The red and the brown
With his new magazine, Pat Buchanan links the old right to the new left
By Ronald Radosh, 10/13/2002
WHEN THE FIRST ISSUE of The American Conservative, the new weekly edited by Patrick J. Buchanan, recently hit the newsstand, readers might have been excused for wondering if they had accidentally picked up The Nation. Buchanan's magazine, which he co-edits with the journalist Taki Theodoracopulos, resembles its left-liberal counterpart in appearance and is printed on the same cheap newsprint. Even more remarkably, much of The American Conservative's contents could just as easily have appeared in the flagship publication of America's left.
In their Oct. 7 debut, the editors bitterly lament the victory of the ''neoconservatives'' in our country's cultural and political wars; the neoconservatives, in their view, stand for unfettered interventionism, free trade, and unlimited immigration. By contrast, The American Conservative promises to champion a number of causes that also find support on the political left: protectionism to keep workers' wages high in America; opposition to globalism (''we will point to the pitfalls of the global free trade economy''); and the struggle against ''global hegemony.'' Noam Chomsky probably would not put it differently.
It depends on what your definition of "it" is.