Cut Commitments, Not Muscle

Cut Commitments, Not Muscle

By Patrick J. Buchanan In that year of happy memory, 1972, George McGovern, the Democratic nominee, declared he would chop defense by fully one-third. A friendly congressman was persuaded to ask Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to expatiate on what this might mean. The Pentagon replied the Sixth Fleet might have to be pulled out of the Med, leaving Israel without U.S. protection against Continue reading...

Clouds Over Obama’s Second Term

Clouds Over Obama’s Second Term

By Patrick J. Buchanan Rarely have second terms lived up to the hopes and expectations of presidents or their electorates. FDR's began with an attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices and a second Depression of 1937. He was rescued only by the war in Europe in 1939 and the GOP's nomination of "the barefoot boy from Wall Street," Wendell Willkie. What can be called Harry Continue reading...

Who’s Afraid of the Fiscal Cliff?

Who’s Afraid of the Fiscal Cliff?

By Patrick J. Buchanan Were the average Republican asked for a succinct statement of his views on taxation, he or she might respond thus: "U.S. tax rates are too high for the world we must compete in. The tax burden -- federal, state, local, together -- is too heavy. We need to cut tax rates to free up our private and productive sector and pull this economy out of the ditch." This core Continue reading...

Is the GOP Headed for the Boneyard?

Is the GOP Headed for the Boneyard?

By Patrick J. Buchanan After its second defeat at the hands of Barack Obama, under whom unemployment has never been lower than the day George W. Bush left office, the Republican Party has at last awakened to its existential crisis. Eighteen states have voted Democratic in six straight elections. Among the six are four of our most populous: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California. And Continue reading...

The Coming Age of Austerity

The Coming Age of Austerity

By Patrick J. Buchanan "Are the good times really over for good?" asked Merle Haggard in his 1982 lament. Then, the good times weren't over. In fact, they were coming back, with the Reagan recovery, the renewal of the American spirit and the end of a Cold War that had consumed so much of our lives. Yet whoever wins today, it is hard to be sanguine about the future. The demographic and Continue reading...

America’s Last Crusade

By Patrick J. Buchanan For Americans of the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and of the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1950s, the great moral and ideological cause was the Cold War. It gave purpose and clarity to our politics and foreign policy, and our lives. From the fall of Berlin in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, that Cold War was waged by two Continue reading...

Casino Capitalists Playing With Fire

By Patrick J. Buchanan Comes now news from across the pond that executives at one of the world's most respected banks, Barclays, rigged Libor. Even the venerable Bank of England is apparently being investigated. For sports fans, this is like fixing the Super Bowl or doping a horse in the Derby. But it is rather more serious. For the London Interbank Offered Rate is the benchmark interest Continue reading...