What? I am agreeing with Pat Buchanan?

[Leprechan29]

Link:
http://www.amconmag.com/3_1_04/cover.html

Read it and you might end up agreeing too.

Note: there are a few points on which I diverge from his thinking (culture of death, ect), but on the whole, he makes a good point.

[rumguy]

1. that is one hell of a good article...

[bluestateguy]

2. Yes I read that a couple of months ago

He sees right through that neocon bullshit better than many liberals do, though I would advise caution when it comes to possible alliances with paleoconservatives.

The irony of course is that Pat Buchanan idolizes Ronald Reagan, as we have seen this week. But Buchanan represents that wing of the Right that says the Cold War was an unusual circumstance of history and that it is now time for America to return to it's post WWI/pre WWII isolationism.

[Sirveri]

3. Pat Buchanan is a really great speaker.

I'm still not quite sure why everyone hates him so much. He went on Ron Owens show one day and I listened to him and he actually had a lot of points that I agreed with. I just found it funny that everyone kept calling in and screaming that he was a nazi. It was pretty bizzare.

[RoyGBiv]

7. White nationalism...

Buchanan has made statements that associate him with those who espouse white nationalist beliefs. He has also suggested that certain methods of execution used to propagate the Holocaust could not have resulted in death, particularly in reference to Treblinka's carbon monoxide trucks.

I wonder if sometimes neoconservatives don't help in smearing him in order to further their own imperialist objectives, but that doesn't mitigate against his known stances on various issues. Fundamentally, Buchanan is an extreme isolationist, and much of what he says is derived from that. But extreme isolationism carries an undertone of racism among certain people, including Buchanan.

[TheWizardOfMudd]

13. But do you agree with the points made in his article?

?

[RoyGBiv]

15. Most of them...

I'm not sure what that has to do with my comments or their context. I was replying to someone who questioned why people disliked Buchanan. Finding reasons for that dislike is not hard.

I don't agree with his implied assertion that "the West" embraces a "culture of death" through such things as birth control and abortion and that this may be our downfall. What he has to say about the paranoia instilled by neoconservatives regarding the terrorist threat posed by radical Islam is, however, right on the mark.

I can agree with what someone says on a given topic but still find their underlying philosophy repugnant.

[Sirveri]

14. So what?

Just because a person makes statements that happen to be adopted by a unsavoury group of people doesn't make the statements wrong.

It's like saying that because criminals use the streets to commit their crimes that the streets are evil. Just because of a persons stance on certain issues does not invalidate other points they might bring to the table.

I'm a staunch anti gun control person. Others would heavily disagree with that. However I also hate Bush with a pashion and am incredibly pro-choice, pro-gay rights, etc etc etc... hence the reason I'm here. In that sense, I can see a kindred soul in Buchanan, I'll never vote for him, he's simply too extremist, but that doesn't invalidate the good points he makes.

[RoyGBiv]

16. You miss the point...

What Buchanan has said on various issues is not merely "adopted" by "unsavoury" <sic> groups. On the issue of the Holocaust specifically, he has gone out of his way to indicate he believes it to be a tragedy of massive proportions, yet he gives credence to the suggestion that the execution methods were not viable and thus likely fabricated exaggerations. IOW, he tries to remove himself from criticism with the first comment, then agrees with the position that would be criticized with the second. He does this in the face of all scientific evidence to the contrary. He plays a fancy rhetorical game, of which he is a master. He is a brilliant man, but many of his opinions are repugnant.

He's right about Bush and the neoconservatives. Good for him. Hitler was right about the Soviets as well.

[Sirveri]

17. Well, is he right?

Sometimes the truth sucks. Sometimes people are wrong. Maybe people are fabricating things to give their group more support. I've seen the way that the current generation of German Jews treats the rest of Germany. They use the holocaust like a club every chance they can get. Quite frankly I wouldn't put it past someone to exaggerate something in order to further solidify their existing power base.

[RoyGBiv]

18. Is he right?

About the carbon monoxide trucks at Treblinka?

No. He is not right. He is in fact horribly wrong.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

23. You only have to go back to Buchanan's gay baiting culture war speech at

the 1992 Repub Convention in Houston, the one Molly Ivins said would have sounded better "in the original German." He's basically correct on the Iraq War II and I send those American Conservative Magazine links to people all the time too. But he was SCARING people with that culture war crap and REALLY helped Clinton out with that speech.

http://www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0817-rnc.html

[flewellyn]

4. Never thought I'd say it...

But I think he might be right.

Heaven help me, I, a liberal Jew, am agreeing with Pat Buchanan.

[w13rd0]

12. Hey, if you live in Florida...

...you might have voted for him ;)

[wtmusic]

5. And Buchanan was one of the few conservative columnists

who came out and said it early on:

http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html

[SeveneightyWhoa]

6. Thanks for the link..Great piece.

GREAT article, what a joy to read..

[Rosco T.]

8. Sometimes it scares me how much sense Pat Buchanan.. makes me realize..

.. that there are TWO Republican parties...

[AP]

9. Buchanan has been pulling a lot of DU love in the last week.

WTF?

It sort of remings of about a year ago when a lot of people were naively asking, "so what's with Lyndon LaRouche? He seems to make sense."

Before that, I remember when a DU'er dropped the David Duke bomb at DU. After a couple months of pretending he was a socialist (!) he sang the praises of Duke's book for about an hour before he got shit canned.

[TheWizardOfMudd]

10. Just goes to show us: Ideas should not be pigeon-holed into labels

Pat has great ideas about the fucking psychotic neocons. There is no doubt about that!

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. As much as I think the guy is a real danger to the world,

I have found myself a number of times agreeing with him on things. At times, he has a very lucid and compassionate understanding of things, sometimes a very constitutional understanding of things, and I can appreciate that.

But other times he goes off on such bizarre Christo-centric end-of-world crap, I want to have him committed to an asylum.

But I find it's always worth listening to him, at least for a few moments to figure out if he is in insane mode or sensible mode.

In this article, Pat is in total sensible mode.

[necso]

19. The enemy of our enemies is not always our friend.

Pat is at his best when attacking other schools of "thought" in the radical right movement. This is particularly true when his opponents are an easy target, in this case, naive, bumbling idiots, whose past does not bear close inspection.

When I was a young rethug, Pat was considered a real light weight, a posturing ranter, a paleo-paleo with a 1930s sort of outlook --- which everybody with any sense knew didn't work. Isolationist, even xenophobic, he was the guy kept around to appeal to all the jim crow democrats, know-nothings and fellow travelers, that Nixon made a point to attract. His type of thinking effected policy very little, however, even under Nixon.

Pat came into the fore when modern, intellectual conservatism was basically crushed in the Reagan years. Pat was perfect for this new environment, since he is an anti-intellectual's intellectual. Pat will never ask you to look too hard at a problem, think too long about alternate solutions or dispassionately choose and carry out a plan. For him, believing in a thing is enough to make it true.

Moreover, Pat is someone who largely agrees with the far right agenda and would gladly shove it down all our throats. With the neocons gone, and isolationism hoisted as a banner, Pat would be at home.

At best, Pat is a temporary ally and an ally only for the purpose of ruining the neocons. That done, we shall turn again on each other with anvil and tongs.

[RoyGBiv]

20. Well said.. n/t

:kick:

[Delano]

21. Buchanan is a rare breed...

a republican who SINCERELY gives a damn about the working classes of this country. That's what makes some of us find ourselves in agreement with him from time to time.

But then he spouts some very racist or religious fanatic line and you snap out of it.

For the record, I think Buchanan would be a better president than Dumbya. He's no more racist than the rest of the GOP, he just doesn't bother to veil it as they do.

[necso]

22. Pat really does seem to feel for the working classes.

I just can't agree with how he would provide for them. However, he does understand that the national interest and the interests of the "free market" are not one and the same. For this alone, he is head and shoulders above most of the other "lights" of the right.

Still if he were being thorough in his attacks on the neocons, he would have to go after those who brought the neocons to power, the fundies. But without the fundies, the right would be without many of its most dependable foot soldiers. So Pat isn't going there, at least not in a serious way.

We must be careful to look through Pat's rhetoric to what his actual intentions are --- and these are little better than the neocons.

Still I too would rather have him as president, at least he cares about this country. It is a little bit of common ground to work from.

[GreenPartyVoter]

24. Some of it is all right

At least it shows it's not just people on the left who oppose the war. That counts for something.

[noonwitch]

25. Every once in a while I agree with him, and it's scary when it happens

This is a good article.

I also agree with him to some degree about the debasement of western culture, but I have a much more inclusive definition of western culture than Pat does.