The New Republic - September 9, 2002
American Spirit
To the editors:
While I appreciate the gracious welcome Franklin Foer gave our as-yet-unpublished magazine, let me dissent from his conclusion that we "could not have chosen a worse time to start a journal of the isolationist right" ("Home Bound," July 22).
This is precisely the right time; for there is, as Foer writes, an absolute conformity of thought at National Review, The Weekly Standard, and Commentary--and among the pundits who pass for conservatives at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. They are all free-trade-and-open-borders Democrats; like you, they relish the prospect of the coming Pax Americana and "cakewalk" to Baghdad--after which we shall tutor the Muslims in democracy and go nightsticking recalcitrant regimes according to a priority list drawn up for us by Bibi Netanyahu.
Why is this the right time for our magazine? Because there is a void and a need. No one else in this city says what we say: that neoconservatism is a counterfeit. It is not conservatism at all but a hybrid of Wilsonian-FDR globalism and Rockefeller Republicanism. Free trade, interventionism, empire, eternal alliances, foreign aid, moral imperialism-- these are not conservative traditions but the antithesis of those traditions. As for neocons who bray that we "won the culture war," they deceive themselves and the rest of us. And because neoconservatism has no deep roots in our history or in America's heart, the American people will repudiate it when they learn that the price is permanent war, lengthening casualty lists, ever-expanding government, and endless bailouts of bankrupt regimes in the name of Global Democracy. Do you seriously believe that conservatism is now wholly encompassed by Norman Podhoretz, Jonah Goldberg, Ramesh Ponnuru, Rich Lowry, our virtuous Teletubby William Bennett, Charles Krauthammer, and the Kristols, pere et fils?
If President George W. Bush and his War Cabinet decide to go warlord-hunting and nation-building in Afghanistan and send 250,000 U.S. troops up the bloody road to Baghdad-- while subcontracting Mideast policy out to Ariel Sharon-- they will put the United States on the wrong side of tribalism, nationalism, and faith in a vast region of one billion people and end up in the history books alongside Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and Dean Rusk. We intend to say so, and, if we're the only ones, fine. We believe we are right, but, then, we're all going to find out fairly soon.
Patrick J. Buchanan Co-Editor - The American Conservative http://www.theamericancause.org
You just sold a subscription Mr. Buchanan....