Free Republic

Pat Buchanan’s attempt to defend Republican National Committee Chairman (RNC) Michael Steele fails. Miserably. Steele, of course, recently insisted that Afghanistan is “Obama’s war,” which cannot be won and should never have been waged. Pat defends Steele on free-speech grounds. “A majority of Americans oppose the Afghan war,” Pat cries. And the point made by Steele about the futility of fighting in Afghanistan has been made by columnists George Will and Tony Blankley, ex-Rep. Joe Scarborough, Ron Paul and antiwar conservatives and moderates. When exactly did supporting Obama’s war policy become a litmus test for loyal Republicans? Pat misstates the...

"This was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." Strictly speaking, Republican Party Chair Michael Steele was way off base when he made this remark at a closed-door meeting of party contributors in Connecticut. For the war began in 2001 under George W. Bush and was backed by almost all Americans, who collectively cheered the downfall of the Taliban and the rout of al-Qaida from its sanctuary in Afghanistan. Yet, Steele was not entirely wrong. Today, a majority of Americans do not believe the nine-year war in...

Sarah Palin is often cast as a reincarnation of Pat Buchanan, who tapped into the nationalist, even nativist, sentiment that's always been a strand of American political life. But in one important respect, as Josh Rogin points out today, Palin is the anti-Buchanan: She's emerged as the spokeswoman for a hawkish, confrontational, Cheneyite foreign policy that would make Buchanan shudder. She just posted a rather long foreign policy speech to Facebook, and it's worth a read. And she's fighting an important battle inside the loosely organized conservative grass roots to head off calls from some tea party types and fiscal...

In Year One of the Reagan Revolution, in which he was a shining star, Budget Director David Stockman told reporter William Greider: "Kemp-Roth (President Reagan's 1981 tax cut) was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate. ... It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down.' So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory." An astounding admission. The president's principal salesman of tax cuts was confessing that the altarpiece of the Reagan policy was a ruse -- to cut tax rates of the richest...

While Chris Matthews’ special “Rise of the New Right” was nothing less than insulting to the intelligence, and pure propaganda, conservatives can learn something from it. If we do not clean our own house, somebody else will. There are many who march under the banner of conservative America, but who have their own agenda. They often keep this agenda to themselves until they are presented with the proper moment or event that provides them the opportunity of revealing themselves without risk of reprisal or censure. Take the example of the Flotilla fiasco. The incident occurred on May 31, 2010 and...

From Laura Ingraham's radio show. Buchanan defends his latest broadside on the Jewish state.

And today, President Obama should end his and his country's shameful silence over the inhumane blockade of Gaza that is denying 1.5 million beleaguered people the basic necessities of a decent life. Time to start acting like America again. That bloody debacle in the Eastern Mediterranean last Sunday was an inevitable result of Israel doing what it always seems to do: going beyond what is essential to her security, to impose collective punishment upon any and all it regards as hostile to Israel. Israel claims, and film confirms, that its commandos rappelling down onto the Turkish ship were attacked with...

Since America became a nation, four of her greatest generals have served two terms as president: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant and Dwight David Eisenhower. Not one of these generals led America into a new war. Washington was heroic in keeping the young republic out of the wars that erupted in Europe after the French Revolution, as were his successors John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Jackson, arguably America's greatest soldier -- who won the Battle of New Orleans, which preserved the Union, and virtually annexed Florida -- resisted until his final days in office recognizing the Republic of Texas,...

Among the mega-forces moving the tectonic plates and imperiling the nation-states of the world from above and below are these: First, ethno-nationalism, which threatens nations with secession and break-up. We see it in the Uighurs of China, the Naga of India, the Baluch of Iran and Pakistan, the Kurds of Iran, Syria, Iraq and Turkey, the Chechens of the Russian Caucasus and the Walloons of Belgium. Second, transnationalism. This is the project of global elites who seek to reduce nations to ethno-cultural enclaves in a new world order run by these same bloodless bureaucrats whose loyalty is neither to the...

Are Liberals Anti-WASP? by Patrick J. Buchanan 05/14/2010 "A chorus of black commentators and civic leaders has begun expressing frustration over (Elena) Kagan's hiring record as Harvard dean. From 2003 to 2009, 29 faculty members were hired: 28 were white and one was Asian American." CNN pundit Roland Martin slammed "Kagan's record on diversity as one that a 'white Republican U.S. president' would be criticized for." This is an excerpt from the Washington Post about the rising anger in a black community, which voted 24-1 for Obama, that one of their own was once again passed over for the Supreme...

New York, NY, May 15, 2010 � The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called Pat Buchanan "a recidivist anti-Semite who doesn't miss an opportunity to show his fangs," in response to remarks he made about the Jewish faith of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and the religious makeup of the current court. Buchanan wrote in his May 14 syndicated column, "If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats' idea of diversity?" Buchanan continued, "Not in living memory has a Democratic president...

Even on May 1, when Germany was guiding the European Union and International Monetary Fund draft of the carefully crafted rescue plan for Greece, the Greek problems seemed far from over. Many doubt the plan will solve all the troubles that started in Athens and which are now spilling into Europe and the world. This might require far stronger intervention in Greece, although the plan seems a balanced yet possibly insufficient compromise. However, a larger intervention in Greece opens a box of problems, which this time could be properly attributed to Pandora, the originator of the ancient Greek myth. This...

Someone just let 12 million cats out of the bag . . . A lefty pundit has admitted what the Obama admin likely thinks but dare not say: that he would like to grant citizenship to all 12 million illegal immigrants in the USA. Chris Hayes of The Nation made his candid comment during an exchange with Pat Buchanan about the Arizona immigration law on today's Morning Joe. View video here.

"Is white the new black?" So asks Kelefa Sanneh in the subtitle of "Beyond the Pale," his New Yorker review of several books on white America, wherein he concludes we may be witnessing "the slow birth of a people." Sanneh is onto something. For after a year of battering as "un-American," "evil-doers" and racists, and praise from talk-show hosts and Sarah Palin as "the real Americans," Tea Party America seems to be taking on a new and separate identity. Ethnonationalism -- the recognition of an embryonic people that they are different from their neighbors, and the concomitant drive to live...

The New Intolerance by Patrick J. Buchanan 04/09/2010 "This was a recognition of American terrorists." That is CNN's Roland Martin's summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined. Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing that Gov. Bob McDonnell had declared Confederate History Month in the Old Dominion. Virginia leads the nation in Civil War battlefields. So loud was the howling that in 24 hours McDonnell had backpedaled and issued an apology...

With a Democratic president’s approval ratings on decline and a loud right-wing opposition, many pundits are harking back to the Clinton days when then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich signed a Contract with America that got Republicans a 60-seat gain in Congress. Pat Buchanan joins them, but only to bash the Contract as “one of the most overrated things in politics.”

The decapitation of the Polish government last weekend, including President Lech Kaczynski and the military leadership, on that flight to Smolensk to commemorate the Katyn Massacre, brings to mind the terrible and tragic days and deeds of what many yet call the Good War. From Russian reports, the Polish pilot waved off four commands from air traffic control to divert to Moscow or Minsk. The airfield at Smolensk was fogged in. There is speculation that Kaczynski, fiercely nationalistic and distrustful of Russians, may have defiantly ordered his pilot to land, rather than delay the 70th anniversary of Katyn. The symbolism...

"Diplomacy has failed," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told AIPAC, "Iran is on the verge of becoming nuclear and we cannot afford that." "We have to contemplate the final option," said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., "the use of force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon." War is a "terrible thing," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., but "sometimes it is better to go to war than to allow the Holocaust to develop a second time." Graham then describes the war we Americans should fight: "If military force is ever employed, it should be done in a decisive fashion. The Iran...

Pat Buchanan wrote a column titled, "Bibi’s Hollow Victory." He takes issue with Benjamin Netanyahu stating Jerusalem is the Jewish capital and the construction of 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem. Israel has always maintained Jerusalem as their capital and many members of Congress recognize this fact. The construction of 1,600 homes was a decision made by Jerusalem's planning board....made up of urban planners and others...hardly some insidious political plot. He further accuses Bibi of making this decision and blowing up Biden's mission. Caroline Glick has already pointed out that Tzipi Livni and other leftists in Israel may have manufactured this...

Greece this past weekend saw the worst rioting since the debt crisis began. After Athens had announced new tax hikes and budget cuts to reduce a deficit of 13 percent of gross domestic product, mobs drove guards from Greece's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and attacked police. In our own country, students, teachers and administrators at UC-Berkeley held a "Strike and Day of Action to Defend Education" to demand more money from taxpayers -- for themselves. How badly are they suffering? According to Peter Robinson of Hoover Institution, California spends $13,000 per student in the state system, compared to $6,000...