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Pat Buchanan
Born	November 2, 1938 (1938-11-02) (age 69) Washington, D.C.
Occupation	Writer, Political analyst
Spouse	Shelley Ann Scarney
Parents	William Baldwin Buchanan and Catherine Elizabeth Crum Buchanan

Patrick Joseph Buchanan (born November 2, 1938) is an U.S. politician, 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 was a senior advisor to three American presidents, Nixon, Ford and Reagan, and 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.

Contents 1 Personal life 2 Professional career 2.1 St. Louis Globe-Democrat 2.2 Nixon years 2.3 CNN 2.4 Reagan years 2.5 1992 campaign 2.6 Off the campaign trail 2.7 1996 campaign 2.8 2000 campaign 2.9 MSNBC 2.10 The American Conservative 3 Republican politics 4 Roman Catholicism 5 Social conservatism 5.1 Culture war 5.2 Abortion and Euthanasia 5.3 Education and faith 5.4 Gay rights and AIDS 5.5 Feminism 5.6 Guns and Crime 6 National identity 6.1 Immigration reform 6.1.1 Assimilation and National Security 6.1.2 Demographic change 6.1.3 Platform 7 Race relations 7.1 Civil rights, crime, and immigration 7.2 American Civil War 7.3 Martin Luther King, Jr. 8 Global affairs 9 Environmental protection 9.1 Environmentalism, property rights and trade 9.2 Animal welfare 10 Israel and accusations of anti-Semitism 10.1 Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust 10.1.1 "Great courage" controversy 10.1.2 Charles Lindbergh 10.1.3 Reagan at Bitburg 10.1.4 Iwan Demjanjuk 10.2 U.S.-Israel Policy 10.2.1 A Palestinian State 10.3 Terrorism and 9/11 10.4 Iraq 10.4.1 Lebanon 10.5 Neoconservativism 11 In popular culture 12 Books and articles 12.1 Books 12.2 Major speeches 12.3 Selected articles 12.4 Interviews 13 See also 14 References 15 External links 15.1 Buchanan-affiliated 15.2 News and analysis 15.2.1 Also 15.3 Campaign materials 15.4 Supporting views 15.5 Opposing views 15.6 Miscellaneous

[edit] Personal life

Buchanan was born on November 2, 1938, in Washington, D.C., the son of Catherine Elizabeth (née Crumm), a nurse and a homemaker, and William Baldwin Buchanan, a partner in an accounting firm.^[1] Buchanan had six brothers (Brian, Henry, James, John, Thomas, and William Jr.) and two sisters (Kathleen and Bay).^[2] One sister, Bay Buchanan, served as U.S. Treasurer under Ronald Reagan. Buchanan has German, Scots Irish, and Irish ancestry.^[3] He had a great-grandfather who fought in the American Civil War on the Confederate side. He expresses pride in his Southern heritage. He is also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans^[4] and admires Robert E. Lee.^[5]

Buchanan was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church and has remained Catholic throughout his life, attending the traditional Latin Mass. He has also spent most of his education at Catholic institutions. He attended Blessed Sacrament School, the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College High School, and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In 1992, Buchanan told a Washington Post reporter 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."^[6] Buchanan graduated from Gonzaga with a 98 average. He graduated cum laude from Georgetown with degrees in English and Philosophy in 1961.

Buchanan served in ROTC while studying at Georgetown and received his draft notice in 1960. However, a District of Columbia draft board declared him 4-F, rejecting him from military service due to reactive arthritis. After Georgetown, Buchanan earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia in 1962.

In 1971, Buchanan married Shelley Ann Scarney, a White House staffer.^[7] They have no children.

One of Buchanan's heroes is Gen. Douglas MacArthur,^[8] which is apparent in some of his work.^{[9][10][11][12]} Buchanan also defends Senator Joseph McCarthy,^[13][14] who has an entire chapter dedicated to him in Right from the Beginning.

[edit] Professional career

[edit] 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 master's project at Columbia on the expanding trade between Canada and Cuba. Canada-Cuba trade had tripled in 1961, the first year of the United States embargo against Cuba. The Globe-Democrat published a rewrite of the paper under the eight-column banner "Canada sells to Red Cuba - And Prospers." According to Buchanan's memoir Right from the Beginning, this article was a milestone in his career, occurring just eight weeks after he started at the paper. Buchanan later turned against the embargo, saying it only strengthened the communist regime.^[15] In 1964, the Globe-Democrat promoted Buchanan to assistant editorial page editor. That year, Buchanan supported Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. The Globe-Democrat did not endorse Goldwater, however, and Buchanan speculated about a clandestine agreement between the paper and President Johnson. Buchanan later recalled: "The conservative movement has always advanced from its defeats. . . I can't think of a single conservative who was sorry about the Goldwater campaign."^[16] According to the foreword (written by Pat Buchanan) in the most recent edition of Conscience of a Conservative, Buchanan was a member of the Young Americans for Freedom, and wrote press releases for that organization.

[edit] Nixon years

Buchanan was an early supporter of Richard Nixon's political comeback. In 1965, he served as an executive assistant in the Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander, and Mitchell law offices in New York City. The next year, he was the first person hired as an advisor to Nixon's presidential campaign;^[17] he worked primarily as an opposition researcher. He was soon nicknamed "Mr. Inside" for his speeches aimed at dedicated supporters.^[18]

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 Nixon and the vice president, Spiro Agnew. Buchanan was influential in the White House, where he coined the phrase silent majority and helped shape the strategy that drew millions of Democrats to Nixon; in a typical 1972 memo he suggested that the White House "should move to re-capture the anti-Establishment tradition or theme in American politics."^[19] 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.^[18]

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 mistakenly suspected him as 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."^[20] On September 26, 1973, Buchanan appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee, due to his role in the Nixon campaign's "Attack Group." He told the panel: "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."^[18] When Nixon resigned in 1974, Buchanan briefly stayed on 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.^[18]

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."^[18] 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."^[21]

[edit] CNN

After leaving the White House, Buchanan returned to his column and began regular appearances as a broadcast host and commentator. He co-hosted the Buchanan-Braden Program, a three-hour daily radio show with liberal columnist Tom Braden, and also delivered daily commentaries on NBC radio from 1978 to 1984. Buchanan started his TV career as a regular on The McLaughlin Group and CNN's Crossfire (inspired by Buchanan-Braden) and The Capital Gang, making him nationally recognizable. His several stints on Crossfire occurred between 1982 and 1999; his sparring partners included Braden, Michael Kinsley and Bill Press.

[edit] 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 intended to indicate opposition to Nicaragua's Sandinista government and support for the rebels fighting against it. Buchanan supported Reagan's visit to a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, which had been criticized because, among other soldiers, also 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."^[18] Bay Buchanan started a "Buchanan for President" movement in June 1986, while her brother still worked for Reagan. She said the conservative movement needed a leader, but Buchanan was initially ambivalent.^[18] He returned to his column and Crossfire after leaving the White House. He sat out the 1988 race out of respect for Jack Kemp, who would later become his adversary.^[19]

[edit] 1992 campaign

In 1990, Buchanan published a newsletter called Patrick J. Buchanan: From the Right; it sent subscribers a bumper sticker that read, "Read Our Lips! No new taxes."^[22] In 1992, Buchanan began the first of his three presidential campaigns, running on a platform of economic nationalism, immigration reduction, and social conservatism, including opposition to multiculturalism, abortion, and gay rights. He unsuccessfully challenged the incumbent, President George H. W. Bush, for the Republican Party presidential nomination, garnering some 3 million votes in state primary elections. Buchanan won 38 percent of the seminal New Hampshire primary, seriously challenging Bush, whose popularity was waning. Buchanan explained his reason for running thus: "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."^[16]

Buchanan later threw his support behind Bush, and delivered a keynote address at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which became known as the culture war speech, in which he described "a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America." In the speech, 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 units--that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call God's country.^[23]

Buchanan's speech stirred controversy and alienated some moderates.^[24] Among liberal commentators who responded, Molly Ivins quipped that the speech "probably sounded better in the original German."^[25]

[edit] Off the campaign trail

In between campaigns, Buchanan returned to his column and Crossfire. In 1993, after his first presidential campaign, he founded The American Cause, a paleoconservative educational foundation, to promote the principles of federalism, traditional values, and anti-intervention. Bay Buchanan serves as the Vienna, Virginia-based foundation's president and Pat is its chairman.^[26]

On July 5, 1993, Buchanan 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. Buchanan left the program on March 20, 1995, to launch his 1996 campaign.

[edit] 1996 campaign

Buchanan again sought the Republican nomination in 1996 while voicing his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Buchanan won an upset victory in the New Hampshire primary in February, defeating Senator Bob Dole by about 3,000 votes. At a rally in Nashua, he said, "We shocked them in Alaska. Stunned them in Louisiana. Stunned them in Iowa. They are in a terminal panic. They hear the shouts of the peasants from over the hill. All the knights and barons will be riding into the castle pulling up the drawbridge in a minute. All the peasants are coming with pitchforks. We're going to take this over the top."^[27] 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 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."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".^[28]

Dole defeated Buchanan by large margins in the subsequent Super Tuesday primaries. Buchanan suspended his campaign in March, having collected 21 percent 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.^{[citation needed]} Dole chose Jack Kemp and they received Buchanan's endorsement. After the 1996 campaign, Buchanan again returned to his column and Crossfire. He also began a series of paleoconservative books with 1998's The Great Betrayal.

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.^[29](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.^[30]

[edit] 2000 campaign

Following poor results in the Republican Party's Ames Straw Poll in August 1999, in October 1999, Buchanan sought the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, announcing his departure from 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 party members expressed discomfort 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 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 Democratic and Republican 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 each claiming to be the legitimate Reform Party and offering different candidates.

Ultimately, Buchanan won the nomination when the Federal Elections Commission ruled that he would receive ballot status as the Reform candidate, as well as about $12.6 million dollars in federal campaign funds secured by Perot's showing in the 1996 election. In his acceptance speech, Buchanan proposed U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and expelling the U.N. 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.

In the 2000 general election, Buchanan finished fourth with 449,895 votes, 0.4 percent of the popular vote. (Hagelin garnered 0.1 percent 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". 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". However, 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 Reform Party to take an active role within 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 next few years, choosing not to align himself with what he viewed as the neo-conservative Republican party leadership. 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 said he would vote for George W. Bush's re-election.^[31]

During the 2000 race, Gipper, Buchanan's 14-year-old orange tabby cat, sometimes sat on his lap at staff meetings.^[32]

[edit] MSNBC

After the 2000 race, Buchanan's column resumed, although CNN decided not to take him back.^[33] From July 15, 2002 to November 26, 2003, MSNBC aired Buchanan and Press, a longer variation of the Crossfire format that reunited the old show's stars, Buchanan and Press. Billed as "the smartest hour on television", Buchanan and Press featured the duo interviewing guests and sparring about the top news stories. As the Iraq War loomed, Buchanan and Press toned down their rivalry, as they both opposed the invasion. Press claims they were the first cable hosts to discuss the planned attack.^[34] MSNBC Editor-in-Chief Jerry Nachman once jokingly lamented this unusual situation, saying, "So the point is why does only Fox [News Channel] get this? At least, we work at the perfect place, the place that's fiercely independent. We try to have balance by putting you two guys together and then this Stockholm syndrome love fest set in between the two of you, and we no longer even have robust debate.^[35]"

Just hours after his own talk show debuted, Buchanan was a guest on the premiere of MSNBC's ill-fated Donahue program. Host Phil Donahue and Buchanan debated the separation of church and state. Buchanan called Donahue "dictatorial"^[36] and teased that the host got his job through affirmative action.^[37]

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

[edit] The American Conservative

In 2002, 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. The first American Conservative issue was dated October 7, 2002. Paid circulation in April, 2004, was 12,600.^[38] Buchanan is currently listed as Editor Emeritus on the masthead.

[edit] Republican politics

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 many subjects. Buchanan says that his contrarian opinions have caused him to be called "an anti-Semite, a homophobe, a racist, a sexist, a nativist, a protectionist, an isolationist, a social fascist and a beer-hall conservative" and that he accepts none of those labels.^[39]

Some of Buchanan's contemporary positions reflect the influence of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.^[40] Many of his views, particularly those opposing the managerial state, echo those of the Old Right Republicans of the first half of the 20th century.^[41] For example, Buchanan supports abolishing many government agencies, such as the Department of Education^[42] and the Bureau of Land Management.^[43] "We do not consider 'Big Government conservatism' a philosophy," Buchanan said in 2005. "We consider it a heresy."^[44]

Following his return from the Reform Party, Buchanan currently maintains a rocky relationship with Republican Party leadership. He says he believes the party has largely abandoned its traditional conservative principles for neoconservatism and compromise. On MSNBC before the 2006 State of the Union Address, he characterized President Bush as 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.^[45]

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.^[46]

[edit] Roman Catholicism

Buchanan is a member of the traditionalist movement within Roman Catholicism, attending the Tridentine Mass in the Latin language at Saint Mary, Mother of God Church in Washington, D.C. on Sundays and holy days. His religious convictions have greatly influenced his political opinions. In a 1993 speech against multiculturalism, he declared, "our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free."^[47] He has also expressed fear that the Western World approaches a grim future for rejecting Christian dogma and theology.^[48][49] He has also said that society faces "a permanent downhill run" if politicians do not "defend the moral order rooted in the Old and New Testament and Natural Law" -- and that this matters more than "economic or political" problems.^[50]

Buchanan has charged the New York Times with Anti-Catholic bias, at least against Catholics with conservative views on theology and politics.^[51]

^[52] He has referred to John Kerry and many other Catholics, who claim views on abortion and homosexual unions which dissent from official Catholic Doctrine, as scandalous heretics.^[53] On the direction of the Catholic Church since Vatican II, he has stated:

"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."^[54]

Buchanan admiringly referred to Pope John Paul II as "the most politically incorrect man on Earth", praising 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.^[55] He later praised the pope's successor, Benedict XVI, as uncompromising on Catholic doctrines, including divorce, contraception and women's ordination.^[56]

On the other hand, he blasted John Paul II for coming out against capital punishment.^[57]

Buchanan has also defended Mel Gibson's film Passion of the Christ, praising it from an artistic standpoint and stating that

"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."^[58]

He defends Pope Pius XII against charges that he remained silent during the Holocaust, calling the claim "a blood libel that is Hitlerite in dimension."^[59] He notes that the Nazis thoroughly despised the Pontiff^[60], while their victims (and the 1940s New York Times) praised him.^[61] He says Pius XII reigned during "a time of explosive growth in the Church" ^[62] and supports proposals to have him declared a saint.^[63]

[edit] Social conservatism

[edit] Culture war

Pat Buchanan says that America is divided by a culture war. He calls it a conflict over the power to define society's definition of right and wrong.^[64] Fronts include environmentalism, feminism, abortion, gay rights, freedom of religion, women in combat, display of the Confederate Flag, recognition of Christmas and taxpayer-funded art.^[65][66] He also said that the controversy given this idea of culture wars was itself evidence of polarization.

When Buchanan ran for president in 1996, he promised to fight for the conservative side of the culture war, saying, "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".^[67] 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".^[68]

In addition to today's entertainment industry, Buchanan also opposes pornography, saying it 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”.^[69]

[edit] Abortion and Euthanasia

Buchanan opposes legalized abortion, for any reason, on the grounds that human life begins at conception. “I don’t care about the circumstances of a child’s conception," he says, "You want to execute somebody in the case of rape, execute the rapist and let the unborn child live”.^[70] He calls RU-486 a 'human pesticide'.^[71] While certain that there is no correlation between a lack of gun control and violence in society, he says that this is very much so for 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 believes modern technology can be used to prove that life begins at conception and that, "To reach hearts, we must first teach. Some hearts that are closed and cold will open. We will reach them. It has worked before".

Buchanan has come under criticism for his stance on abortion when filmmaker Michael Moore, as part of his book Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, mailed several hundred dollar checks out to various 1996 presidential candidates, written under the guise of fictional support groups with names and agendas antithetical to the particular candidate's ideology "just to see if politicans would take money from anybody." Buchanan was the first to cash his check, which was from the fictional group "Abortionists for Buchanan". This is featured in Moore's film The Big One.

^[72] 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.^[73] 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.^[74] "In coming decades," he predicts, "involuntary euthanasia will be commonplace in Europe, and Generation X 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".^[75]

[edit] Education and faith

Buchanan supports passing a constitutional amendment to allow state-sanctioned prayer in public schools. He has complained that Christianity and the Ten Commandments were "expelled" from public education.^[76] In a 1999 interview, he said that "ever since the judges have gotten heavily into education, and the National Education Association has gotten into control of that Department of Education, test scores go down, there’s violence in classroom, things are going wrong".^[76] In Right from the Beginning, he called for civil disobedience to advocate school prayer, writing: "A National Day of Prayer, conducted inside the classrooms of America's public schools, by Christian teachers, in open defiance of Supreme Court edicts, would send a message of political strengths the Secular City could not ignore."^[77]

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.^[78]

Buchanan has written that Darwinism "contains dogmas men may believe, but cannot stand the burden of proof, the acid of attack or the demands of science".^[79] He endorses the concept of intelligent design, and has argued that the laws of science "imply the existence of a lawmaker".^[80]

[edit] Gay rights and AIDS

Buchanan has said that "homosexuality is not a civil right." He calls it unhealthy and described sex between two men as "not only immoral, but filthy." Further, Buchanan has said that public acceptance of homosexuality inevitably leads to societal decay and the collapse of the family.^[81] In his autobiography, he wrote,

"Someone's values are going to prevail. Why not ours? Whose country is it, anyway? Whose moral code says we may interfere with a man's right to be a practicing bigot, but must respect and protect his right to be a practicing sodomite?"

In a 1990 interview, he stated that he was "the first national columnist to demand why the government wasn’t dealing with this national epidemic," and stood by his view that AIDS is a consequence of immoral sex.^[82]

Referring to AIDS in 1983, he wrote in his syndicated column that gays "declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution".^[83] And in later years he 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 these sentiments, Buchanan did not reject gays as political supporters.^[84] Notably, he developed professional ties with openly gay paleolibertarian Justin Raimondo, due to their common Old Right anti-war views.

[edit] Feminism

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.

Buchanan has also spoken out against certain aspects of 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".^[85]

In Right from the Beginning, Buchanan wrote: "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 vocally opposed the policy of allowing women to serve in military combat. In Death of the West, he wrote that early campaigners for women's rights such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton held social views distinctly different from those of second-wave feminists of the 1960s. He has expressed his belief that the latter hold much of the responsibility for imperiling Western civilization.^[86]

[edit] Guns and Crime

Buchanan, like many social conservatives, argues that the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protects private ownership of handguns. He denies that gun ownership and violence are linked, saying that the gun owner bears the responsibility of keeping 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. People convicted of violent crime 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.^[87]

Buchanan also endorsed armed resistance to urban unrest, saying, "There is one root cause that is common to all riots: rioters. When such people -- as they did early in May -- attack a bus carrying terrified commuters, they do not need to hear a lot of bullhocky about 'communicating' and 'dialogue.' They need to hear through a local bullhorn the three little words that say it all: 'Lock and load!'"^[88]

Buchanan supports the war on drugs and, opposing marijuana legalization, he has said marijuana use is not a victimless crime.^[89] On the other hand, he has also declared that marijuana use for medicinal purposes should be a matter between patient and doctor. "If a doctor indicated to his patient that this was the only way to alleviate certain painful symptoms," Buchanan told the Charlotte Observer. "I would defer to the doctor's judgment".^[90]

He has indignantly denied ever using illegal drugs himself.^[91] He once answered a New York Daily News reporter's question, "No to cocaine. No to marijuana. And a question mark over Jack Daniels".^[92]

[edit] National identity

[edit] Immigration reform

Buchanan has been a contributor to VDARE.com, a paleoconservative website advocating immigration reduction. An archive containing the articles written by Buchanan for the website can be found here.

[edit] Assimilation and National Security

Buchanan has vocally criticized 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 guest worker program (which he labels amnesty) for immigrants who are currently here illegally.^[93]

He has also stated his belief that many Left-Wing Mexican-Americans have a revanchist view on territories lost to the United States in the Mexican-American War. He has declared 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". In 1992, he said: "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?"^[94] He also says that an open Mexican border invites the drug trade, which he does not consider a victimless crime.^[95]

Buchanan says 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 claimed 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.^[96]

[edit] 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".^[97] Buchanan believes that if these demographic trends continue, young Americans will spend their golden years in a "third world America", which will reduce the nation to a conglomeration of peoples with nothing in common. He believes this can be credited to the 1965 Immigration Act and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. He also notes that past immigration was European, while 90 percent of new legal immigrants are Asian, African, and Latin American and that they are not "melting and reforming".^[98]

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," he said, "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".^[99] Colmes then followed up by asking Buchanan if he believed the country should be largely white to which he replied "No, no. What I believe is that people should not deliberately alter the character and composition of the country without consulting the American people. If you adopt two children, Alan, you're going to go in and you're going to decide who comes. Who should decide who comes and who doesn't? First, illegals should not come. Secondarily, the American people should be consulted about how many immigrants come, what are the criteria. -- And we haven't been consulted."

[edit] Platform

In State of Emergency, Buchanan proposes the following immigration policy:

• 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.
• A deportation program beginning with all aliens convicted of felonies and every gang member who is not a citizen of the United States.^[100]

[edit] Race relations

Buchanan says he supports "equal justice under law," opposing both discrimination against blacks and "reverse discrimination" against whites.^[101] 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.^[102] 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).^[103]

A recurring theme in his 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."

Some observers said the 2000 Reform Party campaign reflected desire to spread his message beyond his white base, while his views had not changed.^[104] Buchanan's running-mate was African American Ezola Foster. He also attacked President Clinton for profiting from blacks' votes, yet relegating blacks to political "Section Eight housing - secondary cabinet positions which have no influence in the inner core of an administration".^[105]

[edit] Civil rights, crime, and immigration

Buchanan also claims that while he did not oppose all aims of the Civil Rights Movement, he deplored what he saw as its increasingly Left-Wing orientation. Although he has never approved of the treatment of Blacks that took place before the desegregation, Buchanan has expressed preference for the social and cultural views of most of Black America prior to the baby boom generation. In his 2001 book Death of the West Buchanan shows a more positive opinion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but assails those African-Americans who do not consider themselves a part of American culture and Western civilization.

In his 2006 book State of Emergency, Buchanan writes that he believes giving African-Americans equal rights and repealing the Jim Crow laws were the right decisions on the government's part, but quotas and the Busing controversy were not. He maintains that Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy was a good idea, and dedicates an entire chapter called "The Suicide of the G.O.P." to his view that the Republican Party's new strategy to court minority votes at the expense of its traditional base will spell doom for the Republican Party.

State of Emergency also details his take on the importance of race, statistics dealing with race, crime and education, and America's history concerning race. In the book, Buchanan praises the anti-immigration positions of black leaders like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, his favorite black American leader,^[106] and W.E.B. DuBois. He has especially praised Washington's pleas with industrialists to hire Blacks instead of immigrants. He attacks modern day African-American leaders (along with today's union and business leaders) for not taking the same position. The book's view of the African-American community in general is critical in some instances and supportive in others, often taking the contemporary black community to task for the country's high crime rates but also portraying blacks as victims of illegal immigration and at times taking a sympathetic historical view of black Americans.

America did not listen [to Booker T. Washington's concerns]. Millions of jobs in burgeoning industries went to immigrants who poured into the United States between 1890 and 1920. These men and women enriched our country. But they also moved ahead of and shouldered aside black men and women whose families had been here for generations and even centuries. Not until immigration had been dramatically cut in the Coolidge era, and World War II created an all-consuming demand for industrial workers, were black Americans brought by the hundreds of thousands north to the manufacturing cities of America. And when they were, a Black middle class was created upon which the civil rights movement was built. When immigration stopped, Black America advanced, as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and A. Philip Randolph said it would.[p.231]

[edit] American Civil War

Pat Buchanan has expressed great pride in his Southern origins and has openly ridiculed those who oppose the display of Confederate flags in State capitals. He has written that the American Civil War was about States' Rights, self-determination, and "the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance", as well as irreconcilable cultural differences between the North and the South at the time. In The Death of the West, Buchanan cites this as an example of how culture is more important than political ideologies, because "[t]he South was 'attached to the same principles of government' as the North. But that did not prevent Southerners from fighting four years of bloody war to be free of their Northern brethren."^[107] However, like other Southern conservatives of past generations, he has also expressed admiriation for President Abraham Lincoln, calling him "the great protectionist of the Republican Party".^[108]

[edit] Martin Luther King, Jr.

Buchanan has been a critic of Martin Luther King, Jr. since his days at the Globe-Democrat.^[109] He once heard King speak at a Baptist church in north St. Louis in 1962.^[110] He claims the civil rights leader smeared the 1964 Goldwater presidential campaign, accusing it of "dangerous signs of Hitlerism".^[111] During the 1980s he opposed making King's birthday a national holiday. In 1969, Buchanan urged Nixon not to visit King's widow, Coretta Scott King, because he felt, "It would outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue, and perhaps worse. ... It does not seem to be in the interests of national unity for the president to lend his national prestige to the argument that this divisive figure is a modern saint."^[112]

Buchanan discussed his comments in a 2000 public radio interview, saying King was a divisive figure -- and that he had met him and witnessed his civil rights demonstrations.^[113]

[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.^[114]

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

[edit] Global affairs

Main article: Political views of Pat Buchanan on global affairs

Buchanan argues that the United States' ability to control its own affairs is under siege due to free trade ideology, globalism, globalization and other issues, discussed below. He once remarked, "we love the old republic, and when we hear phrases like 'new world order,' we release the safety catches on our revolvers."^[115]

[edit] Environmental protection

[edit] Environmentalism, property rights and trade

Buchanan has been a critic of the environmental movement. He 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.^[116]

In The Great Betrayal, Buchanan argues that free trade contributes to environmental destruction. He blames multinational corporations, saying they do not have the same vested interest in respecting nature as "economic patriots". He also opposes the Kyoto Protocol.

[edit] Animal welfare

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.^[117] The articles were "Fear Factories"^[118] and "Dominion" by Matthew Scully, a former George W. Bush speechwriter.

Buchanan says that being a lifelong "cat fan" is what sparked his interest in the issue of animal cruelty. "I've always been disgusted by that," he remarked, "even though I'm not a vegetarian".^[119]

[edit] 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".^[120] John Podhoretz, Norman's son, wrote: "You want to know what anti-Semitism is? When Pat Buchanan calls Israel's military action 'un-Christian',^[121] that's anti-Semitism".^[122]

Buchanan denies the charges and refutes them at length.^[123] 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".^[124] In a 1999 response to the elder 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".^[125] 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".

[edit] Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust

Pat Buchanan says that Adolf Hitler only sought to dominate Europe, making him "no physical threat to the US" after 1940. He also observes that President Roosevelt "froze all Japanese assets, cutting off trade, including oil" to push Japan into starting a war.^[126] He refers to Roosevelt as "a base appeaser of Stalin" and that his administration was "shot through with Communist spies and traitors".^[127] "In World War II," he writes, "patriots argued the wisdom of FDR's 'Europe First' policy that left our men on Corregidor to the mercy of the butchers of Bataan".^[128] He also says, "Responsibility for the lack of American preparedness at the time of Pearl Harbor rests wholly with FDR. He had been in power nine years and had controlled both Houses of Congress for all nine of those years. Blaming our lack of preparedness on the isolationists (or even on the Communists) is the shilling of court historians".^[129]

During the 2000 campaign, he elaborated on his interpretations of the roots of WWII:

"It was Wilsonism, liberal interventionism, not 'isolationism,' that created the moral-political swamp in which fascism, Hitlerism, and Stalinism were spawned. Unable to deal with the truth - that their own heroes produced the disasters that may yet ring down the curtain on Western Civilization - the blind children of Wilson now scapegoat Pius XII and America First. Do those attacking me realize they are defending the policies that produced World War II and virtual annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe? While the West is busy erecting Holocaust museums, it has failed to study the history that produced it.^[130]

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".^[131] In another column, Buchanan mentions the Holocaust as one of the horrors of World War II along with "the collapse of the British Empire, the Stalinization of 11 nations of Eastern Europe, 50 million dead and half a century of Cold War".^[132]

In defending himself against charges of Nazi sympathies, Buchanan calls Hitler a "monster" guilty of "ugly actions and discriminatory laws".^[133] 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. Until then, the Holocaust was no more of a concern for U.S interventionist leaders than it was for the isolationists.^[134] Buchanan says America fought on the right side of the conflict -- and had no choice but to fight Nazi Germany after Hitler declared war on the United States.^[135]

[edit] "Great courage" controversy

In a 1977 Globe-Democrat 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.^[136]

Slate's Jacob Weisberg takes credit for finding this quote as evidence of Buchanan's alleged bigotry.^[137] Buchanan supporters say this paragraph is easily taken out of context.^[138] 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 statesmen were not following that example.^[139]

[edit] Charles Lindbergh

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, in an October 11, 1999, letter to the Washington Post claimed that A Republic, Not an Empire "defends Charles Lindbergh against charges of anti-Semitism, not mentioning the infamous 1940 [sic] speech in which he [Lindbergh] accused the Jews of warmongering." Buchanan denies this and points out Foxman's error, saying that he mentioned the 1941 speech to say it "ignited a national firestorm," which lingered after the aviator's death, and shows "the explosiveness of mixing ethnic politics and foreign policy".^[140] Buchanan also said in 2002:

There was nothing immoral, or unwise, about the isolationists’ position of 1940-41. Because of the courageous efforts of Lindbergh and America First, the United States stayed out of the war until Hitler threw the full force of his war machine against Stalin. Thus, the Soviet Union, not America’s young, bore the brunt of defeating Nazi Germany.^[141]

[edit] 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 among other soldiers were buried 48 members of the Waffen SS. The trip went through, over the vocal objections of Jewish groups.

(German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was the prime mover behind using the site.^[142]) In an interview, author Elie Wiesel described 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."^[143]

Buchanan indignantly stated that this never happened. In a 1992 ABC interview, he said,

"I didn't say it and Elie Wiesel wasn't even in the meeting."

He also said

"that meeting was held three weeks before the Bitburg summit was held. If I had said that, it would have been out of there within hours and on the news."^[144]

Norman Podhoretz and others have 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"^[145]

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".^[146]

[edit] Iwan Demjanjuk

Buchanan asserted that six men accused of Nazi-era war crimes were innocent: Iwan Demjanjuk, Karl Linnas, Arthur Rudolph, Frank Walus, Ivan Stebelsky, Tscherim Soobzokov.^[147] Ukrainian born Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland autoworker accused of operating the gas chambers at the Treblinka concentration camp, received the most attention. Buchanan called his trial a witch hunt and said "Demjanjuk had never even been at Treblinka".^[148] After a highly publicised trial, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death by an Israeli court, but his conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel on the grounds of mistaken identity. Buchanan wrote at the time that this spared Israel the disgrace of hanging an innocent man.^[149]

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".^[150] 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".^[151] 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."^[152]

[edit] U.S.-Israel Policy

Pat Buchanan says he favors "a strong, independent state of Israel",^[153] 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".^[154] In Buchanan's opinion, "The Israeli people are America’s friends and have a right to peace and secure borders. We should help them secure these rights." He believes that the United States has a "moral commitment" to recognize Israel's right to defend itself, "But U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical. They often collide, and when they do, U.S. interests must prevail".^[155]

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."^[156] In 1991 he wrote that Congress has become "a Parliament of Whores incapable of standing up for U.S. national interests if AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is on the other end of the line."^[157] He 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".^[158] In the 1990s, he endorsed the "land for peace" policy in the Middle East.^[159] He also strongly praised Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,^[160] calling him "the statesman who brought peace after a half century of fighting for Israel's place in the sun".^[161]

The first widespread accusations of anti-Semitism against Buchanan concerned the September 15, 1990, McLaughlin Group program.^[162] 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."^[162] 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."^[162] This sparked New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal to complain of "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."^[162] ("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 pejorative.)

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said that before the 1990 invasion of Iraq, Buchanan made "an appeal to anti-Semitic bigotry"^[163] and "accused Israel's American supporters of goading the United States into the Persian Gulf War"^[164] by writing in one column, '"The civilized world must win this fight,' the editors thunder. But, if it comes to war, it will not be the 'civilized world' humping up that bloody road to Baghdad; it will be American kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown." Buchanan doesn't see anything anti-Semitic about this statement, and he responded, "If it is the lack of Jewish names among those soldiers, why is my list not also anti-Italian, anti-Greek, and anti-Polish?"^[165]

[edit] A Palestinian State

Buchanan supports an independent Palestinian state, but criticized Yasser Arafat's leadership.^[166] He compared the Battle of Jenin to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and 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".^[167] He also said 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.^[168]

[edit] Terrorism and 9/11

Buchanan has argued that Islamic terror groups target America "for what we do, not who we are," disagreeing with George W. Bush and other Republicans who have tried to present terrorists as strictly irrational fundamentalists. He has been critical of the aggressive nature of the post September 11 war on terror which he has claimed ignores the root causes of terror in favor of short-term military victories. He advocated the use of torture to get information from terrorists. ^[169]

[edit] Iraq

Buchanan was a passionate and outspoken critic of the 2003 Iraq War from the earliest days, consistent with his opposition to the Gulf War of 1990-1991. He argued it was a useless war based on deception and imperialism, largely fought to defend Israeli interests and the interests of American oil firms.

[edit] Lebanon

In July 2006, 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 there is no proof to substantiate Bush's claim that Syria was behind Hezbollah's capture of the Israeli soldiers, and added that those "whispering in his ear" are "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?"^[170]

[edit] Neoconservativism

Buchanan vocally opposes those labeled "neoconservatives," whom he calls "undocumented aliens from the Left, carrying with them the viruses of statism and globalism."^[171] 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. ^[172] He said he welcomed the Neocons during the early 1970s, but that it has become 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. ^[173]

Buchanan also denies the neoconservative maxim that the United States is "the first universal nation"^[174], one that embodies rational, democratic principles about freedom, equality and virtue that are applicable everywhere.^[175] He says "every true nation is the creation of a unique people", sharing a common heritage, culture and language. Further, "Americans are a people apart from all others, with far more in common that political beliefs."^[176] He also says that America's modern-day sexual immorality and "imperial decadence" are not worth emulating.^[177] In his opinion, "A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's 'emancipation,' that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of 'American values.'^[178]"

In March 2003, Buchanan 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 claimed that Lawrence Kaplan, David Brooks, Max Boot, Robert Kagan and others used anti-Semitism charges to intimidate Iraq War critics. Buchanan wrote that the American 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.^[179]

See also: Neoconservatism, paleoconservatism, and neoconservatism and paleoconservatism

[edit] In popular culture

• Hunter S. Thompson considered Buchanan a friend. Buchanan was among dozens who offered a statement in Rolling Stone after the journalist's suicide in 2005.^[180] About Buchanan, Thompson once wrote, "We disagree so violently on almost everything that it's a real pleasure to drink with him."^[181]

• Ali G interviewed Buchanan on Da Ali G Show, where the commentator played along by calling WMDs "BLTs." Buchanan went on to say that he would dramatically change America, and that is why he "would never become president."^[182]

• Buchanan is a guest star on the second episode of the Al Franken NBC sitcom LateLine, which aired on March 24, 1998.^[183]

• 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.

• The 1992 Bush re-relection campaign ran a 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 'lemons.'"^[184] At the time Buchanan said he bought it in 1989 "for the missus" and that unloading it would be an empty gesture.^[185] He later sold the car back to its previous owner.^[186] In 2002, he said he drove a Lincoln Navigator and a Cadillac STS.^[187]

• 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.^[188]

• 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".^[189]

• In the 2002 movie Big Trouble, Arthur Herk, played by Stanley Tucci, is described as "one of the few Floridians not confused when he voted for Pat Buchanan".
• In the animated series Futurama, there have been many references ridiculing the Reform Party. In the episode "Future Stock", Planet Express is offered for sale to Momcorp, a giant conglomerate. During the vote of Momcorp shareholders to ratify the sale, one of Mom's slow witted sons accidentally votes for Pat Buchanan.

[edit] Books and articles

[edit] Books

• 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)

[edit] 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.
• A Time for Truth about China, Commonwealth Club speech dated April 5, 1999.
• To Reunite a Nation, Richard Nixon Library speech on immigration dated January 18, 2000.

[edit] Selected articles

• The Dark Side of Diversity, column dated May 1, 2007.
• 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.
• What Do We Offer the World?, column dated May 19, 2004.
• 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.

VDARE.com archives many articles written by Buchanan here.

[edit] 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)
• Pat Buchanan discusses his book State of Emergency on Book TV, August 24, 2006 (Video)

[edit] 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

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Preceded by Ross Perot

Reform Party Presidential candidate 2000 (4th)

Succeeded by Ralph Nader

v • d • e United States Reform Party Presidential nominees
Perot • Buchanan • Nader

Persondata
NAME	Buchanan, Patrick Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American politician and commentator
DATE OF BIRTH	November 2, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH	Washington, D.C., United States
DATE OF DEATH	living
PLACE OF DEATH