran and Buchanan, involved more explicit confrontations.
Buckley’s Evolution: His views shifted over time—e.g., he later regretted opposing civil rights legislation—so some "purges" reflected his own changing priorities.
Post-Buckley Era: Figures like Derbyshire and Christopher Buckley were ousted after Buckley’s death, but under the editorial culture he shaped.
This list isn’t exhaustive—National Review’s history is full of lesser-known contributors who faded away—but it captures the major ideological purges tied to Buckley’s vision. He aimed to make conservatism intellectually coherent and politically viable, often at the cost of alienating those who didn’t fit his mold. Whether that mold was too narrow or just right depends on who’s judging.

So "Conservative" isn't as simple, or even a single vector like Leftism. They have this saying they live by: "no enemies to the Left", clearly the Right doesn't have this.

The Alt Right in the run up to the 2016 election used the term Alt-Right as a rejection of "Conservatism" and used the criticism of "what have they conserved?" as a pointed barb jabbed into the mainstream conservative movement.

Of course eventually the Alt-Right imploded, but the division they highlighted lived on in the division between, say, Steve Bannon's Trump supporting right wing and the old-school Reagan Conservative types who all supported Nikki Haley and so on.

Or to put it another way: look how much the GOP has changed, it's almost unrecognizable compared to the GOP of Biden's era when the party nominated in succession John McCain and then Mitt Romney to carry the party standard into the POTUS contest. By 2024 Romney resigned rather than face a bruising Senate race in Utah where a Trumpian was sure to run against him.

So, it's not just in Europe where "Right Wing" isn't that precisely defined, it's here too. Maybe that's a good thing. We can stay flexible and change as things evolve in society. One of my putdowns of the Left when they start in on their tired racial propagandizing is "to some people it's always 1963 on the Selma bridge". Every day, forever.

Their losses in 2024 are, I'm convinced, to some extent due to their rhetoric, positions, and mythology all being tired and old and not longer relevant or meaningful to many people.

Banon uses the term: "popular nationalist" to describe his political ideology.

Very well stated, thank you.

Take your own advice. Europe is not prepared to fight Russia. They are the weakling you mention, however, in this scenario the weakling (Europe) thinks that their big protector (the US) will come to their rescue again.