I'm not a "Pat Hater". I agreed with many of the things Buchanan had to say about the culture war, immigration, abortion, the second amendment, and a fortress American strategy.
However, his stuff about Hitler came awful close to an apologia for Nazism. I don't like it when liberals apologize or rationalize for communism either.
The 2000 campaign, in which Pat received a $12,000,000 gift from the taxpayer, was the final straw for me, and many others sympathetic, but not committed to the man.
Buchanan's whining that his pathetic 0.5% showing in the popular vote was due to a media and debate freeze-out has some validity, but even his counterpart on the left, Nader managed 4%.
The American people made the only judgement that counts about Buchanan last November. Pat's quixotic campaigns for President were totally about enriching his coffers and bloating his ego. The man may be a good pundit, but he would make an awful leader.
Only the cult of personality types can't see this now.
Pat is for America first, last and only and for that he is demonized as anti-semitic.
This simply isn't true. I've seen the quotes that alledgedly support this, but I've also read the essays that these quotes are selectively culled from. When someone selects a line from an essay about what Germans of the 30s saw in Hitler, and attributes those same views to the author, in this case Buchanan, it is simply an exercise in lying. And that is an example of what has been done. What it does is reveal the low ethics of those who take quotes out of context in their zeal to label someone a Nazi. Such tactics used to be the province of the Left. And it's quite obvious that a number of Neocons haven't abandoned their roots.
This controversy first began when Buchanan defended President Reagan for his having laid a wreath at Bitburg Cemetery, to honor the German war dead. If you recall, a number of the same people who have called Pat a nazi also had the same words for Ronald Reagan over that incident. If you don't recall, then I suggest you go dig up some copies of Commentary magazine of that time. Do you also think Ronald Reagan is a "nazi"?
Another incident that aroused the Pat-is-a-nazi crowd was his defense of a group of nuns that was being evicted from their convent at the site of one of the former Death Camps, where they prayed for the millions of Catholics who also were murdered by the Nazis. Should good Catholic Pat have ignored the plight of these nuns? I didn't care, but then I'm not Catholic.
Another of his "nazi" activities was his having the gall to argue that old John Demjanjuk was falsely accused of having been Ivan the Terrible, a prison guard at one of the Nazi death camps. Buchanan argued that the evidence, largely from the Soviets, wasn't true. In the end Demjanjuk was acquitted, by the Israeli Supreme Court. I guess they're nazis, too.
I used to know all of these Crimes of Herr Buchanan. Mostly because I read a dozen magazines at the time when this all began, and I was very surprised to realize that some people had an agenda here, and that agenda wasn't seeking the truth. I was certainly naive to believe that there is a dedication to truth, to honor, and to goodwill among the people I considered on my side politically. Machiavelli lives.