July 3, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Last Saturday, Honduran soldiers marched into the presidential palace, bundled up President Manuel Zelaya and put him on a plane for Costa Rica.
The ouster had been ordered by the Supreme Court and approved by the Congress, as Zelaya was attempting an illegal referendum to change the Honduran constitution so he could run for another term.
Will someone please explain why this bloodless transfer of power to the civilian legislator first in line for the presidency, in a sovereign nation, is any business of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers or Barack Obama? For all have denounced the “coup” and demanded Zelaya’s immediate return.
June 30, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
“You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world of science,” wrote Thomas Huxley. “Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be.”
As “Darwin’s bulldog,” Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master’s theory gospel truth in Great Britain.
He is quoted above for two reasons.
First is House passage of a “cap-and-trade” climate-change bill. Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths — or a fearmongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.
June 26, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — In just a few weeks time, California hits the wall.
And Americans should take a good, long look at the fiscal and social wreck of the Golden Land, because California is at a place to which all of America is heading.
In May, when five fund-raising proposals were put on the ballot, Gov. Schwarzenegger pleaded with the overtaxed Californians not to make their state “the poster child for dysfunction.”
As The Economist writes, “On May 18th, they did exactly that.”
Doug Feith and friends want to send civilians into war zones to do the job the military can’t.
By Jeff Huber -The American Conservative Magazine
It was a pot-and-kettle event when Gen. Tommy Franks called Doug Feith the “dumbest f—king guy on the planet.” So much blood has spilled down the gutter in our woebegone war on Islamofabulism that it’s easy to forget that Franks was the commander who originally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
June 23, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Given its monopoly of guns, bet on the Iranian regime. But, in the long run, the ayatollahs have to see the handwriting on the wall.
Let us assume what they insist upon — that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the June 12 election; that, even if fraud occurred, it did not decide the outcome. As Ayatollah Khamenei said to loud laughter in his Friday sermon declaring the election valid, “Perhaps 100,000, or 500,000, but how can anyone tamper with 11 million votes?”
June 22, 2009
Update: The database appears to be working correctly. Let’s hope it stays that way!
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After upgrading the blog software [WordPress] our database is not working properly. The full text of columns are not available. Please know that I’m working on this and hope to find a fix soon. In the meantime, you can subscribe to our BRIGADE Elist to get a copy of Pat’s latest columns. Thanks for your patience.
June 19, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
On Dec. 14, 1825, following the death of Alexander I — who had seen off Napoleon — his brother, the grand duke, who had just taken the oath as Czar Nicholas I, was confronted by mutinous troops and rebels in Senate Square before the Winter Palace.
For hours, the czar stood at the end of the square as the crowd shouted for a constitution or for Nicholas’ brother Constantine to take the throne. Shots were exchanged.
As darkness fell, a czarist general rode up to Nicholas and said, “Sire, clean the square with gunfire — or abdicate.”
June 16, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
The Obama policy of extending an open hand to Iran is working and ought not be abandoned because of the grim events in Tehran.
For the Iranian theocracy has just administered a body blow to its legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people and the world.
Before Saturday, the regime could credibly posture as defender of the nation, defiant in the face of the threats from Israel, faithful to the cause of the Palestinians, standing firm for Iran’s right to enrich uranium for peaceful nuclear power.
June 12, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Having lost the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, Republicans are looking to redefine themselves for a nation that still leans conservative but is less Republican that it has been in decades.
The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court presents just such an opportunity. For, even if the party loses the battle and Sotomayor sits on the court, it can win the war, as Ronald Reagan won the Panama Canal debate, even as Senate Republicans committed collective suicide by voting to give away the canal.
June 9, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Despite his boldness, Barack Obama seems as fated to fail as were Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. And for the same reason: a belief in his own righteousness and moral superiority, and a belief that his ideals and his persona count mightily in the modern world.
Wilson declaimed about America’s fight to “make the world safe for democracy” when in harness with the British, French, Russian, Japanese and Italian empires, all slavering to feast on the carcasses of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman empires.
June 5, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
“I have to admire the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews lives in Jerusalem.”
Thus did Israeli government press director Daniel Seamen caustically dismiss President Obama’s opposition to Israel’s right to “natural growth” of its settlements in Arab East Jerusalem and on the West Bank.
Though Obama’s address in Cairo broke no new ground, it confirmed to the world that a new day has arrived and a sea change has taken place. The Israel-centric Middle East policy of George W. Bush is dead. And with the policy change has come rhetorical change.
June 4, 2009
by Laurence M. Vance - LewRockwell.com
Pat Buchanan and I have some differences – some major differences.
He is a Catholic; I am a Protestant. He is a conservative; I am a libertarian. He is a protectionist; I am a freetrader. He has disparaged Wal-Mart; I spend most of my money there. He believes Alexander Hamilton was one of the greatest of the Founding Fathers; I much prefer Thomas Jefferson. He has worked for Republican presidents; I loathe Republican presidents. He favors a government limited to conservative and Republican policies; I favor a government as limited as possible.
June 2, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
If the U.S. Senate rejects race-based justice, Sonia Sotomayor will never sit on the Supreme Court.
Because that is what Sonia is all about. As The New York Times reported Saturday, the salient cause of her career has been advancing persons of color, over whites, based on race and national origin.
“Judge Sotomayor, whose parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico,” writes reporter David Kirkpatrick, “has championed the importance of considering race and ethnicity in admissions, hiring and even judicial selection at almost every stage of her career.”
May 29, 2009
By Patrick J. Buchanan
When you think about it, Sonia Sotomayor is the perfect pick for the Supreme Court — in Barack Obama’s America.
Like Obama, himself a beneficiary of affirmative action, she thinks “Latina women,” because of their life experience, make better judicial decisions than white men, that discrimination against white men to advance people of color is what America is all about, that appellate courts are “where policy is made” in the United States.
To those who believe the depiction of our first Hispanic justice as an anti-white liberal judicial activist, hearken to her own words.
May 27, 2009
The long-time progressive’s pitch to the disenfranchised Right
Pat Buchanan; Ralph Nader
The American Conservative Magazine
Ralph Nader recently accepted Pat Buchanan’s invitation to sit down with us and explain why his third-party presidential bid ought to appeal to conservatives disaffected with George W. Bush. We think readers will be interested in the reflections of a man who has been a major figure in American public life for 40 years—and who now finds himself that rarest of birds, a conviction politician.
Pat Buchanan: Let me start off with foreign policy—Iraq and the Middle East. You have seen the polls indicating widespread contempt for the United States abroad. Why do they hate us?
