Posted on 08/28/2002 9:16:46 AM PDT by sixmil
Patrick J. Buchanan isn't giving up. He's left the Republican Party for good. And he isn't planning a fourth run for the White House.
But he is finally trying something fans have been telling him to do for years. He's founding a magazine.
The new, bi-weekly magazine will debut next month and be called "The American Conservative." Scott McConnell, former editorial-page editor of the New York Post, will edit it. Society gadfly Taki Theodoracopulos will help with cash.
Buchanan is upbeat, about the magazine at least.
"We hope to have a conservative magazine which is genuinely and authentically conservative," he said. "We hope it will be sort of a rallying point for the conservatism that is really utterly unrepresented by either the K Street conservatives or the Weekly Standard, National Review, Commentary, New Republic neocons."
IBD talked with Buchanan at his home in Virginia to get a flavor for the new journal.
IBD: How are we doing in the war on terror?
Buchanan: I think the president did a bully job of diplomacy and moral leadership from September to January. The way they fought that war and won it was outstanding. It was a moral and just war, fought in a moral and just way.
But when he got into identifying an "axis of evil" and then threatening pre-emptive strikes against all nations that might develop the kinds of weapons we've had for the past century, he lost his focus. He has disrupted alliances. He has threatened actions that we don't have the troops in place to take.
He's asserting a right to wage pre-emptive war without the approval of Congress on any nation that aspires to build the kinds of weapons we've had since World Wars I and II. I don't think he's got the right to do that, and I think a policy of warning about pre-emptive strikes is the kind of policy that could invite pre-emptive strikes against us.
IBD: What about a war with Iraq?
Buchanan: Anybody who has a state, including Saddam Hussein, is going to be reluctant to go to war against the United States or to commit any atrocity which would put them in a war with the U.S. Containment and deterrence will work with almost any state.
Saddam is terrified of the United States. He wants to hand over his power to one of these sons of his. He's got all these palaces out there.
Why in heaven's name would he want to trigger a war with the United States of America and have all that blown to kingdom come along with him, his sons, his family, his dynasty, his army, everything?
I don't think we should give up on the policy of deterrence. It frightened Joe Stalin. It frightened Mao Tse-tung. These guys are not in that league.
IBD: What should we be doing here at home?
Buchanan: The first thing we should do is get serious about border security. Since 9-11, we've only had 411,000 illegal aliens come into the United States.
If there is a weapon of mass destruction smuggled into this country, the whole idea of global interdependence and 10,000 Mexican trucks coming into the U.S. every day, almost all of them not inspected, and over a million containers - that's going to come to an end.
It will be a very powerful argument for retiring to economic independence and economic nationalism, where you do not have thousands of people crossing your border every day. One or two more of these attacks and globalization itself is in trouble.
IBD: What will that mean for an open society?
Buchanan: I'm a believer in an open society, I'm a believer in a free society, and this is why I'm opposed to the idea of an empire. They say we need a Department of Homeland Security. I thought the Defense Department was in charge of homeland security. Apparently it's in charge of empire security.
Of what advantage is all this American empire, interfering in all these quarrels around the world, if as a consequence we lose freedom at home and live in constant danger of some kind of small atomic weapon detonated on American soil?
I think the American empire is going to go, and I think that's a good thing. The reason they were over here on 9-11 is that we are over there.
IBD: Where do you see things 10 years from now?
Buchanan: I regret that for the rest of Mr. Bush's first term, we're going to be at war. The president has subcontracted out our Middle East policy to Ariel Sharon, and I think that's a dreadful mistake.
Palestinian terrorists ought to be condemned and Israel has a right to peace, but you have to give the Palestinian people some hope. And I think Bush's (June 24) speech gives them very, very little hope. I think his speech could have been written in Tel Aviv.
IBD: Will there ever be a Palestinian state?
Buchanan: I think the question is not whether there'll be a Palestinian state. There may be two. The ultimate question is whether there's going to be a Jewish state in the Mideast. I think Ariel Sharon is leading them into a cul-de-sac from which there is no way out but back through Oslo and Tabaah and the Saudi plan.
I was talking about Pat. Not Forbes. You guys really are too much.
If you want to know the honest truth, I wouldn't touch you with gcruse's ten foot pole and blame it on your hubby. To do otherwise would risk polluting my offspring's DNA.
Not for anything, but despite your paranoia, gcruse and I have no connection outside this forum except for saying the same things we've been saying for nearly 5 years, long before you ever showed up. Although he would make a most excellent mini-me.
I could care less about what you say or think, but could you do other freepers the courtesy of pinging them when you decide to rant about them behind their back?
PA has no territory. They need to get a life and move to the Sahara. All the land to the Tigres and Euphates Rivers belongs to Israel. Whether the Euroweenies know it or not, they are doing the devil's work due to their ignorance. A thought occured to me: They (Euroweenies) don't want the Israelis controlling the oil supply, even though the Israelis would do a better job of extracting it (IMO).
That's right, I was talking about Forbes, and you are dodging the question, or missing the point. See if you can stick with me for a few seconds. You seem to be saying that Pat is a loser because he lost the republican nomination, and also the presidency. That is, he lost the run for president twice. There are numerous examples of people losing more than once. Some of them still end up winning in the end. In fact, it is actually not the norm to win the first or second time you run, and that does not even count trying to just win the nomination of your party. So, I am trying to see if you just hate Pat, or if you think anyone who loses twice is a loser. Are you still with me? Steve Forbes is one of many throughout history who have failed twice to win the presidency, so, do you think he is a loser too, or do you just hate Pat? Either answer is OK, even though I suspect the latter, I'm just curious.
BTW, who is you guys? I thought I was mostly alone here, like 1% or less.
Too bad you didn't read "A Republic, Not An Empire" more recently where he called Hitler a thug. Same word he uses for Saddam, BTW.
LOL, change the first period to a comma, and you would have contradicted yourself all in one sentence.
But their deification grates me.
It is not a matter of diefication. They got most of it right, and we are just unlearning what they taught us so that we can all go and learn the same lessons again as if they never existed. That is political de-evolution in my book. I'd rather see us build on what they did instead of tearing it down only to suffer through the same problems in order to relearn things we already knew.
Well that is certainly good news, since I was under the impression that we were harboring them here.
That would be perfect if we could continue the cycle. First we make buddies with Saddam and help him out only to find out he is the bad guy. Next we wipe him out and put the Kurds in charge. Later we will find out they are the bad guys and we will have to kill them and put another corrupt bunch of 3rd worlders in charge. When are we going to stop this idiocy? Don't get me wrong, this kind of stuff is fun when playing Civilization or RISK, but this is real life, not a game.
Some portion of 270 if you believe the thread count. That would include you, and our friends at IBD who wrote the article. And don't forget the <1% too. It's kind of funny how Buchanan threads regularly pull in 200+ posts despite being so insignificant. Perhaps you could cut that in half by getting yourself and your compatriots to stop posting the usual 'insignificant', 'wacko', and 'hates Jews' diatribes.
He rants. He raves. He's, at times, entertaining. Since the Nixon White House (and I'd argue that he wasn't much use there, even) he hasn't done anything of consequence. He's a joke. A charicature of a politician and a hack journalist. A genuine throwback to an era of "machine" politicians. He ran for president the same way Quixote tilted at windmills. Blindly and to validate himself. A mere gadfly, he is. The George Stuffituphisass of the right wing.
BTW, who is you guys? I thought I was mostly alone here, like 1% or less.
But you are a vocal lot, eh?
You couldn't tell that from how some of the people around here talk.
Pray tell how he would accomplish this Herculean task. He talks the talk. However, the difference between amateurs and professionals is that amateurs talk strategy, and professionals talk logistics. And the logistics of securing the borders of the United States would make it extremely difficult to walk the walk.
Darn those tax cuts. So the federal government gets about $1200 less of my money this year because W, and not Pat, is President. Boo-Hoo. Pat is many things; CONSERVATIVE is not one of them.
Cutting taxes is not conservative, cutting the size of government is. Bush may even be surpassing Clinton in that regard.
That is the excuse from the Blame America First crowd, it is not the real reason, however I do understand how some come to that view by watching snippets of statements on the lamestream news without delving into all the aspects of the declared "jihad" aka "holy war". The official spokesman for the Al-Qaeda organization, Suliman Abu Rith has stated that this is a "struggle between Good and Evil" because "U.S. policy is biased towards Jews and Christians across the world".
While Bin Laden does mention occupation, he stated in a 1998 interview that "Surely, their presence is not out of concern over their interests in the region. ... Their presence has no meaning save one and that is to offer support to the Jews in Palestine who are in need of their Christian brothers to achieve full control over the Arab Peninsula which they intend to make an important part of the so called Greater Israel."
So it is not our occupation they are fighting against, but rather our support of Israel as God's chosen nation based on our beliefs in the Bible. They feel they must drive Israel into the sea, not merely because of the land at stake...but because their hatred is rooted in their concept that Judaism and/or Christianity is evil and they wish it purged from their midst, because they feel their religion is the one and only true religion.
LOL! Right on Pat!
Rodney King is a thug. Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin were mass murderers.
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