Pat Buchanan

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Pat Buchanan

Patrick Joseph Buchanan (born November 2, 1938) is an American paleoconservative, nationalist and traditionalist Catholic author, syndicated columnist, and broadcaster. He ran in the 2000 presidential election on the Reform Party ticket. He also sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996.

Buchanan has been a senior advisor to three American presidents: Nixon, Ford and Reagan. He was an original host on CNN's Crossfire. He also co-founded The American Conservative magazine and launched The American Cause, a paleoconservative foundation. He has been published in many publications, including Human Events. National Review, The Nation and Rolling Stone.

On American television, he is currently a political analyst on the MSNBC cable network and a regular on The McLaughlin Group.

Early life

Pat Buchanan was born in Washington, D.C., William Baldwin Buchanan, a partner in an accounting firm, and his wife, Catherine Elizabeth Crum, a nurse and a homemaker.[1] He had six brothers (Brian, Henry, James, John, Thomas, and William Jr.) and two sisters (Kathleen and Bay).[2] One sister, Bay Buchanan; became U.S. Treasurer.

Pat is one-half German, one-quarter Scots Irish, and one-quarter Irish. He received a Roman Catholic baptism and remained in the church throughout his life.

Buchanan spent most of his education at Roman Catholic institutions. He attended Blessed Sacrament School, the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College High School, and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Buchanan graduated cum laude with degrees in English and Philosophy in 1961. After earning a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University a year later, he joined the St. Louis Globe-Democrat newspaper. He would later discuss his roots in his autobiography, Right From The Beginning.

In 1996, Marcus Stern of Copley News Service wrote this about Buchanan's college career:

In 1959, just shy of his twenty-first birthday, he was expelled from Georgetown University after sending two policemen to the hospital in a brawl that erupted when he resisted arrest while out on a date. A prominent defense attorney and friend of Buchanan's father got the felony charge reduced to a misdemeanor and he paid a $25 fine for the incident. After a year off, Buchanan returned to Georgetown and received his degree. As a graduate student in journalism at Columbia University in New York, he came close to getting kicked out of school again after he sucker-punched a classmate.

Professional Career

St. Louis Globe-Democrat

When Buchanan joined The St. Louis Globe-Democrat at age 23, he became the paper's youngest editorial writer. He had written his Columbia University master's project on the expanding trade between Canada and Cuba. It had tripled in 1961, the first year of the United States embargo against Cuba. Buchanan was able to publish a rewrite in the Globe-Democrat under the eight-column banner "Canada sells to Red Cuba - And Prospers."

This article was a milestone in his career, occurring just eight weeks after he started at the paper, according to his memoir, Right from the Beginning. Note that this column about Canada was written a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Fidel Castro was still considered a major figure in the Cold War. Buchanan now opposes the embargo, since the Cold War is over. [3].

In 1964, Buchanan supported Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. The Globe-Democrat did not endorse him, however, and the editorial writer speculated about a clandestine agreement between the paper and President Johnson. "The conservative movement has always advanced from its defeats...,"he later recalled. "I can't think of a single conservative who was sorry about the Goldwater campaign,"

The Nixon Years

Buchanan was an early supporter of Richard Nixon's political comeback. In 1965, he served as the executive assistant for the Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander, and Mitchell law offices in New York City. The next year, he was the first person hired an advisor to Nixon's presidential campaign.; he worked primarily as an opposition researcher. He was soon nicknamed "Mr. Inside" because he wrote speeches aimed at dedicated supporters.[4]

Buchanan traveled with Nixon throughout the campaigns of 1966 and 1968, as well as a tour of Western Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War. When Nixon took the Oval Office in 1969, Buchanan worked as a White House advisor and as a speechwriter to both him and his vice president, Spiro Agnew.

His daily duties included developing political strategy, publishing the President's Daily News Summary, and preparing briefing books for news conferences. He accompanied Nixon on his 1972 trip to China and the 1974 summit in Moscow, Yalta, and Minsk. He also suggested that his boss label opponent George McGovern as an extremist and burn the White House tapes.[5]

Buchanan remained as a special assistant to the president through the final days of the Watergate Scandal. He was not accused of wrongdoing, though some falsely suspected him as a possible Deep Throat. When the actual identity of the press leak was revealed in 2005 as FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, Buchanan called Felt "sneaky," "dishonest," and "criminal," commenting that:

What he should have done, was if he felt the investigation was corrupted, stand up and say, "I'm going to resign from the FBI because I don't want to be a party to what's going on. This is not correct, I think things are going on in the White House that are wrong. I don't believe they're investigated. I don't believe they're being investigated properly."[6]

On Sept. 26, 1973, Buchanan appeared before the Senate's Watergate committee, due to his role in the Nixon campaign's "Attack Group". "The mandate that the American people gave to this president and his administration cannot and will not be frustrated or repealed or overthrown as a consequence of the incumbent tragedy," he told the panel.[7]

When Nixon resigned in 1974, Buchanan briefly stayed as special assistant under incoming President Gerald Ford. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig approved Buchanan's appointment as ambassador to South Africa, but Ford refused it.[8] After leaving the White House, he became a syndicated political columnist. Buchanan later referred to Watergate as "the lost opportunity to move against the political forces frustrating the expressed national will," and remarked: "To effect a political counterrevolution in the capital . . . there is no substitute for a principled and dedicated man of the Right in the Oval Office."[9]

Long after his resignation, Nixon defended Buchanan, calling him a confidant and saying he was neither an anti-Semite nor a “hater,” but a “decent, patriotic American.” Nixon said that his old assistant had “some strong views,” such as his “isolationist” foreign policy, with which he disagreed. While the former president did not think Buchanan should become president, he said the commentator “should be heard.”

CNN

After leaving the White House, he returned to his column and began regular appearances as a host and commentator. He co-hosted the Buchanan-Braden Program, a three-hour daily radio show with liberal columnist om Braden and delivered daily commentaries on NBC radio from 1978 to 1984. He became a TV personality as a regular on The McLaughlin Group and CNN's Crossfire and The Capital Gang, making him nationally recognizable.

His several stints on Crossfire spread between 1982 and 1999; the show was inspired by Buchanan-Braden. His sparring partners included Braden, Michael Kinsley and Bill Press. During the final Crossfire episode on June 1, 2005, he joked that the program's early days were a "tough show."

One of the first shows Braden and I did, Brandi Dowson (ph), was an imaginative producer. We were up there at 11:30. So, we come downstairs. Sitting in the chair is the head of the Ku Klux Klan in full battle regalia. He has his cone hat on. I sit down with the opening. I'm looking over at Braden and I start reading the introduction. And Braden says, what the hell are you doing here with that get up? And the fellow says your producer told me to wear it.[10]

The Reagan Years

Buchanan returned to the White House in 1985, serving until 1987 as White House Communications Director for the Ronald Reagan administration. He was known for coining the phrase "I'm a contra too," originally a line in one of Reagan's speeches and was intended to indicate opposition to Nicaragua's Sandinista government and support for the rebels fighting against it. He supported Reagan's laying a wreath at a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany (see below) where SS members were buried. He also accompanied the president at the 1986 Reykjavik summit with Mikhail Gorbachev.

During this period, Buchanan expressed concern about what some called the "Reagan Revolution." In a 1986 speech to the National Religious Broadcasters, he said: "Whether President Reagan has charted a new course that will set our compass for decades -- or whether history will see him as the conservative interruption in a process of inexorable national decline -- is yet to be determined." A year later, he remarked that "the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan."[11]

Bay Buchanan started a "Buchanan for President" movement in June, 1986, while her brother still worked for Reagan. She said he would make a great new leader for the conservative movement. According to the Washington Post, Pat was initially ambivalent.[12] He returned to his column and Crossfire after leaving the White House. In 1993, after his first presidential campaign, Buchanan founded The American Cause, a Paleoconservative educational foundation based on the principles of freedom, federalism, limited government, traditional values, and anti-intervention.

On July 5, 1993, he returned to radio as host of Buchanan and Company, a three-hour talk show for Mutual Broadcasting System. It pitted him against liberal co-hosts, including Barry Lynn, Bob Beckel, and Chris Matthews -- in a time slot opposite Rush Limbaugh’s show. He left the program on March 20, 1995, to launch his 1996 campaign.

MSNBC

From July 15, 2002 to November 26, 2003, MSNBC aired Buchanan and Press, a longer variation of the ‘’Crossfire’’ format that reunited Buchanan with liberal Bill Press. Billed as “the smartest hour on television,” it featured the duo interviewing guests and sparring about the top news stories. As the Iraq War loomed, they toned down their rivalry, since they both opposed the invasion. Press claims they were the first cable hosts to discuss the planned attack. [13] MSNBC Editor-in-Chief Jerry Nackman once joked on-air that the show was “this Stockholm Syndrome love fest.”

Just hours after his own talk show debuted, Buchanan was a guest on the premiere of MSNBC's ill-fated Donahue program. They debated the separation of church and state. Buchanan called Phil Donahue "dictatorial" and teased that the host got his job through affirmative action.[14]

After MSNBC President Eric Sorenson canceled Buchanan and Press, Buchanan stayed at the network as a political analyst. He is a regular on the network's talk shows. He also occasionally fills in on the nightly show Scarborough Country.

The American Conservative

Buchanan joined with former New York Post editorial page editor Scott McConnell and financier Taki Theodoracopulos to start a new magazine featuring paleoconservative viewpoints on the economy, immigration and foreign policy. Theodoracopulos, a columnist and shipping heir, had once suggested sending neocon William Kristol on "a one-way Concorde trip to the Israeli Riviera."[15] The first American Conservative issue was dated October 7, 2002. Paid circulation in April, 2004, was 12,600.[16] Buchanan is currently listed as Editor Emeritus on the masthead.

Presidential campaigns

Buchanan has run for president three times on a platform of economic nationalism, immigration reduction, and social conservatism, including opposition to multiculturalism, abortion, and gay rights.

1992

In 1992, Buchanan unsuccessfully challenged George H. W. Bush for the Republican Party Presidential nomination, garnering some 3 million votes in state primary elections. Buchanan won 38% of the seminal New Hampshire primary, seriously challenging sitting Republican President George H. W. Bush, whose popularity was waning. It is said that Buchanan's strong potential in the primaries pushed Bush to run a more conservative campaign than he had in 1988. He said in a radio interview:

"If the country wants to go in a liberal direction, if the country wants to go in the direction of [Democrats] George Mitchell and Tom Foley, it doesn't bother me as long as I've made the best case I can. What I can't stand are the back-room deals. They're all in on it, the insider game, the establishment game -- this is what we're running against."

Buchanan later threw his support behind President Bush, and delivered the controversial keynote address at the 1992 Republican National Convention, since dubbed the culture war speech. In it, he strongly attacked Bill and Hillary Clinton, saying:

The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on America — abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat — that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God's country.

Buchanan's stances stirred controversy within the Republican Party. Some Bush supporters criticized his talk of culture war and his negative depictions of the economy. Yet President Bush also received his greatest single increase in the polls on the night Buchanan delivered the speech on live, prime-time television.

A year later, he founded The American Cause, a Paleoconservative educational foundation, to promote his political ideas, such as federalism, traditional values, and anti-intervention.[17] It is based in Vienna VA. Bay Buchanan is its president and Pat is its chairman.[18]

1996

Buchanan again sought the Republican nomination in 1996 and voiced his opposition to NAFTA. Buchanan won a upset victory in the New Hampshire primary in February, defeating Senator Bob Dole by about 3,000 votes. While campaigning, Buchanan energized his supporters with the slogan, "The peasants are coming with pitchforks", occasionally appearing with a prop pitchfork, thus earning him the nickname Pitchfork Pat.

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, served as Buchanan's presidential campaign co-chairman. In February, the liberal Center for Public Integrity issued a report that claimed he appeared at two meetings organized by white supremacist and militia leaders. Pratt denied any tie to racism, calling the report a smear aimed at hurting Buchanan before the New Hampshire primary. [19] "I believe him," Buchanan told the Manchester Union Leader. Yet "to answer these charges," Pratt took a leave of absence "so as not to have distraction in the campaign."

Dole soon defeated Buchanan by large margins in the subsequent Super Tuesday primaries. Buchanan dropped out of the race in March, having collected 21% of the total votes in Republican state primaries. Buchanan threatened to run as the U.S. Taxpayers Party (now Constitution Party) candidate if Dole were to choose a pro-choice running mate. Dole ultimately chose pro-life Jack Kemp and Dole received Buchanan's endorsement.

2000

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Buchanan talks to a large crowd about American farmers and his Agricultural policies in his 2000 Presidential bid.

In October 1999 Buchanan sought the nomination of the Reform Party, announcing his leaving the Republican Party, which he disparaged (along with the Democrats) as a "beltway party." The Reform Party was bitterly divided between nominating Buchanan and nominating John Hagelin, an Iowa physicist whose platform was based on transcendental meditation. Many members of the party were uncomfortable with Buchanan's strong rhetoric and supposed involvement with "dirty tricks" in the Nixon administration. Party founder Ross Perot did not endorse a candidate, but his former running-mate Pat Choate endorsed Buchanan.

Supporters of Hagelin charged that the results of the party's open primary, which favored Buchanan by a wide margin, were "tainted." The Reform Party divisions led to dual conventions being held simultaneously in separate areas of the Long Beach Convention Center complex. Both conventions' delegates ignored the primary ballots and voted to nominate their presidential candidates from the floor, similar to the way the two major parties putatively nominate presidential candidates at their national conventions. One convention nominated Buchanan while the other backed Hagelin, magnifying a split in the party with two camps claiming to be the legitimate Reform Party and offering separate candidates.

Ultimately, Buchanan won the nomination when the Federal Elections Commission ruled that he would receive ballot status as the Reform candidate, plus about $12.6 million dollars in federal campaign funds secured by Perot's showing in the 1996 election. In his acceptance speech, Buchanan proposed leaving the United Nations and kicking them out of New York, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, taxes on inheritance and capital gains, and affirmative action programs. Buchanan chose Ezola B. Foster, an African-American activist and retired teacher from Los Angeles, as his running mate.

He finished fourth with 449,895 votes, 0.4% of the popular vote. (Hagelin garnered 0.1% as the Natural Law candidate). In Palm Beach County, Florida, Buchanan received 3,407 votes -- which some saw as inconsistent with Palm Beach County's liberal leanings, its large Jewish population and his showing in the rest of the state. He is suspected to have gained thousands of inadvertent votes as a result of the county's now-infamous "butterfly ballot." (see 2000 Presidential Election) When Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer stated that "Palm Beach county is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3,407 votes there," Reform party officials strongly disagreed, estimating the number of supporters in the county at between 400 and 500. Appearing on the "Today" show, Buchanan said: "When I took one look at that ballot on Election Night ... it's very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore."

Buchanan resisted overtures from the remaining Reform Party organization to take an active role with the party following the 2000 election, though he did attend their 2001 convention to offer his gratitude for their prior support. He identified himself as a political independent in the first few years afterwards, choosing not to align himself with what he viewed as the neo-conservative Republican party leadership. (Foster joined the Constitution Party.) Prior to the 2004 election, Buchanan announced that he once again identified himself as a Republican, had no interest in ever running for president again, and endorsed George W. Bush for re-election.

Republican politics

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Buchanan on talk radio with Al Franken.

Buchanan calls himself a traditional conservative, in contrast to today's neoconservatives or the old Rockefeller Republicans. While his views have evolved over a 45-year career, he typically expresses strong contrarian convictions on most subjects. Some of his opponents collected boffo quotes from his enormous canon of work, examples of which appear below, claiming they show that he is a menace to American democracy.

Some of Buchanan's contemporary positions reflect the influence of the paleoconservative magazine, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Many echo the Old Right Republicans of the first half of the 20th century.[20] For example, he supports abolishing many government agencies, such as the Department of Education [21] and the Bureau of Land Management[22], that he says are inconsistent with a small government philosophy. "We do not consider 'Big Government conservatism' a philosophy," Buchanan said in 2005. "We consider it a heresy."[23]

Buchanan currently has a rocky relationship with the Republican Party, having returned after his stint in the Reform Party. He says he believes the party has largely abandoned its traditional conservative principles for neoconservatism and compromise. For example, on MSNBC before the 2006 State of the Union Address, he called President Bush a "Great Society" Republican. "He is Woodrow Wilson in foreign policy, FDR in trade policy, he‘s LBJ on immigration, but he‘s Reagan on judges," he said.[24]

Buchanan reluctantly endorsed Bush's 2004 reelection, writing in The American Conservative that although he strongly disagrees with him on numerous issues, "Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and values. Kerry is right on nothing." He says both parties are now barely distinguishable. "The Republican Party in Washington D.C. today are the sort of people we went into politics to run out of town," he told a public radio interviewer.[25]

Roman Catholicism

Buchanan supports the traditionalist movement within Roman Catholicism and his religious and political views often intermingle: He argues that the West faces a grim future due to rejecting Christianity.[26][27] He charges the New York Times with liberal bias against Catholic conservatives. [28] [29] He claims that John Kerry and many other Catholics, who claim freedom of conscience over abortion and homosexual unions, are scandalous heretics. [30]

He also wrote in 2002:

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Buchanan prays with his wife Shelley and Reverend Billy Shanks.

The church is in crisis today not because it failed to adjust its teaching and practices to the sexual revolution, but because it tried both to be true to its teachings and to keep in step with an immoral age, which is an impossibility. The way for the church to restore its lost moral authority is to retrace its steps...[31]

Buchanan also called Pope John Paul II the most politically incorrect man on Earth, lauding his views on abortion, homosexuality and extra-marital sex. He also says that post-Vatican II liberalism hurt Mass attendance and reduced the numbers of priests and nuns. [32] He later praised his successor, Benedict XVI, as uncompromising on Catholic doctrines, including divorce, contraception and women's ordination. [33]

He also defended fellow Catholic Mel Gibson's film Passion of the Christ:

Gibson has scored a triumph in the culture war by telling The Greatest Story Ever Told with artistry and courage, while under a year-long attack by enemies whose hatred of the Gospel truths caused them to stumble and blunder themselves into laughable absurdity. And there is an ancillary benefit. Because of the over-the-top attacks on Gibson, millions who see The Passion will also come to see the slur of "anti-Semite!" for what it has all too often become, an attempt to smear, silence, intimidate, ostracize and blacklist.[34]

Buchanan also defends Pope Pius XII, against charges that he failed to speak out against Nazi atrocities. He calls the claim a “blood libel that is Hitlerite in dimension”[35] and says the Nazis hated the pontiff[36], while their victims (and the 1940s New York Times) praised him.[37] He says Pius XII reigned over “a time of explosive growth in the church” [38] and supports proposals to have him declared a saint.[39]

Social Conservatism

Culture War

Pat Buchanan says that America is divided by a culture war. This is a conflict over the power to define society's definition of right and wrong.[40] Fronts include environmentalism, feminism, abortion, gay rights, religious liberty, women in combat, display of the Confederate Flag, recognition of Christmas and taxpayer-funded art.[41][42][43] He also said that the controversy given this idea of culture wars was itself evidence of polarization.

In a 2004 column, he wrote,

Who is in your face here? Who started this? Who is on the offensive? Who is pushing the envelope? The answer is obvious. A radical Left aided by a cultural elite that detests Christianity and finds Christian moral tenets reactionary and repressive is hell-bent on pushing its amoral values and imposing its ideology on our nation. The unwisdom of what the Hollywood and the Left are about should be transparent to all.[44]

When Buchanan ran for president in 1996, he promised to fight for the conservative side of the culture war:

I will use the bully pulpit of the Presidency of the United States, to the full extent of my power and ability, to defend American traditions and the values of faith, family, and country, from any and all directions. And, together, we will chase the purveyors of sex and violence back beneath the rocks whence they came.[45]

Abortion

Buchanan opposes legalized abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, on the grounds that human life begins at conception. He calls RU-486 a human pesticide [46] and does not see a paradox between his pro-life and pro-death penalty views.He says there is a correlation between violence in society and the legal availability of abortions, comparing legalization to the downfall of Weimar Germany. As a result, he opposes Planned Parenthood, UNFPA and fetal-tissue research. Buchanan wants Congress to hold hearings on when life begins and confer "personhood" on the unborn. He wrote,

In the 23 years since Roe v. Wade, technology has developed enormously. We have imaging machines and sonograms that can show developing life. We have biologists, ethicists and doctors who can explain that life begins at conception and that the unborn child is viable earlier and earlier. All this must be explained to the American people. To reach hearts, we must first teach. Some hearts that are closed and cold will open. We will reach them. It has worked before.[47]

Euthanasia

Buchanan believes that the right to die does not exist, calls euthanasia a crime against humanity and compares it to the culture of the pre-Christian Roman Empire.[48] For example, he claims that Florida murdered Terri Schiavo and starved the comatose woman to death. He argues that practices like this will physically destroy Western civilization.[49]

He predicts a grim future:

In coming decades, involuntary euthanasia will be commonplace in Europe, and Gen-Xers' battles to stay alive into old age will be treated with the same cold contempt as they treated the silent screams of the unborn. Millions will be put to sleep like aged and incontinent household pets. Since the 1960s, the radical young have pleaded for a world free of the strictures of the old Christian morality. They are close to getting what they have demanded... and my sense is that they will not like what they get.[50]

Pornography

Buchanan says pornography is a symptom of society's displacement of Christianity. He argues that capitalism's power should not extend to such material. He referred to hardcore pornography as ” the sort of squalid, grungy stuff that, not long ago, would have had the men who produced and distributed it sent to prison for years, after being denounced from the bench as perverts.”[51]

School Prayer

Buchanan supports legalized prayer in public schools. He complains that Christianity and the Ten Commandments were "expelled" from public education.[52] He also says that Congress should restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to block decisions against it.[53] He argues that Court decisions, such as those that eliminated staff-sanctioned prayer helped lead to the downfall of American public education.[54]

In announcing his 1996 presidential campaign, he said,

Today, in too many of our schools our children are being robbed of their innocence. Their minds are being poisoned against their Judeo-Christian heritage, against America's heroes and against American history, against the values of faith and family and country. Eternal truths that do not change from the Old and New Testament have been expelled from our public schools, and our children are being indoctrinated in moral relativism, and the propaganda of an anti-Western ideology.[55]

Gay Rights and AIDS

Buchanan denies that homosexuality is a civil right, calls it unhealthy and described gay male sex practices as "not only immoral, but filthy." Further, Buchanan says that public acceptance of homosexuality inevitably leads to societal decay and the collapse of the family.[56] He wrote in 1990, "With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide."

In a 1990 interview, he said he was one of the first to demand U.S. government action against AIDS:

[I wrote] a column in 1983, [when] 600 people had died of AIDS and 1,600 were infected. And I said, ‘What is the matter with our government that it doesn’t recognize this?’ I said, ‘This could kill thousands of people.’ At the end of that column, I had that one throwaway line [that AIDS is a consequence of immoral sex], which I don’t withdraw. But I was the first national columnist to demand why the government wasn’t dealing with this national epidemic. I don’t apologize for that or my views, sir.[57]

Referring to AIDS in 1993, he said that gays "declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution" and urged New York City Mayor Ed Koch and New York State Gov. Mario Cuomo cancel the Gay Pride Parade or else "be held personally responsible for the spread of the AIDS plague." Despite this sentiment, Buchanan has developed professional ties with openly gay paleolibertarian Justin Raimondo, due to their common Old Right anti-war views.

Feminism

Buchanan also takes positions against feminism. For example, in a 1983 syndicated column, he wrote that women are "simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism." (In 2000, he said that his sister Bay felt this statement went too far)

In Right from the Beginning, Buchanan wrote that "The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer." He does not believe in allowing women to serve in combat in the military. In Death of the West, he writes that early campaigners for women's rights such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton held social views distinctly different from the second-wave feminism of the 1960s, and implicates the latter as one of the main phenomena responsible for imperiling Western Civilization.

Intelligent Design

Buchanan says that parents have the right to decide whether or not their children are taught Darwinism in school.[58] He calls Darwinism a dogmatic faith system that cannot withstand the burden of proof.[59] He endorses the intelligent design critique of evolutionary theory:

Science itself points to intelligent design. For most of man's existence, we did not understand the laws of gravity, the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry. But applying those laws today, we can send a rocket millions of miles and strike a distant planet, predicting impact to the minute. But does not the existence of these natural laws imply the existence of a lawmaker?[60]

Gun Control

Buchanan, like many Republicans, argues that U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protects private ownership of handguns. He denies that gun ownership and violence are linked. He also says that gun owners have the responsibility to keep weapons away from children. He explained his views during his 2000 presidential campaign:

The Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to own, possess, and use personal firearms, and as President I will ensure that this right is not compromised. Convicted felons should forfeit their right to own firearms, but sportsmen, hunters, & law-abiding Americans should be allowed to use guns for pleasure or personal or family safety. Private ownership of guns gives citizens of this free republic the means to protect life, liberty and property -- and I will fully & faithfully protect that right.[61]

National Identity

Immigration reform

Assimilation and security

Buchanan criticizes large-scale immigration, both legal and illegal, especially coming across the border with Mexico. He supports increased border security and opposes President Bush's proposed amnesty program for immigrants who are currently here illegally.[62] He argues that many immigrants today do not seek to assimilate into American society.

He also claims many Mexican immigrants have a revanchist view on territories lost to the United States in the Mexican-American War and that their high birthrates threaten the social cohesion of certain parts of the country. In State of Emergency, he warned that the American Southwest could "become a giant Kosovo," still part of the United States, but Mexican in "language, ethnicity, history and culture." He said in 1992, "if we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?" He also says that an open Mexican border invites the drug trade, which he does not consider a victimless crime.[63])

Buchanan also says that immigrants pose a potential security risk and that porous borders puts America at risk for another terrorist attack. In Where the Right Went Wrong he noted that "the Communist Chinese government has the secret loyalty of millions of 'overseas Chinese' from Singapore to San Francisco." He also opposes Muslim immigration to the United States and Europe.[64] Critics say this is inconsistent, since he criticizes what he sees as America's antagonistic meddling in the affairs of Islamic countries. Supporters say Bush and the neoconservatives want to "invade the world and invite the world," and that Buchanan is right for advocating the exact opposite policy regarding Muslims and people from third world countries in general[65].

Demographic change

His book The Death of the West expressed concern at the declining numbers of non-Hispanic whites in America, arguing that few nations have ever held together without an ethnic majority. In a 2002 speech, he said:

In the next 50 years, the Third World will grow by the equivalent of 30 to 40 new Mexicos. If you go to the end of the century, the white and European population is down to about three percent. This is what I call the death of the West. I see the nations dying when the populations die. I see the civilization dying. It is under attack in our own countries, from our own people.[66]

He believes that if this continues young Americans will spend their golden years in a third world America, and this will deconstruct the nation into a conglomeration of peoples with nothing in common; which he believes can be credited to the 1965 Immigration Act and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. He also says that past immigration was European, while 90 percent of new immigrants are Asian, African, and Latin American and they are not "melting and reforming". [67]

In State of Emergency, he suggests that immigrants generally assimilate more easily into American culture if they come from European cultures and writes:

Any man or any woman, of any color or creed, can be a good American. We know that from our history. But when it comes to the ability to assimilate into a nation like the United States, all nationalities, creeds, and cultures are not equal. To say that is ideology speaking, not judgment born out of experience.

During an interview promoting the book, Buchanan said he did not prefer only white immigrants, yet lamented changes in United States demography.

"What I would like is — I'd like the country I grew up in. It was a good country. I lived in Washington, D.C., -- 400,000 black folks, 400,000 white folks, in a country 89 or 90 percent white. I like that country. In 1965, in the Immigration Act, Teddy Kennedy said we're going to maintain immigration at about present levels and numbers, and we will not consciously alter the character."[68]

These arguments routinely face insinuations of racism. For example, leftist comedian Bill Mahr mocked the Emergency book on CNN, saying, "if you're Mexican-American, you're going to love Pat Buchanan's new book. It's called I Hate Brown People[69]."

Platform

Buchanan proposes this immigration policy in State of Emergency:

• A ten-year moratorium on all legal immigration at a level between 150,000 and 250,000 per year.
• A 2000-mile double-line security fence between the United States and Mexico.
• A federally legislated end to all social welfare benefits for illegal aliens, except for emergency medical services.
• A crackdown on major businesses that chronically hire illegal aliens and the elimination of deductibility for all wages paid to illegals.
• A U.S. law to "restate the true meaning of the 14th Amendment," and denial of automatic citizenship to “anchor babies” born to illegal aliens.
• A policy allowing immigrants to bring in only wives and non-adult children.
• An end to dual citizenship in United States.
• An deportation program beginning with all aliens convicted of felonies and every gang member who is not a citizen of the United States.[70]

Race relations

Buchanan says he supports "equal justice under law," opposing both discrimination against blacks and "reverse discrimination" against whites. While his views had not changed since 1996, after he left the Republican Party many observers noticed a desire to spread his message beyond his white base.[71] Buchanan's running-mate in his 2000 presidential bid was African American Ezola Foster, and he had reportedly offered the spot to Alan Keyes, another African American conservative.

Also, a recurring theme in Buchanan's work is that various types of nationalism, cultural loyalties, and blood ties shape world events more strongly than economic issues or political ideologies. This is a major theme of State of Emergency, in which he writes,

Race matters. Ethnicity matters. History matters. Faith matters. Nationality matters. While they are not everything, they are not nothing. Multiculturalism be damned, this is what history teaches us.

Civil Rights

Buchanan also claims that while he did not oppose all aims of the Civil Rights Movement, he deplored what he saw as its more left-leaning politics. Though he does not approve of treatment of blacks that took place before the desegregation, Buchanan prefers the social and cultural views of most of black America prior to the baby boom generation. He is known to strongly dislike the cultural legacy of the baby boomers in general, and blames it for current problems in the black community as well as what he sees as the general decline of America and Europe. In his 2001 book Death of the West Buchanan shows a more positive opinion about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but assails African-Americans who do not consider themselves a part of American culture and Western Civilization.

Affirmative action

Buchanan sees affirmative action as discrimination and is a critic of the NAACP and others he sees as distancing blacks from "the American mainstream." He has often accused Republicans of pandering to such organizations in recent years out of fear of being called "racist" [72]. He does not see anything wrong with blacks and whites preferring to associate with those of their own race, so long as it is done respectfully and doesn't divide America (which he feels the racial politics of today are doing)[73]. He has also argued that American citizens of all races should oppose multiculturalism and should be concerned that whites may disappear as the majority in America, because historically no nation has ever been able to survive without its ethnic majority. He believes that what will replace the United States would be a corrupt authoritarian state followed by violent ethnic feuds and breakaway states (i.e. Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia or the Austro-Hungarian Empire), and that both white and non-white Americans should fear this possibility. ^{(6) (7)}

Race, crime, and ethnicity

His book State of Emergency details his take on the importance of race, statistics dealing with race, crime and education, and America's history concerning race. He describes and praises the anti-immigration stances of black leaders such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and especially Booker T. Washington, attacking most of today's African-American leaders (along with modern-day business and labor leaders) for not taking the same position. The book also contains entire chapters about the importance of race in politics as Buchanan sees it.

The Civil War

Buchanan believes that the American Civil War was not fought over slavery alone -- and has ridiculed opponents of the display of Confederate flags in state capitals. In a 1993 column, he wrote,

The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance. How long is this endless groveling before every cry of 'racism' going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?

In State of Emergency he discusses the war, believing the war to have been caused primarily by irreconcilable cultural differences between the North and the South at the time. He states that "Slavery and the tariff were but the battleground quarrel behind which was a burning Southern desire to be free of all the North had come to represent." Buchanan believes the Civil War supports his word view in which culture is more important than political ideologies, because "The South was attached to the same principles of government. But that did not prevent the South from fighting four bloody years to be free of a Union headed by Abraham Lincoln."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Buchanan has been a critic of Martin Luther King, Jr. from his days at the Globe-Democrat.[74] He once heard King speak at a Baptist church in north St. Louis in 1962. He claims the civil rights leader smeared the 1964 Goldwater presidential campaign, accusing it of "dangerous signs of Hitlerism."[75] During the 1980s, he opposed making King's birthday a national holiday, along with other Republicans.

As a member of the Nixon administration, Buchanan urged Nixon not to visit King's widow, Coretta Scott King. Critics claim he said that "Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse" and called him "one of the most divisive men in contemporary history." Buchanan discussed the comments in a 2000 public radio interview:

[I said that in] a memo in 1969 whether we should recognize the day or go down and see Mrs. King, and I suggested we not see Mrs. King. I said, ‘Martin Luther King was one of the most divisive men. Some see him as the messiah of the nation, others think he’s a dreadful person. He is a divisive figure.’ Look, I knew Martin Luther King. I am the only candidate who was at the march on Washington. I was in the Lincoln Memorial. I was in Mississippi covering the civil rights demonstrations...Like every great movement, the civil rights movement had things that were attractive and things that were not. And for my history, friends, we make no apologies.[76]

Death of the West displays a more positive view of King⁽⁷⁾ and State of Emergency even quotes him with approval, but Buchanan still disagrees with many positions attributed to King. For example, he says colorblindness is ultimately impossible and disputes the view that race is not an issue, dismissing such ideas as utopian and unrealistic. "We will never escape the prison of race," writes Buchanan in State of Emergency, "It will forever poison our politics."

Global Affairs

National Sovereignty

Buchanan argues that the United States' ability to control its own affairs is under seige due to free trade ideology, globalism, globalization and other issues, discussed below. For example, he once suggested that the U.S. remove the United Nations headquarters from New York City and send in the Marines to “help pack”. He supports withdrawal from the Kyoto Treaty, the Rome Treaty and most of the IMF. He also suggests that foreign aid be rolled back and that all US troops pull out of Europe. [77]

In The Great Betrayal, he wrote:

"Like a shipwrecked, exhausted Gulliver on the beach of Lilliput, America is to be tied down with threads, strand by strand, until it cannot move when it awakens. 'Piece by piece,' our sovereignty is being surrendered."[78]

Trade

Buchanan proposes economic nationalism based on the principles of the American School, He is a critic of free trade, supports repealing NAFTA and raising tariffs on imported goods to provide tax relief to domestic industry. Arguing that "you need imports to pay the taxes," he sees tariffs as a vehicle for allowing for tax relief for domestically made products, making them more competitive.

Buchanan does not view tariffs as something that should be set so high as to ensure the foreign product will not be bought (and the tariff hence uncollected), but something that should be adjusted to maximize tax flow. As he wrote in 2004,

Tariffs raise the prices of goods. True. But all taxes — tariffs, incomes taxes, sales taxes, property taxes — are factored into the final price of the goods we buy. When a nation puts a tariff on foreign goods coming into the country, it is able to cut taxes on goods produced inside the country. This is the way to give U.S. manufacturers and workers a 'home-field advantage.'"

Buchanan opposes placing economic sanctions on foreign countries, saying they only harm the impoverished and weak while giving tyrants a convenient scapegoat. He has consistently rejected as immoral and self-defeating the idea of imposing sanctions on Arab and Muslim countries, for example. Despite his anti-Communism, he now opposes sanctions on Cuba ⁽⁸⁾ and criticized proposed sanctions on North Korea. [79] Buchanan also opposed economic sanctions against South Africa during apartheid. (see South Africa, below)

War and Peace

Core Values

Buchanan's entire career reflects staunch anti-communism. He called for a strong national defense the Cold War and supported the Vietnam War, saying that Communism directly threatened the safety of the United States. He does not approve of the way the Vietnam War was fought, but believes the Unites States could have won the war if it had been fought correctly. Today, he expresses concern about a Chinese Threat. In Where the Right Went Wrong, he noted that "the Communist Chinese government has the secret loyalty of millions of 'overseas Chinese' from Singapore to San Francisco."

Buchanan opposes other U.S. military actions abroad, including the Persian Gulf and Iraq Wars. Buchanan opposes the modern Republican Party's neo-conservative foreign policy. He supports the tradition of 'neutrality' or 'non-interventionism' which was the policy of United States prior to the onset of the Cold War. He has said that "Unless American honor, vital interests or citizens were at risk or have been attacked, U.S. policy should be to stay out of war." He is credited with reviving the slogan "America First," which was the name of a group that opposed American intervention in World War II. In his 1999 book A Republic, Not An Empire, he applauds that organization's efforts and calls its supporters maligned patriots. He also argued that the committee deserves credit for the fact that Soviet Russian casualties far outnumbered American ones on the European Front[80]. Buchanan's critics often describe him as an isolationist, which he denies.

He is in favor of ending treaties that he believes do not protect the interests of the United States, such as one-way defense treaties where the U.S. must militarily come to the defense of another country, but not vice versa. For example, he believes that the U.S. no longer has any legitimate reason to be a member of NATO ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and he strongly opposed American intervention in the Yugoslav Wars.

Islam, Terror and Conflict

Buchanan says Bush administration meddles in world affairs to the point of imperialism. He believes that Islamic terrorist attacks, such as the events of September 11, 2001 come as a result of intervening in foreign countries, saying "terrorists hate us for what we do, not what we are." He says "Our war on terror should more properly be called a war on Al Qaeda, the ones who attacked us. Terrorism is a weapon of war that has been used from before the destruction of Carthage." He believes it is pointless and dangerous for Americans to force their will on Muslim countries, because "anti-colonial and anti-imperial terror seems to be one of the few occupations at which Arab and Islamic peoples are proficient and successful. Turks, British, French, Israelis, Russians, and, yes, Americans (Lebanon in 1983), have been pushed out of these countries by terrorism and guerrilla war. Why do we want to go back?"

"Clearly, Islam is going through an upheaval with its incapacity to reconcile itself both with modernity and its militant faith. We should stay out of this revolution inside Islam, as Washington, Adams and Jefferson sought to keep us out of the wars that came out of the French Revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath. That revolution may hit our shores, and when it does, we have to defend ourselves and punish those who attack us. But wholesale military intervention in the Middle East and Islamic world is throwing rocks at bee hives." ⁽¹⁰⁾

Sometimes Buchanan's social views overlap with his ideas about trade and foreign policy. For example, he claims that the American media contributes to an unnecessary war because "Many of the movies, books, magazines, TV shows, videos and much of the music we export to the world are as poisonous as the narcotics the Royal Navy forced on the Chinese people in the Opium Wars."[81] While he says Islam is barbaric and inferior to Christianity[82][83], he also shows sympathy for modern Muslims' opposition to American pop culture today.[84] He also says Muslim culture is superior to many parts of America today, albeit not to American culture of 1954.[85] He wrote,

If conservatives reject the “equality” preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary [Clinton]?[86]

Environmental Protection

Buchanan has been a critic of the environmental movement. He claims that extremists "put insects, rats and birds ahead of families, workers and jobs." He mocks Earth Day as a poor substitute for Easter, where "we can all worship dirt.” He also says that while he wants endangered species to survive, regulations protecting habitats are unconstitutional takings from private landowners. During his 2000 presidential campaign, he explained,

We have a Biblically-based obligation to be good stewards of the land as “keepers of the commons.” However, the modern environmental movement has been co-opted by globalists who use international treaties to regulate our industries, and violate property rights by converting private holdings into public “habitats”. No one is more qualified to conserve land than the people who live on it. The government should not trample states rights by turning local land into public property.[87]

Canada

Buchanan remarked in 1990 that if Canada broke apart due to the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord, "America would pick up the pieces." In 1992, he stated that "for most Americans, Canada is sort of like a case of latent arthritis. We really don't think about it, unless it acts up."

On October 31, 2002, Buchanan called some Canadian politicians anti-American on MSNBC:

It's the blame America first crowd. The Canadians . . . have been defended by the United States, they pay nothing for defense. That place is a complete haven for international terrorists. Even their own retired security guys say it's a complete haven. We . . . need lectures from some people, not from Soviet Canuckistan.[88]

These comments followed a warning issued by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs stating that Canadians born in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Syria should be cautious while traveling to the United States, prompted by a U.S. law requiring photos and fingerprints of anyone born in those countries and visiting the U.S., as well as the case of Maher Arar.[89] Following Buchanan's comment, many Canadians adopted Soviet Canuckistan as an ironic, humorous self-reference. At the same time, some conservative Canadians adopted the term to express dislike for the Canadian political system and Liberal Party of Canada leadership.

Europe

Buchanan argues that Christianity created Europe, but Europe rejected Christianity. So without orthodox morality and ethics, it faces a crisis of legitimacy. He further says that democracy is merely a political process and insufficient for preventing decadence and tyranny.[90]

Buchanan is also a Euroskeptic and opposed the 2005 EU “New Europe” constitution, yet also suggested that the EU offer Russia membership.[91] He complains of an “atheist-socialist superstate rising in Europe”[92], which is "the prototype of the World Government to come."[93] He also speculates that the "Mother Continent" is endangered by falling birthrates[94], so that it risks becoming “Islamicized” by immigrants.[95]

For the de-Christianized European Union does not contain a single nation where the birth rate is sufficient to replace the population. Europe has begun to die. In 20 nations, the native-born population has begun to shrink. The cohort of workers entering the labor force is not large enough to maintain the welfare benefits, pensions and health care for retirees and elderly.[96]

Some critics equate Buchanan‘s right-wing nationalism with that of French nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted and fined by a German court for remarks "minimizing the Holocaust."[97] Buchanan himself contends that Le Pen “made radical and foolish statements," but is not a neo-Nazi. He also says the EU establishment violated the National Front leader’s free speech rights. He wrote:

As it is often the criminal himself who is first to cry, "Thief!" so it is usually those who scream, "Fascist!" loudest who are the quickest to resort to anti-democratic tactics. Today, the greatest threat to the freedom and independence of the nations of Europe comes not from Le Pen and that 17 percent of French men and women who voted for him. It comes from an intolerant European Establishment that will accept no rollback of its powers or privileges, nor any reversal of policies it deems "progressive."[98]

China

Buchanan claims the United States must review its policy toward China, because it is ambiguous and could lead to war. He argues that America gives this nation “unrestricted” access to its markets – and deserves something back, “besides cheap consumer goods.”[99] He also says that while the Chinese still live under Communist ideology[100], they follow economic policies reminiscent of German nationalist Friedrich List.[101]

About contemporary China, he writes:

[The Chinese] are Hamiltonians – resolute and ruthless economic nationalists. They look out and see the same world our forefathers saw, a world of nation-states where the struggle for power and pre-eminence is eternal, where trade is not a game, but an arena of battle, where industrial and technological primacy eventually yield military and strategic supremacy, where those who sacrifice today rule the world tomorrow. They see the world as it is. We see the world as we would like it to be.[102]

Buchanan says that although he supported his boss, President Nixon, when he opened toward China in the 1970s, the geopolitical situation has changed greatly since then. He says that the U.S. should contain, but neither aggravate nor appease, Beijing. He also supports providing Taiwan with defensive weapons and other materiel, but not troops.[103]

Korea

Buchanan says the 1953 Korean war armistice is a good example of a president ending a war that became unwise or unwinnable.[104] He calls North Korea “Stalinist,” but dismisses President Bush’s claim that it is part of an “Axis of Evil” with Iran and Iraq.[105] He said that the U.S. should pull its troops out of Korea, letting the North and South should solve the unification problem as an internal issue. [106]

While a North Korean attack on the South would imperil U.S. troops on the DMZ, this is not 1950. Why should we fight the South's war, with atomic weapons, when the South's population is twice that of the North and its economy is 30 times as large? Would it not make more sense to get U.S. forces out of South Korea and sell Seoul the weapons she needs to conduct her own defense? For if a war, conventional or even nuclear, broke out, no vital U.S. interest would be imperiled, so long as no U.S. troops are in South Korea. [107]

Buchanan also says the Bush administration was hypocritical to demand pre-emptive strikes and regime change for other nation, but not for North Korea. He says a “new generation” of South Koreans resents the U.S. military presence. He also predicts that a U.S. pullout would “moot America's quarrel with the Communist North.”[108]

South Africa

Buchanan opposed economic sanctions designed to punish South Africa for apartheid, as did many other 1980s Republicans. Then he characterized such proposals as "collaborating in a United Nations conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions." He still defends that position, opposes sanctions in general (see Trade, above) and praises President Reagan for vetoing them.[109]

Buchanan has also referred to Nelson Mandela as a former train-bomber.[110] He says that he and the African National Congress used terrorism to overthrow white rule, as did Robert Mugabe in Rhodesia.[111][112] He uses them an example of how revolutionaries have fought European dominance.[113]

Israel and Accusations of anti-Semitism

Buchanan has been accused of anti-Semitism multiple times. For example:

• Norman Podhoretz called him "soft on Hitler" and said he had a "habit of championing the cause of almost anyone accused of participating actively in Hitler's genocidal campaign against the Jews."[114]
• John Podhoretz, Norman's son, wrote: "You want to know what anti-Semitism is? When Pat Buchanan calls Israel's military action 'un-Christian,' that's anti-Semitism."[115]
• Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said that before the 1990 Gulf War, Buchanan noted that "several commentators with obviously Jewish names and suggested that the war would be fought by soldiers 'with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown.'" He called it "an appeal to anti-Semitic bigotry."[116]

(Some other events that included claims of anti-Semitism are discussed below.)

Buchanan denies the charges. For example:

• He wrote in 1992 that "no true Christian can carry within his heart hatred for any of God's children . . . I am as aware as any other Christian that our Savior was Jewish, His mother was Jewish. The Apostles were Jewish. The first martyrs were Jewish...So no true Christian, in my judgment, can be an anti-Semite."[117]
• In a 1999 response to Podhoretz, he said, "true anti-Semitism -- a hatred of Jews for who they are or what they believe -- is a disease of the heart. Unrepented of, it corrupts the soul. There is no such hatred in my heart for any group or any individual."[118]
• He argued in 2003 that "it is the charge of “anti-Semitism” itself that is toxic. For this venerable slander is designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and censoring and blacklisting them and any who would publish them."

Hitler and the Holocaust

Pat Buchanan says that Adolf Hitler only sought to dominate Europe, making him “no physical threat to the US” to the US after 1940. He also claims that President Roosevelt "froze all Japanese assets, cutting off trade, including oil" to push Japan into starting a war.[119] He refers to Roosevelt as "a base appeaser of Stalin" and that his administration was "shot through with Communist spies and traitors." [120]

In addition, in his book State of Emergency, Buchanan blames Hitler and the Holocaust for contemporary white guilt and political correctness. He also quotes several Jewish voices in support of the idea of an American melting pot as opposed to multiculturalism, and gives examples of anti-Semitic sentiment on the part of some Mexican immigrants. In A Republic, Not an Empire, he refers to Auschwitz and Katyn as places "where SS and NKVD killers roamed free and labored long into the night."[121]

He also speaks of the Holocaust as one of the horrors of World War II:

"War wins nothing, cures nothing, ends nothing . . . in war there are no winners, but all are losers." So said Neville Chamberlain on the eve of the war he had sought desperately to avoid, but which his own blunders would bring about. Chamberlain was mistaken. War ended Nazi Germany, though the cost was high: the Holocaust, the collapse of the British Empire, the Stalinization of 11 nations of Eastern Europe, 50 million dead and half a century of Cold War.[122]

In defending himself against charges of Nazi sympathies, Buchanan calls Hitler a "monster" guilty of "ugly actions and discriminatory laws"[123] He has also said that the Holocaust did not become a Final Solution until the Wannsee conference in 1942, after the Pearl Harbor attack ended the debate over U.S. involvement in World War II. Then, the Holocaust was no more of a concern for interventionist leaders than it was for their opposition.[124].

"Great courage" controversy

In a 1977 column discussing John Toland's biography of Adolf Hitler, Buchanan wrote,

Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him...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.[125]

Buchanan supporters say this paragraph is easily taken out of context.[126] They point out that in the same essay, the commentator praised Winston Churchill for seeing that "Hitler was marching along the road toward a New Order where Western civilization would not survive." He concluded that modern-day statesment were not following that example.[127]

Reagan at Bitburg

As a White House advisor in 1985, Buchanan supported President Reagan's plan to visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg, in which were buried 48 SS members, over the objections of Jewish groups. (German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was the prime mover behind using the site.) In an interview, author Elie Wiesel discussed attending a White House meeting of Jewish leaders about the trip, "The only one really defending the trip," he said, "was Pat Buchanan, saying, 'We cannot give the perception of the president being subjected to Jewish pressure."

Norman Podhoretz and others claimed that Buchanan crafted this Reagan statement:

"These [SS troops] were the villains, as we know, that conducted the persecutions and all. But there are 2,000 graves there, and most of those, the average age is about 18. I think that there's nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery where those young men are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis. They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps"[128]

Buchanan later wrote that "Mr. Reagan made this remark spontaneously, in answer to a questioner, as he was departing an editors' briefing on April 18, 1985... I had nothing to do with it."[129]

Ivan Demjanjuk

Buchanan asserted that six men accused of Nazi-era war crimes were innocent:

• Ivan Demjanjuk
• Karl Linnas
• Arthur Rudolph
• Frank Walus
• Ivan Stebelsky
• Tscherim Soobzokov[130]

Ukrainian born Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland autoworker, received the most attention. Buchanan called his trial a witch hunt and said "Demjanjuk had never even been at Treblinka."[131] Demjanjuk was convicted by an Israeli court, but his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel on the grounds of mistaken identity. Buchanan wrote that this spared the country the disgrace of hanging an innocent man.[132]

Diesel engines

In a 1990 column defending Demjanjuk, Buchanan also claimed:

Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. In 1988, 97 kids, trapped 400 feet underground in a Washington, D.C., tunnel while two locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the car, emerged unharmed after 45 minutes. Demjanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill. [133]

When asked for his source, Buchanan said, "somebody sent it to me." Critic Jamie McCarthy says this claim may have come from the German American Information and Education Association's newsletter, a publication he accused of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial He also argues that "unlike the locomotive engineer in Buchanan's example, who was concerned with saving the lives of trapped people, the Nazis had no qualms about opening the engine's throttle and restricting the air intake."[134].

The Washington Post reported in 1989, before the controversy, that

An Amtrak train had been stalled in a tunnel for half an hour, and smoke from the diesel engine had filled the first car, where there were 97 fifth-grade pupils and 27 adult chaperones. [EMT Cynthia] Brown boarded the train, guided the passengers -- most of whom suffered from smoke inhalation -- from the car and assisted those who needed immediate attention.

U.S.-Israel Policy

Pat Buchanan says he favors "a strong, independent state of Israel,"[135] although he regularly criticizes U.S. policy in the Middle East. He wrote in 1999:

As for my views on Israel, they have changed. With the Intifada, I came to believe that Israel's survival now mandated a homeland, a flag, and a nation of their own for the Palestinian people. A friend I made in Israel at the end of the Six Day War, Yitzhak Rabin, reached the same conclusion at the same time. For attempting to negotiate peace with Arafat, Rabin, too, was called an anti-Semite and Nazi, and was murdered in that climate of hatred.[136]

In particular, Buchanan argues that much American "meddling" in the Middle East is largely done to support Israel, not to protect the U.S. national interest. Buchanan has referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory." In the 1990s, he endorsed the "land for peace" policy in the Middle East.[137] He also strongly praised Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin^{(12) (13)}, calling him "the statesman who brought peace after a half century of fighting for Israel's place in the sun."[138]

"Amen corner" controversy

The first widespread accusations of anti-Semitism concerned the September 15, 1990, McLaughlin Group program. On it, Buchanan said that "there are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East -- the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States." He also said, "The Israelis want this war desperately because they want the United States to destroy the Iraqi war machine. They want us to finish them off. They don't care about our relations with the Arab world." This sparked New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal to complain of a "venom" and a "blood libel" against Jews, saying "that to be silent about anti-Semitism would be a sin with which I could not live."

("Amen corner" is a slang term used by some American protestants to describe a group of people who sit in near one another in church and shout "Amen!" whenever the preacher makes a point. In this sense, it is not necessarily perjorative.)

The Palestinians

Buchanan supports an independent Palestinian state, but criticized Yasser Arafat's leadership. ⁽⁹⁾ He compared the Battle of Jenin to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and accuses Israel of spying on the United States in many instances other than the well-publicized case of Jonathan Pollard, about whom he wrote,

Israel suborned Jonathan Pollard to loot our secrets and refuses to return the documents, which would establish whether or not they were sold to Moscow. When Clinton tried to broker an agreement at Wye Plantation between Israel and Arafat, Bibi Netanyahu attempted to extort, as his price for signing, release of Pollard, so he could take this treasonous snake back to Israel as a national hero.[139]

He describes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the battle of intractable foes. He says a Palestinian state is the only hope for peace -- and would give the Palestinians "a huge stake" in "preventing acts of terror against Israel – i.e., national survival."[140] He also that "Israeli repression" made the Palestinians radical -- and describes U.S. policy as "waging war on innocents to break their political leaders" and fueling anti-American hatreds.[141]

Lebanon

In July, 1996, during Israel's conflict with Lebanon, he accused President Bush of "subcontracting U.S. policy out to Tel Aviv, thus making Israel the custodian of our reputation and interests in the Middle East." Further, he said that when Bush was asked if he would urge Israel to restrain airstrikes, he "sounded less like the leader of the Free World than some bellicose city councilman from Brooklyn Heights." He concluded:

Already, Bush is ranting about Syria being behind the Hezbollah capture of the Israeli soldiers. But where is the proof? Who is whispering in his ear? The same people who told him Iraq was maybe months away from an atom bomb, that an invasion would be a "cakewalk," that he would be Churchill, that U.S. troops would be greeted with candy and flowers, that democracy would break out across the region, that Palestinians and Israelis would then sit down and make peace? How much must America pay for the education of this man?[142]

The Neoconservatives

See also the entries for neoconservatism and paleoconservatism.

Pat Buchanan opposes those people labeled neoconservatives, whom he calls “undocumented aliens from the Left, carrying with them the viruses of statism and globalism.” [143] He describes their first generation as people who began as “Trotskyist, socialists or Social Democrat,” then became “JFK-LBJ Democrats,” but broke with the left during the Vietnam War and “came into their own” during Reagan’s administration. [144] He said he welcomed the movement in the early 1970s, but that it became an inquisition, “hurling anathemas at any who decline to embrace their revised dogmas. “ Buchanan compares “neocons” to squatters who take over a once-beloved home (the Republican Party) and convert it into a crack house. [145]

In March, 2003, he wrote an American Conservative cover story arguing that neoconservatives want “to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.” He said that Lawrence Kaplan, David Brooks, Max Boot, Robert Kagan and others used anti-Semitism charges to intimidate Iraq War critics. Buchanan denied these claims, saying that national interest is at stake and “warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon.” He argued that a group of ”polemicists and public officials” was “colluding with Israel” to start wars, wreck the Oslo Accords, damage U.S. relations with Arab states, alienate Western and Islamic allies, and threaten the peace won by winning the Cold War. He concluded:

The Israeli people are America’s friends and have a right to peace and secure borders. We should help them secure these rights. As a nation, we have made a moral commitment, endorsed by half a dozen presidents, which Americans wish to honor, not to permit these people who have suffered much to see their country overrun and destroyed. And we must honor this commitment. But U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical. They often collide, and when they do, U.S. interests must prevail. Moreover, we do not view the Sharon regime as “America’s best friend.”[146]

Pop culture

• Hunter S. Thompson considered Buchanan a friend. Buchanan was among dozens who offered a statement in Rolling Stone after the gonzo journalist's suicide in 2005.[147] About Buchanan, Thompson once wrote, "We disagree so violently on almost everything that it's a real pleasure to drink with him."

• Ali G interviewed Buchanan on Da Ali G Show, where the commentator played along by calling WMDs "BLTs." [148]

• Buchanan is a guest star on the second episode of the Al Franken NBC sitcom LateLine, which aired on March 24, 1998.[149]

• Buchanan is referred to as a past President of the United States in Robert J. Sawyer's 2005 novel Mindscan, which takes place in 2045 and features an ultra-conservative United States of America and an ever-more-liberal Canada.

Trivia

• Buchanan spokeswoman Linda Muller said on September 7, 2006, that "PJB is not running" in the 2008 presidential race.[150]

• Buchanan married Shelley Ann Scarney in 1971. She was a member of the White House staff from 1969 to 1975.[151] They have no children. The pair usually traveled together on Pat's campaign trail.

• During the 2000 race, Gipper, Buchanan's 14-year-old orange tabby cat, sometimes sat on his lap at staff meetings.[152]

• Buchanan belongs to the the Knights of Malta, a Roman Catholic fraternal order also known as the Knights Hospitaller.

• The 1992 Bush re-relection campaign ran an TV ad in Michigan that mocked Buchanan's economic nationalism. In it, a voiceover read, "Pat Buchanan tells us 'America First.' But while our auto industry suffers, Pat Buchanan chose to buy a foreign car, a Mercedes-Benz. Pat Buchanan called his American cars, quote, 'lemons.'" At the time Buchanan said he bought it in 1989 "for the missus" and that unloading it would be an empty gesture. He later sold the car back to its previous owner.[153] In 2002, he said he drove a Lincoln Navigator and a Cadillac STS.

• In 1992, Buchanan told a Washington Post that he once lobbed an apple at a prostitute on I Street while a high school student. "This is the way our world was," he remarked. "I'm not an angry man. I'm a very happy, contented human being."

• Garry Wills mentioned Buchanan in his 1968 book “Nixon Agonistes. "As usual he has a black overcoat on," he wrote. "with the collar wrapped up around his lumpy raw face -- a 40-year-old torpedo, hands on the iron in his pockets? No, he is 29, a writer, one of Nixon's fresh batch of intellectuals." Buchanan memorized the description.

• In 1960, a District of Columbia draft board declared Buchanan 4-F and rejected him from military service due to Reiter's syndrome, an arthritic condition. (He had previously served in ROTC at Georgetown.) Five years later, he told a group of antiwar protesters, “All of you are here on a pass because of your (student) deferments.”

• PETA gave Buchanan the 2005 "Strongest Backbone" Proggy Award after his American Conservative magazine ran cover stories criticizing "factory farms and slaughterhouses." The group said Buchanan made a "gutsy decision" to cover animal rights topics.[154] The articles were "Fear Factories" and "Dominion" by Matthew Scully, a former George W. Bush speechwriter.

• In a 1996 FEC filing, Buchanan reported holding shares of AT&T, Caterpillar, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, General Motors, General Electric, Gillette, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly Clark, IBM, and Wal-Mart.(The AT&T stock was described as an old gift from his father-in-law.) In 2000, his reported holdings included SBC, Lucent, El Paso Corp., Bell Atlantic, and Burlington Resources. It also contained between $250,000 and $500,000 in precious metals, plus a home in McLean, Va., valued between $1 million and $5 million. That year, he listed his family net worth as between $5.2 million and $16.1 million. [155]

• Buchanan has opposed every major military campaign the U.S. has engaged in since the end of the Cold War except for the United States invasion of Afghanistan. On The McLaughlin Group in December 2005, he referred to the current war in Iraq as the worst foreign policy disaster of his lifetime.

• Buchanan had a grandfather who fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side. Though some consider his political views traditionally Midwestern in origin, he expresses pride in his Southern heritage. He is also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans[156] and admires Robert E. Lee.

• He says his favorite black American leader is Booker T. Washington[157].

• In A Republic, Not an Empire, Buchanan advocates the U.S. purchase and annexation of Greenland.

• A protester shouted "Stop the bigotry!" and tossed salad dressing at Buchanan during a Q&A session at Western Michigan University on March 31, 2005. He was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. “Thank you all for coming, but I’m going to have to get my hair washed,” he remarked just before leaving.[158]

• Village Voice reporter Tom Carson once told Buchanan, "I've been waiting my whole life for someone running for President to talk about the Fortune 500 as the enemy -- and when I finally get my wish, it turns out to be you."[159]

• One of Buchanan's heroes is Gen. Douglas MacArthur[160], which is apparent in some of his work[161][162][163]. Other controversial American historical figures Buchanan has often defended include Senator Joseph McCarthy[164][165] (who has an entire chapter dedicated to him in Right from the Beginning) and aviator Charles Lindbergh[166] (who is portrayed as a maligned American hero who spoke out against a warmongering FDR in A Republic, Not and Empire and briefly again in Death of the West).

Books and Articles

Books

File:A Republic Not An Empire Cover.jpg

• State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (August 22, 2006) ISBN 0-312-36003-7
• Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency (2004) ISBN 0-312-34115-6
• The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (2002) ISBN 0-312-28548-5
• A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny (1999) ISBN 0-89526-272-X
• The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy (1998) ISBN 0-316-11518-5
• Right from the Beginning (1988) ISBN 0-316-11408-1
• Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories: Why the Right Has Failed (1975) ISBN 0-8129-0582-2
• The New Majority: President Nixon at Mid-Passage (1973)

Major Speeches

• 1992 Republican National Convention keynote, speech dated August 17, 1992
• 1996 campaign announcement, speech dated March 20, 1995.
• 1996 campaign speech, Georgia primary stump speech dated February 29, 1996.
• 2000 campaign announcement, speech dated March 2, 1999.
• 2000 Reform Party nomination acceptance, speech dated August 12, 2000.
• The Cultural War for the Soul of America, speech dated September 14, 1992.
• Death of The West, Commonwealth Club speech dated January 14, 2002.
• Free Trade, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations speech dated November 18, 1998.
• To Reunite a Nation, Richard Nixon Library speech on immigration dated January 18, 2000.

Selected Articles

• The Aggressors in the Culture Wars, column dated March 8, 2004.
• The Death of Manufacturing, American Conservative, August 11, 2003.
• The Death of the West, book excerpt on MSNBC.com, Oct 30, 2003.
• Ghostbusting the Smoot-Hawley Ogre, column dated October 20, 1993.
• 'Ivan The Terrible' - More Doubts, column dated March 17, 1990.
• A Lesson in Tyranny Too Soon Forgotten, column dated August 25, 1977.
• The Old Right and the Future of Conservatism, by Patrick J. Buchanan. Foreword to the second edition of Justin Raimondo's 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right.
• The Sad Suicide of Admiral Nimitz, column dated January 18, 2002.
• Response to Norman Podhoretz, letter to The Wall Street Journal dated November 5, 1999.
• Time for Economic Nationalism, column dated June 12, 1995.
• True Fascists of the New Europe, column dated April 30, 2002.
• Whose War?, American Conservative, March 24, 2003.
• Where are the Christians?, column dated July 18, 2006.

The American Cause archives several years of Buchanan's newspaper columns here.

Interviews

• Ten Questions for Pat Buchanan, by Jeff Chu, Time, Aug. 20, 2006.
• Is This the Face of the Twenty-First Century?, by Bill Kauffman, The American Enterprise, July/August 1998.
• Pat Buchanan Defends Controversial Immigration Comments Fox News partial transcript, Hannity & Colmes," August 22, 2006.
• Republicans: Whitman, Buchanan and Terror, "Open Source" public radio show. (audio)

See also

• Antifeminism
• Bay Buchanan
• Conservatism
• Constitution Party
• Culture war
• Ezola Foster
• Globe-Democrat
• Non-interventionism
• Old Right
• Paleoconservatism
• Populism
• Protectionism
• Traditionalist Catholicism
• Reform Party

Online Notes

Note (1): Britannica.com.

Note (2): MSNBC article

Note (3): Antiwar.com

Note (4): Los Angeles Times article

Note (5): Archive.salon.com

Note (6): Frontpagemag.com.

Note (7): Lewrockwell.com

Note (8): Sptimes.com

Note (9): ArchiveSalon.com

Note (10): Frontpagemag

Note (11): CNN article transcript.

Note (12): [167]

Note (13): [168]

External links

Buchanan-affiliated

• Buchanan.org
• Buchanan blog
• Buchanan's twice-weekly column
• Pat Buchanan archive on LewRockwell.com
• The American Conservative magazine
• The American Cause
• MSNBC bio
• MSNBC Buchanan and Press page
• Pat Buchanan Features, from Creators Syndicate, distributor of Buchanan's columns.

News and analysis

• Right Wing Populist, by Eyal Press, The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1996.
• The Voice of Economic Nationalism, by Steven Stark The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1998.
• Buchanan claims Reform Party nomination, CNN.com, August 12, 2000.
• Buchanan 2000: What Went Wrong, enterstageright.com.
• Buchanan and Palm Beach county controversy, Salon.com.
• Buchanan attacked with salad dressing, video dated April 1, 2005.
• Buchanan sees 'war' within conservatism, by Ralph Z. Hallow. Washington Times, May 17, 2005.
• Buchanan warns of flood of illegals, by Eric Pfeiffer. Washington Times, August 22, 2006
• Pat Buchanan and the Great Right Hope, by Sidney Blumenthal, The Washington Post, January 8, 1987.
• Pat Buchanan Book Hits Amazon No. 1 Spot, NewsMax, August 23, 2006.
• Pat Buchanan, Populist Republican, by Robert Novak, National Review, August 14, 1995.
• Reform Party Split Deepens, BBC News, August 12, 2000.
• Third Party presidential candidates in 2000. PBS.org.

Also

• Ezola Foster: Pat Buchanan's Far Right Hand," by Peter Carlson, The Washington Post, September 13, 2000.
• Reagan Joins Kohl in Brief Memorial at Bitburg Graves," by Bernard Weinraub, 'The New York Times, May 6, 1985.

Campaign Materials

• Buchananism or Barbarism, by Justin Raimondo, Reform Party Nominating Convention speech dated August 12, 2000.
• Reclaiming America’s Destiny, Pat Buchanan for President 2000 Campaign Brochure.
• Setting the Record Straight on Anti-Semitism, Buchanan campaign press release dated March 1, 1996.

Supporting views

• Buchanan Is Right On Trade Sanctions, by Bruce Bartlett, column dated January 3, 2000.
• Learning to Love Pat Buchanan by Knute Berger, Seattle Weekly, October 13, 2004.
• The Anti-Buchanan Hysteria, by Burton S. Blumert, LewRockwell.com, November 1, 1999.
• Buchanan is Right about the Right, by Darrell Dow.
• Pat Buchanan, antiwar candidate by Lenora Fulani, WorldNetDaily, December 28, 1999.
• My Guy: Paul Gottfried on Patrick Buchanan, Policy Review, Summer 1995.
• Buchanan: The Epilogue, by Scott McConnell, VDARE, November 26, 2000.
• Targeted for Destruction, by John F. McManus. The New American, March 18, 1996.
• Portrait of an American Nationalist, by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, August 16, 1999.
• Pat Buchanan and The Menace, Murray Rothbard, 1990 libertarian defense of Buchanan.
• Is Patrick Buchanan an anti-Semite?, by George Szamuely, New York Press, November 4, 1999.
• Pat Buchanan profile by Derek Wallace, virtuemag.org.

Opposing views

• Know Your Right Wing Speakers, CampusProgress.org
• Pat Buchanan's Skeleton Closet, RealChange.org.
• Overview and critique of Buchanan's diesel engine assertion
• Pat Buchanan on Jews and Israel, Anti-Defamation League, September, 1999.
• Pat Buchanan in His Own Words, FAIR press release dated February 26, 1996.
• Buchanan's White Whale, By Lawrence Auster, Frontpagemag.com, March 19, 2004.
• Will The Real Pat Buchanan Please Stand Up?, by Bill Barnwell, Lew Rockwell.com, May 15, 2000.
• The Truth About Trade in History, by Bruce Bartlett, Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, n.d.
• Nazi Buchanan Must Be Stopped!, by Ron Daniels, Jewish Defense Organization.
• The Buchanan Doctrine, by John Judis, New York Times, October 3, 1999.
• Who's afraid of Pat Buchanan?, by Jake Tapper, Salon, September 4, 1999.
• Buchanan and Market, by Jeffrey A. Tucker, Lew Rockwell.com, March 23, 2002.

Miscellaneous

• Buchanan ancestry through nine generations.
• On The Issues listens dozens of Buchanan's stated positions.
• IMDB.com profile
• NNDB.com profile