Politics
The charge of antisemitism is the last refuge of the truly unpatriotic “conservatives” who act against the interests of America and her people.
If Patrick Buchanan was ever wrong, it has not made its way into the historical record.
Sure, there are minor indiscretions, even minor errors. This publication’s founding editor and advisor to three presidents was a bit too bullish on the libertarian-infused conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan; he was a tad too willing to excuse the ideological impulses of the latter in particular, who did much to replace the old Republic with a drive toward permanent, universal revolution; he was a touch too trusting of Russell Kirk’s placement of the foreigner Edmund Burke atop the pantheon of American conservatism.
On balance, though, Buchanan was perhaps the definitive champion of the American tradition in the latter part of the twentieth century. From the early ‘60s at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat; through the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations; through half a century in media and three presidential campaigns; to the dawn of the new millennium, the disastrous war on terror, and the founding of The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan has been a voice of reason in an age of compounding insanity.
It was Buchanan who counseled President Nixon to “re-capture the anti-Establishment tradition or theme in American politics,” to “speak to the poor,” to become “the Republican FDR…[and] use the mandate to impose upon the nation his own political and social philosophy.” It was Buchanan who envisioned the politics of the Silent Majority that would succeed the cross-party liberalism of the postwar era. It was Buchanan who ensured American interest remained a live issue in Republican debates on trade long after globalist free marketeers had claimed the center of the rhetorical field.
That is why he, along with Scott McConnell and Taki Theodoracopulos, founded The American Conservative more than twenty years ago.
With the tragedy of September 11, 2001 as pretext, the same neoconservative hawks who for years had been urging a regime change war in Iraq were gaining ground in the administration of George W. Bush. In January 1998—nearly four years before the Global War on Terror—the Project for a New American Century had sent a letter to President Clinton urging “military action” that would establish “removing Sadam Hussein and his regime from power…[as] the aim of American foreign policy.” By 2002, 14 of that letter’s 18 original signatories occupied key positions in the Bush foreign policy and defense establishments (a fifteenth,
