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Guest Opinion/Commentary*

Friday, February 29, 2008

How Pat Buchanan (Almost) Ruined Conservatism
  General piece by Guest: Daniel Weir

When I first heard of William F. Buckley’s death at his home in Connecticut at age 82, I was rather shocked and saddened.  For WFB was probably my favorite writer, pundit, columnist, commentator, and TV personality since I became politically aware in late 1973, right after the Yom Kippur War and the first oil crisis.  Buckley did not invent conservatism, but he refined it and made it politically viable.  In the current slang, he gave it “street cred.”

That said, his erstwhile comrade-in-arms, Patrick J. Buchanan, did everything in his power to destroy the modern
conservative movement, and undo a half-century of heroic efforts on the part of Buckley and others to realign
American politics and provide a real alternative to classical, statist liberalism.

Why?

On the “micro” level, it could be that Buchanan was traumatized at the fact that he was unable to have a family;
as an orthodox (pre-Vatical II) Catholic, Buchanan must have been absolutely devastated by this, and was looking
for some kind of diversion that would take most of his energy and time.  On the “macro” level, however, the
reasons for Buchanan’s pathological deviationism perhaps have more sinister roots.

These may have to do with Buchanan’s religious upbringing, but that is not important here.  What is important is -
as Buckley so eloquently wrote in his 1992 masterpiece “In Search of Anti-Semitism” - Buchanan really, truly did
hate Jews.  And he has always hated Jews, and still does.  His latest tome seems to once again revise history and
recast World War II as a fool’s errand, probably sponsored by prominent Jews of the time.

Buchanan’s long paper trail of anti-Semitic rhetoric would probably stretch at least a half-mile, if you printed
it out on your computer and included all of his rather silly and pointless “defenses,” most of which were merely
boilerplate, auto-denial, innuendo, and reactionary emotionalism, liberally sprinkled with non-sequitors.

Buchanan was not a thinker like Buckley, George Will, or Jonah Goldberg.  There was little cerebral component to
Buchanan’s approach to conservatism.  Buchanan was the political equivalent of a “gang banger,” spewing invective
against Jews, African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics and - most of all - mainstream conservatives who advocated
free markets, free trade, and a reasonable immigration policy that put border security first and legal,
predictable, rational assimilation of foreigners second.  Like the real “gang-bangers,” he did all this to hurt
people and derive a sort of sick pleasure out of seeing them suffer.

As scholar Joshua Muravchick wrote in 1991, for Buchanan, “the pain of getting hit was less than the pleasure of
hitting someome.”

Did Buchanan have innate intelligence?  Honestly, I don’t know.  I do recall his mentioning “solving a calculus
problem” back in 1996 when he was trying to cobble together a fusion-style Presidential candidacy between the
Republicans, the Libertarian Party, the U.S. Constitution Party, and other right-wing minor parties.  That said,
I doubt he’d be able to understand Bessel’s differential equation, why it is significant, and what it’s used for.

To be fair, I doubt most politicians would.

Unlike Buchanan, I bet WFB might understand, and what’s more, he’d probably be able to dissect the socio-economic
impact of such advanced engineering mathematics on culture and technology after it was introduced in Europe in the
mid-19th century.  Not surprisingly, given his towering intellect, Buckley deeply felt the importance of the Judeo-
Christian ethos on Western civilization, with - for the sake of this argument - the emphasis on “Judeo.”

For, as everyone knows who cares to reflect, Christianity sprang from Judaism.  It’s that simple.  However, for
whatever reason, Buchanan never learned that basic fact.

I wonder how conservatives will react to Buchanan’s passing in the years ahead.  I think I’ve tipped my hand here:

I won’t celebrate, but I will reflect.  And, in the Jewish tradition, I will forget.  For that is what we do with
our enemies: We banish them from our “collective” consciousness - not “collective” in the socialist sense, but in
the moral sense.

Daniel Weir

Posted by Guest: Daniel Weir on 2/29/08 at 06:29 AM
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