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Thread ID: 6264 | Posts: 14 | Started: 2003-04-20

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PaleoconAvatar [OP]

2003-04-20 17:10 | User Profile

From The Washington Dispatch

Opinion

[url=http://www.washingtondispatch.com/printer_5162.shtml]Buchanan-Style Conservatism is a Relic of the Past[/url]

Exclusive commentary by Uriah Kriegel

Apr 20, 2003

The outcome of the war in Iraq seems to have vindicated the conservative argument for the war. But as conservatives celebrate this well-deserved political victory, it is important to remember that not all conservatives supported the idea of ridding the world of Saddam’s regime. Pat Buchanan and his fellow paleo-conservatives at the American Conservative were as staunchly opposed to the war as the anti-war Left.

Buchanan’s analysis, canvassed in detail on the pages of the American Conservative, had a particular twist which generated something of a mini-controversy. The mini-controversy was focused on whether Buchanan’s was an anti-Semitic argument. But the first thing to notice about Buchanan’s argument is how fundamentally implausible it was.

Buchanan’s theory went something like this. (1) The war in Iraq is not in America’s interest. (2) Rather, it is in Israel’s interest. (3) There are influential Jewish neo-conservatives who push for war with the Israeli interest in mind. (4) And this is why we are going to war.

All four tenets of this theory are wildly implausible. The American interest in invading Iraq was twofold. First, the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would end up in terrorists’ hands required preemptive action on our part. Second, and more deeply, it’s not an accident that monsters such as al Qaeda develop in the dark outbacks of repressive Middle East regimes. The combination of political repression, toxic religious fundamentalism, and denial of basic human rights is the lifeblood of such organizations. You can’t win the war on terror by just killing all active terrorists; it is imperative to modify the context in which the very phenomenon of terrorism flourishes.

This deeper reason for going to war has completely escaped Buchanan. “Nasty as some of these [Middle East] regimes and groups might be, what had they done to the United States?,” he asked. What they have done is create a climate in which intense hatred of western civilization and everything it stands for takes a delusional and violent turn, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. But Buchanan can’t see beyond the old rules of the game, where the only way one regime can threaten another is by staging an official military campaign against it. That is, in this as in every other way, Buchanan is behind his times.

A war in Iraq was moreover not in Israel’s immediate interest. Israel lived happily with the old sanction-cum-containment approach to Iraq. As long as the US picked up the containment tab, and thousands of ordinary Iraqis paid the price of the sanctions, Iraq posed no threat to Israel. Nor were the prospects for Iraqi cooperation with al Qaeda particularly threatening to Israel: in its decade of existence, al Qaeda has failed to stage a single successful terrorist attack on Israeli targets. Unlike the US, Israel is a tiny and hermetically sealed country with few second thoughts about civil liberties. It’s virtually impossible to penetrate Israel from another country, let alone highjack an Israel-bound airplane. So neither Iraq nor al Qaeda posed a serious threat to Israel. But once a war was underway, Israeli civilians had become the West’s frontline. It was not improbable that Saddam’s swan song was to include an attempt to fly a biological or chemical warhead into Israel’s metropolitans.

Buchanan pinned the war on the notion that “Sharonites seek hegemony over the Middle East.” To see the absurdity of this notion, just look at the map. Israel is a 12-mile wide country surrounded by five Arab countries stretching from Turkey’s border to Sudan’s. Its powerful military is due mainly to systematic harassment by its neighbors. Perhaps its occupation of Palestinian territories is wrong, but it’s clearly premised on security considerations, not imperial ambition. All Israel seeks is a place under the sun.

It’s perhaps the third tenet of Buchanan’s theory that contained the seed of actual anti-Semitism. The idea that Jewish neo-conservatives count Israel’s interest over America’s is begot by the old canard of disjoint allegiance. If Buchanan’s accusations are right, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle should be tried for treason under the law. Buchanan wrote: “What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel.” This is a serious accusation – and quite an idiotic one as well. But first and foremost it’s a modern blood libel. The accusation of dual allegiance is not the sort anyone would make against, say, Italian-American conservatives. It’s reserved for Jews, under the assumption that Jews are not to be trusted – you can never know what they’re up to.

Even more fundamentally anti-Semitic was the fourth tenet of the theory. Despite the fact that there isn’t a single Jew in Bush’s cabinet (unlike both of Clinton’s), we are told that American foreign policy is “controlled” by the cabal of Jewish neo-conservatives. President Bush is apparently mindlessly puppeteered by Wolfowitz, Perle, Eliot Abrams, and other Jewish and pro-Israel administration officials.

The first problem with this idea is that these officials didn’t insert themselves into the administration in suspiciously roundabout manner – they were nominated by the president himself. In any case, at the end of the day it’s obviously Bush who calls the shots. So how do the opinions of Jewish neo-conservatives trickle their way up to the president’s decisions? Buchanan cites Jewish-written articles in Commentary, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and the New Republic. But if Bush is convinced by the arguments unfolded in those articles, the decisions he makes are fully his, based on his own reasoning. He’s not being coerced in any way and his policies are not being controlled by anyone. To say that Bush’s foreign policy is “controlled” by the Jewish cabal is to say that their words do not appeal to the president’s reason, but somehow work magic on his mind, hypnotically dizzying him into an intellectual vertigo where he’s completely beside himself. If this is not the good old central-European mythical picture of Jews – as wily manipulators who hypnotize you into submission with their clever, sweet, false words – what is?

Buchanan’s theory is far-fetched, then, and its foundations are genuinely anti-Semitic, his contrary professions notwithstanding. But there’s a larger game at play here for Buchanan. In the past few years, Buchanan has been frustrated with the transformation of the conservative movement in America, from his brand of bigoted, intolerant, and economically retarded paleo-conservatism to a kinder, free-market-oriented, more open-minded and inclusive movement. At the moment, Buchanan is still in denial. Of neo-conservatives, he wrote: “Though few in number, they wield disproportionate power through control of the conservative foundations and magazines…” Few in number? The news hasn’t reached Buchanan that neo-conservatives have long become the mainstream of the American Right, while his paleo-conservatism is becoming ever more marginal.

An obvious explanation for the fact that we have so many neo-conservative publications today is that the neo-conservative movement is intellectually vibrant. Neo-conservatives have many ideas, new ideas, ideas many people want to read about. Buchanan quips that “a neocon is more familiar with the inside of a think tank than an Abrams tank,” but the reason there are virtually no paleo-conservative think tanks is that paleo-conservatives haven’t had a new idea in three decades. Buchanan is too much in denial, however, to accept these straightforward explanations. If it can’t be that the likes of his magazine aren’t read because nobody’s interested and everybody knows what they’re about to say anyway, then it must be that a cabal of Jews have “hijacked the conservative movement.”

But the main reason the American Right is dominated today by neo-conservative thinking is simply that this is what the American people has grown to want. Buchanan-style conservatism simply has no significant audience in the American electorate any more.

Buchanan’s bigotry is not peculiar to Jews, but covers immigrants of all non-European stripes: Latin Americans, Arabs, Africans, and others. In his latest book, The Death of the West, he urges that immigrants from these parts of the world are a Trojan horse that will dilute and eventually undermine our western culture and values. But the problem is not only cultural, it’s also racial: “Different races are far more difficult to assimilate than different cultures,” he purports to demonstrate.

Further, Buchanan’s isolationism and xenophobia are not reserved to the realm of defense policy, but extend to the economic sphere as well. For Buchanan, the ultimate purpose of economics is not to generate wealth but to assure national self-sufficiency. Thus Buchanan joins the anti-globalization crowd in their economic illiteracy, celebrating any form of muzzling of the free exchange of private goods.

Today’s America has grown worlds away from Buchanan’s wretched world. The ordinary American still harbors ethnic and racial stereotypes, just like everybody else, but rather than priding in them, struggles with them every day. In Buchanan’s world, the days after 9/11 would be soaked in the blood of innocent Arab Americans, but fortunately, Buchanan’s world is dying. Today’s ordinary American knows just enough economics to understand that free trade and a free market are in the long term the surest way to prosperity, including for the Third World poor. Today’s voters are not deeply suspicious of Mexican immigrants; no longer horrified by homosexuality; not so reckless as to deny their children access to contraceptives. That’s why Bush was voted into office on a platform of inclusive (“compassionate”) conservatism. And that’s why Buchanan’s Reform Party went bust, barely garnering a singe percent of the vote.

In the eyes of Buchanan, all this cannot be the upshot of fair game. It must be the result of back-door manipulations by dark, faceless forces. When these faceless forces are personified, it’s only to be expected that they will turn out to be Jews. In other words, Buchanan is in a state of denial about the intellectual and political merits of his worldview, and anti-Semitism is just his way of trying to cope.

© 2002 The Washington Dispatch. All Rights Reserved.

Buster

2003-04-20 17:50 | User Profile

Yuchhhh!!!!

What on earth is a "Uriah Kriegel"? Sounds like somebody out of a Flannery O'Connor comedy.

Very vulgar, very slanted name-calling. Typically Jewish.

p.s. This appears to be a reprint from last year, judging by the copyright.

madrussian

2003-04-20 17:52 | User Profile

Relic of the past: the values Jews hope the goyim cattle will never regain.

PaleoconAvatar

2003-04-20 18:03 | User Profile

Yes, what's conservative about gleefully consigning things as "relics" to the past?

Faust

2003-04-20 19:40 | User Profile

PaleoconAvatar,

Yes, Saving the "relics to the past" is whole point of Conservatism! " Yes, what's conservative about gleefully consigning things as 'relics' to the past?"

:blink: "Despite the fact that there isn’t a single Jew in Bush’s cabinet... "

"Jews in the Bush Administration - An Annotated List" [url=http://www.friendsofliberty.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=864]http://www.friendsofliberty.com/modules.ph...article&sid=864[/url]

PaleoconAvatar

2003-04-20 22:57 | User Profile

While we're dealing with relics of the past, how about mentioning a certain hypersensitive group's obsession with the past (both real and imagined).

Today is April 20, Hitler's birthday. Now, it's hard for me to view it as a coincidence that I'm seeing a lot of articles coming out today in the mainstream press demonizing every single "politically incorrect" figure out there. I've seen an article bashing Duke, Buchanan, Le Pen, and on and on.

They must do it on purpose in some sort of reverse-tribute, cranking up the smear propaganda by order of an eyes-only internal directive to all their writers, plotted on a secret calendar. I wonder if there are other days on which these sorts of articles peak in frequency. Could be an interesting statistical project to track.

Okiereddust

2003-04-21 03:31 | User Profile

This deeper reason for going to war has completely escaped Buchanan. “Nasty as some of these [Middle East] regimes and groups might be, what had they done to the United States?,” he asked. What they have done is create a climate in which intense hatred of western civilization and everything it stands for takes a delusional and violent turn, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. But Buchanan can’t see beyond the old rules of the game, where the only way one regime can threaten another is by staging an official military campaign against it. That is, in this as in every other way, Buchanan is behind his times.

Typical mixture of neocon denial and boastfulness throughout the article. After denying they're warmongers, the right is claimed to wage preemptive war on just ideological reasons, with nary a shred a military backing.

Like you all it makes me wonder about this Uriah Kriegal guy. Is he just the latest Stephen Schwartz Trotskite dredged up?

Walter Yannis

2003-04-21 05:25 | User Profile

**The accusation of dual allegiance is not the sort anyone would make against, say, Italian-American conservatives. **

We would if Italian Americans were hijacking American foreign policy to help Italy, say, take Corsica from France.

Walter

PaleoconAvatar

2003-04-21 05:51 | User Profile

Originally posted by Walter Yannis@Apr 21 2003, 01:25 > The accusation of dual allegiance is not the sort anyone would make against, say, Italian-American conservatives. **

We would if Italian Americans were hijacking American foreign policy to help Italy, say, take Corsica from France.

Walter**

As an Italian-American (paleo)conservative, I can say that I don't give a fig about what happens in Italy. I have no idea what's even happening over there. Same goes for Ireland--the other half of my heritage.

That's the key difference between European-Americans and the Jews when it comes to attachments to the "Old Country." The various Europeans come here and focus on America, as Americans, and basically forget about all the goings-on in the ancestral land. Not so with the Jews--they're the Perpetual Geographic Rubber-Neckers, always eyeing what's going on in Israel.

Proof? Take a look at FR and pay attention to some of the posters there, like veronica and Yehuda and TopQuark or Alouette--run a search on their posts and you'll find a massive number of articles about internal Israeli politics, articles from various Jewish newspapers with unpronounceable Hebrew names and the like. And when you do find an article from an American source that's tangentially related to something in this country, you find it has something to do with Jews, Arabs, Anti-Semitism, and so on.

PaleoconAvatar

2003-04-21 05:55 | User Profile

Originally posted by Buster@Apr 20 2003, 13:50 ** Yuchhhh!!!!

What on earth is a "Uriah Kriegel"? Sounds like somebody out of a Flannery O'Connor comedy.

Very vulgar, very slanted name-calling. Typically Jewish.

p.s. This appears to be a reprint from last year, judging by the copyright. **

By the way, this author's first name isn't really Uriah, it's Urinal.

il ragno

2003-04-21 08:00 | User Profile

**That's the key difference between European-Americans and the Jews when it comes to attachments to the "Old Country." **

Yeah. We *have * "Old Countries". Legitimate ones, that is.

And one other thing. No European country can point to the date of its founding as The Beginning Of The End Of Western Civilization. By design.

Ragnar

2003-04-21 08:15 | User Profile

Originally posted by PaleoconAvatar@Apr 20 2003, 22:57 ** Today is April 20, Hitler's birthday. Now, it's hard for me to view it as a coincidence that I'm seeing a lot of articles coming out today in the mainstream press demonizing every single "politically incorrect" figure out there. I've seen an article bashing Duke, Buchanan, Le Pen, and on and on.

**

I just got a copy of Hitler's Secret Book for a buck. According to commentators, he's alleged to have predicted all this. The "secret book" is apparently a set of edited papers/comments of Hitler after Mein Kampft.

Another prediction he made (it says here) was that if Germany lost the war, America would become a colony of China. Looks at least possible from what I see.

American dissidents might need to make the leap to meta-politics; the sort of thing New Dawn is doing in Australia and David Icke is doing in England. Change the rules, play with minds, make the old barriers irrelevant.

Our dissenters are stuck in an rut. We need new ones. (Dissenters, not ruts.)

weisbrot

2003-04-22 01:56 | User Profile

**:blink: "Despite the fact that there isn’t a single Jew in Bush’s cabinet... "

"Jews in the Bush Administration - An Annotated List" [url=http://www.friendsofliberty.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=864]http://www.friendsofliberty.com/modules.ph...article&sid=864[/url]**

Philip Weiss on jewish power:

[url=http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=3706]http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=3706[/url]

W.R.I.T.O.S

2003-04-22 03:13 | User Profile

This guy is right though. Neo-conservatism is conservatism to 99% percent of people in this country who call themselves conservatives. Paleo-conservatives are hopelessly marginalized. Open white nationalism is the way forward. Buchanan's approach has proved totally inadequate for the task before us. Above all, we must name the jew.