My World Turned Upside Down

[quade 4]

So, I just got home from working a long couple of days and I'm catching up on my TiVo.

Uh, when the heck, (I musta missed it), when the heck did me and Pat Buchanan start agreeing on stuff? Certainly not everything, but compared to what I've been hearing from the ultra-right, he's sounding a heck of a lot more reasonable these days.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[ltdiver 3]

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but compared to what I've been hearing from the ultra-right, he's sounding a heck of a lot more reasonable these days.

You're mellowing?

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[quade 4]

I don't think so.

What I think happened was a guy I would normally consider pretty freekin' conservative (Christian coalition, Prayer Brigade, anti-choice, 2000 GOP Presidential Primary candidate) is now complaining about how the right has moved too far to the right.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312341156/qid=1095303370/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-5323316-5250328

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Amazon.com

Although the George W. Bush administration is famous for being "on message," delivering a consistent and polished political perspective no matter what, such consistency apparently does not extend to every member of the conservative universe.

In Where the Right Went Wrong, veteran pundit and occasional presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan offers up scathing criticisms of Bush's policies, the arrogance and boorishness of which, he warns, could ultimately dramatically destabilize the United States' superpower status. The problem, in Buchanan's eyes, is the rejection of traditional Reagan-era conservatism by an administration under the sway of the so-called "neoconservatives," who favor a pre-emptive military strategy and big government and don't mind running up dangerously huge budget deficits to support it. The war in Iraq, fought without direct demonstrable threat, alienates America in the eyes of the rest of the world, says Buchanan, squandering the global goodwill earned after the 9/11 attacks and creating exponentially larger numbers of terrorists who will threaten the U.S. for generations to come. The zeal over free trade among elected officials, a feeling notably not shared by Buchanan, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader, is costing America jobs, Buchanan theorizes, and leading to a de-industrialized service-sector-only economy, an end to American self-sufficiency in favor of a reliance on global corporations, and a looming economic crisis.

Refreshingly, and unlike pundits of his day, Buchanan crafts his arguments by examining world history, offering detailed analogies to the Roman Empire, the Civil War, and pre-Soviet Russia among others. Conservatives alienated by the Bush administration will find an eloquent champion in Buchanan and even liberals, who may not have known there was a conservative argument against war in Iraq, stand to learn something from a right side of the aisle perspective so different from that found in the Bush White House. --John Moe

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[skydyvr 0]

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Certainly not everything, but compared to what I've been hearing from the ultra-right, he's sounding a heck of a lot more reasonable these days.

The spectrum of human thought is a circular thing?

. . =(_8^(1)

[ltdiver 3]

I think both camps have polarized....Neither of which is good for the country.

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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I don't think so.

What I think happened was a guy I would normally consider pretty freekin' conservative (Christian coalition, Prayer Brigade, anti-choice, 2000 GOP Presidential Primary candidate) is now complaining about how the right has moved too far to the right.

So who says that the guy has to be saying what he truly believes? Maybe he's just mixing it up so he can get more coverage? "Pat Buchanan changes tune" gets a lot more press than, "Pat Buchanan spews more of the same tired ultra-right-wing rhetoric," doesn't it?

Nothing guarantees it's all in good faith.

-Jeffrey
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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[Kennedy 0]

Man, how many times do I have to tell you to pick up a copy of A Republic, Not An Empire ?

You read that, and I guarantee you will find yourself agreeing with him.

He opposes a lot of the people you think of as conservatives (GOP leadership) as being "neo-cons." He is a true conservative, meaning he supports a lot of the same things you would on an international level, but you probably hate him on domestic stuff.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[FallRate 0]

Pat Buchanan spoke out against the original Gulf War, so it is no surprise to see that he doesn't back this Admininstration on the issue of Iraq.

FallRate

[PhillyKev 0]

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He is a true conservative, meaning he supports a lot of the same things you would on an international level, but you probably hate him on domestic stuff.

Bingo. That's exactly how I feel about him.

[boudy 0]

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when the heck did me and Pat Buchanan start agreeing on stuff?

Our collective memory has been influenced by the distortion and shrill tone of the war debate.

This retrospective illuminates the topic somewhat I believe

When the shooting starts
March 24, 2003
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

On the day after President Bush delivered his ultimatum, Patrick J. Buchanan stopped debating the war. The former presidential candidate and longtime adversary of the Bushes wrote that ''patriotism commands that when American soldiers face death in the battle, the American people unite behind them.''

On that very day, the country's foremost conservative
publication listed Buchanan among ''leading figures in the anti-war movement [who] call themselves "conservatives' '' but hate their country and want it to lose the war. To my astonishment, I was among them.

David Frum, a Washington journalist and White House speechwriter early in this Bush administration, put Buchanan and me on the top of the dishonor roll in ''Unpatriotic Conservatives: A War Against America,'' the cover story in the current edition of National Review.

We are accused of advocating ''a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies.'' Concluding, he writes of us: ''[T]hey are thinking about defeat, and wishing for it, and they will take pleasure if it should
happen. They began by hating the neo-conservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country.''

That demonstrably is not true of Pat Buchanan, and it is certainly not true of me. Anybody who makes a living by dispensing strong comment should be inured to attack, even when the accusations are totally false. During the nearly 40 years that I have been privileged to write this column, I have not subjected readers to my personal controversies. Now, however, I feel constrained to identify myself as a Korean War-vintage Army officer (non-combat) who has always supported our troops and prayed for their success during many wars.

This war is no exception. Dealing with statements about me even so calumnious as Frum's might seem petty in time of war. But broader issues are at stake. Frum represents a body of conservative opinion that wants to delegitimize criticism from the right of policy that has led to war against Iraq.

Anti-war activity over the years has come mostly from the left. Those were not conservatives who shut down Times Square on Thursday. Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle went over the line last Monday when he blamed potential American deaths on Bush's failed diplomacy, but he had regrouped by week's end to promise support of ''our troops and our commander-in-chief.''

Like Buchanan, Daschle ended up following the old American custom of supporting the war once the shooting starts. Frum, on the other hand, chose that moment to begin shooting at ''paleo-conservatives.'' He brackets me with his selected paleos--people whom I have never met or read and whose anti-Semitic and white supremacist views I abhor.

Frum cannot find any such statements ever uttered by me. Nor can he find anything I ever have said to indicate hatred for George W. Bush, much less my country. His article cites four quotations from my columns, one reporting that congressional sources predicted the CIA would be unable to find Osama bin Laden, and the other three criticizing an overly close
identification of U.S. policy with Israel (especially the Ariel Sharon government). Implicitly, that is unacceptable criticism from a conservative.

''[E]ven Robert Taft and Charles Lindbergh ceased accommodating Axis aggression after Pearl Harbor,'' Frum writes. The implication: After 9/11, conservatives should have refrained from debating the Iraq strategy or questioning Israeli policy.

Nevertheless, Frum's mention of Lindbergh recalls the lone Eagle's unhappy experience. Gulled by Hitler into regarding the Nazi thugs as saviors of Western civilization, Lindbergh was goaded by Franklin D. Roosevelt into resigning his colonel's commission in the Army Air Corps Reserve.

Lindbergh sought active duty after Pearl Harbor but was blocked by a vindictive President Roosevelt. He managed to fly secret combat missions in the Pacific, however illegally, as a civilian.

A newly naturalized American, Frum might ponder how Lindbergh handled himself once the shooting started.

[livendive 8]

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I think both camps have polarized....Neither of which is good for the country.

I thought we spent the last 4 years uniting, not dividing.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[ianmdrennan 2]

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I thought we spent the last 4 years uniting, not dividing.

Sept 11 united this country in a way I, as a foreigner, was blown away by. I've never seen anything like it and I was impressed.

The subsequent war in Iraq has succeeded in destroying that unity in a way I've never seen either.

The unity was short lived, the division appears much more rife.

Blues,
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[livendive 8]

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Sept 11 united this country in a way I, as a foreigner, was blown away by. I've never seen anything like it and I was impressed.

The subsequent war in Iraq has succeeded in destroying that unity in a way I've never seen either.

The unity was short lived, the division appears much more rife.

Unfortunately, I agree with your observations.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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I thought we spent the last 4 years uniting, not dividing.

Sept 11 united this country in a way I, as a foreigner, was blown away by. I've never seen anything like it and I was impressed.

The subsequent war in Iraq has succeeded in destroying that unity in a way I've never seen either.

The unity was short lived, the division appears much more rife.

Blues,
Ian

I think it's because while the Right marched on in a logical progression of that unity and went out into the world to fight the terrorists who threaten us, the Left went flaccid and shirked away from that obligation -- causing the rift of which you speak. THEY failed to follow along with the sensible offensive against our terrorist enemies.

Blue skies,
-Jeffrey
-

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"