by Patrick J. Buchanan – April 30, 1998

A century ago, William McKinley, a teenage veteran of Antietam who had wanted his presidency remembered as a time of prosperity and peace, took America to war with Spain. It lasted four months, ending in total triumph for the United States, which lost more men to fever in Florida than to gunfire in Cuba.

Flush with victory in the “splendid little war,” McKinley made the most fateful foreign policy decision of the century. Against the protests of poets, scholars and statesmen from Grover Cleveland to William Jennings Bryan, McKinley annexed the Philippines. America assumed the rule of an alien people it had no intention of allowing to become U.S. citizens. America had become an empire.

By Patrick J. Buchanan – April 28, 1998

Now that the Dow has crossed 9,000, the bulls of Wall Street are talking 15,000 by the end of the century, as the bears have all silently retreated deep into the recesses of their caves.

A buoyant American triumphalism is the spirit of the hour.

Japan’s economy is disintegrating, with the Nikkei average sloshing around at 60 percent below its peak. Europe has found no solution to a permanent jobless rate of 12 percent; and the Asian tigers have been neutered and declawed. At the same time, U.S. growth continues, with low inflation, low interest rates and full employment.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – April 24, 1998

In 1953, in one of the dramatic acts of the Cold War, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in Sing Sing prison for having turned over atomic secrets to Stalin’s Russia.

America was a serious country then. Outside the hard left, few sympathized with the Rosenbergs as they went to their place of execution. But today, the nation seems to have no vital interests the betrayal of which might justify such retribution. Consider:

by Patrick J. Buchanan – April 21, 1998

Why is a Republican Party that once declared the protection of U.S. economic independence and the American standard of living the essence of its creed doing this? Why is the party of the full dinner pail colluding in a betrayal of American engineers and scientists who have already been punished by deep defense cuts, corporate downsizings and the wholesale export of U.S. manufacturing?…

Wenever one points to the exploding U.S. merchandise trade deficit — running at a record annual rate of $222 billion in ‘98 — and vanishing U.S. manufacturing jobs, the impatient retort comes back:

By Patrick J. Buchanan – April 19, 1998

What kind of party is the GOP in the spring of 1998? Is it the authentic voice of a principled conservatism or, as its enemies insist, merely the political instrument of corporate America?

With the return of Congress to the capital, the GOP faces decisions that will go a long way toward defining the party for the fall election. What are these critical issues?

First is the Senate vote on expanding NATO to the border of Russia. While the necessary two-thirds vote seems certain, second thoughts are being entertained by senators on the risks inherent in handing out open-ended war guarantees to Eastern Europe.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – April 16, 1998

A long time ago, Catholic schoolboys were admonished to “stay away from bad companions” and “avoid the occasions of sin.”

Before colluding with Bill Clinton on the $516 billion tobacco tax hike, the GOP Senate should have heeded such advice. The party is now facing either a humiliating climb-down or a hellish beating. What in the world were they thinking of?

by Patrick J. Buchanan – April 9, 1998

Last fall, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights delegated one Bacre Waly Ndiaye of Senegal to investigate capital punishment in the U.S.A. And Brother Ndiaye is not pleased with what he has found.

Ndiaye flatly charges America with using the death penalty in a racist way. Informed that Americans support it, Ndiaye sniffs, “In many countries, mob killings and lynchings enjoy public support as a way to deal with violent crime and are often portrayed as ‘popular justice.’ Yet, they are not acceptable in any civilized society.”

by Patrick J. Buchanan – April 4, 1998

“The document doesn’t even mention Pius XII’s failure to speak out against Nazi atrocities,” said a disgusted New York Times — as it dismissed Rome’s recent statement on the Vatican and the Jews in World War II. “It now falls to John Paul and his successors to take the next step toward full acceptance of the Vatican’s failure to stand squarely against the evil that swept across Europe.”