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.
In a 1977 column, Buchanan said that despite Hitler's anti-Semitic and
genocidal tendencies, he was "an individual of great courage...Hitler's
success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an
intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness
masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood
in his path." (The Guardian, 1/14/92)
Well, it might have started WWIII.
You didn't comment
on union appeasing. Why is that?
Hahaha. You neo-cons hate history so much that you don't even learn your own. Your intellectual forefathers, the framers of the "neo-conservative" movement were all Trotsky-ites, to the person. So don't give me that crap about neo-cons being on the right. It's historically inaccurate and intellectually dishonest.
You think the liberals did-down the black man? You should see how the Trotsky-ites treated him. They have blown some opium in your lungs and you are following them around like a puppy dog. But they are the antithesis of "conservatism", which is a word whose meaning is self-evident. Neo-cons only want to conserve the gains of the state and the destruction of our civilization. You met any small-government neo-cons lately?
If you don't want to contribute to the discussion, then shut your big f*cking mouth. I'm sick of personal attacks from people like you.
A complete non-sequitur. "Pay[ing] lip service to the forefathers" and the ME do not naturally flow. Why should anyone pay more than "lip service" to the forefathers? They were men, afterall. It amuses me how some deify them. That's not to take away from the accomplishments they achieved. But they were men. Nothing but men. But you wouldn't know that listening to some people.
While an enlightened group of intellectuals will tolerate debate, the Neo-Cons have a policy of excommunicating any group that threatens their desire for ideological purity, thus fracturing the potential might of a truly Rightwing government.
I know you didn't. Look at FR, for example. If anyone desires ideological purity it's the far-Right! I, for one, am not having any of it.
NR's Bill Buckely excommunicated the Randians, Libertarians, and John Birchers in the '60s, and when Pat was making the most meaningful challenge to the ruling class in 1992, he was wheeled out to call Pat an anti-Semite.
JBS? You mean the ones who find a communist behind every tree? Spare me. "Ruling class?" Now you sound like a Marxist. And what do we have to do with libertarians?
By the way, Buchanan EARNED the label which you hate he has by what he said out of his own mouth. He has no one to blame but himself.
If their is a definable Rightist in this country, it is a person who believes that the current ruling elite needs to be replaces wholesale.
Shibboleth. Cornel West would agree with you about the replacing bit. That's not saying much, believe me.
The far-Right has no use for me and I for damn sure have no use for the far-Right.
This thread is about the article - not about your dossier smear file.
Here we go again.
Your intellectual forefathers, the framers of the "neo-conservative" movement were all Trotsky-ites, to the person. So don't give me that crap about neo-cons being on the right.
I have no "intellectual forefathers." rdb3 speaks for rdb3, and rdb3 alone.
The rest doesn't even deserve a response. But, let me even it out for you. Buchanan, Sobran, Farrakhan, Jackson, Mfume, Bond, and Sharpton all deserve a family ass-whipping, and I'm just the one to do it.
Worthless. All of them.
Agreed.
Uh...nope. Not at all. But it would have legitimized strategic defense a lot faster.
You didn't comment on union appeasing. Why is that?
Reagan did what the law required him to do.
Ever since then, he's referred to Reagan as "Uncle Ron."
I'll BUMP to that!
You don't think much of Reagan, do you?
He just put in a yeoman's job and left office.
Well, I think he was the greatest president
of the century, a great conservative, and
a great man. But that's just me.
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