by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 29, 1999

“China’s army conducted a military exercise last month with simulated missile firings against Taiwan and also for the first time conducted mock attacks on U.S. troops in the region … ”

That was the jolting lead of a Jan. 26 story by Bill Gertz of The Washington Times. With those mock attacks, China is sending a message: We will collar Taiwan and drag the renegade province back to the embrace of the Motherland, even if it means war with America.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 26, 1999

“Carpe diem,” wrote the poet Horace; seize the pleasure of the passing day. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Gazing on the shambles of the Global Economy, the questions come: Is America sacrificing her future to perpetuate a fraud? Are we squandering our patrimony to put off the inevitable?

America may be relishing the longest peacetime expansion in history, but the gathering global disaster is now visible to all.

Japan, two-thirds of the Asian economy, is awash in debt and headed, say economists, for a “hard landing.” From China come reports of urban riots and investment bank defaults.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 22, 1999

Once again, U.S. air and naval forces are preparing strikes on Serbia’s army and police for refusing to stand down in Kosovo. And, once again, Americans are deeply ambivalent about intervention.

“Either we get in there with a NATO force, or we get the hell out,” said an exasperated Sen. John Warner after Yugoslav strong man Slobodan Milosevic showed two NATO generals the door.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 19, 1999

Given 24 hours to present their case, the House managers spoke in a hushed Senate chamber, for once uninterrupted by the aging student radicals of the Judiciary Committee and demagogic rants from the House floor. So it was that the strength and power of the case against the president was brought home.

Even Senate Democrats conceded by week’s end that, on the facts as presented, Bill Clinton lied under oath to corrupt a civil trial and perjured himself to a U.S. grand jury to cover up his felonies.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 15, 1999

Christmas 1997, I ran into a former U.S. ambassador to Brazil and predicted that country’s currency, the real, would have to be devalued. He bet me a dinner it would not — by Jan. 1, 1999. I lost by 13 days, thanks to a $41.5 billion International Monetary Fund bailout of Brazil.

As predicted, however, all the IMF accomplished was to put another fortune in U.S. tax dollars at risk and kick the can up the road.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 12, 1999

On the day after Pearl Harbor, ex-President Herbert Hoover sat down and wrote to friends: “You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bitten.”

Japan’s sneak attack was one of the great acts of state terror, but its motive was desperation. The United States had cut off Japan’s oil and sent Tokyo an ultimatum: Withdraw from Indochina and China, or we bring you to your knees. Japan decided to seize the oil of the East Indies and eliminate the one force that could stop her: the U.S. fleet.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 8, 1999

Anyone raised in Catholic schools at mid-century often heard the term “invincible ignorance.” Nuns used it to describe those benighted souls who lacked mental competence to grasp the truth. Whenever I read a column by Ed Koch, the old phrase comes to mind.

Koch recently cited as conclusive proof of my malevolence that I defend the America First Committee — an organization, says Ed, “that supported Hitler and the Nazis in 1941.”

by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 5, 1999

In the weeks since the House voted to impeach Bill Clinton for high crimes, more than a few senators have been casting about for some way to evade their constitutional duty to conduct a trial.

Republicans have been shaken by the public reaction to the House vote. Some senators now look on a trial of Clinton like a truck bomb parked outside their caucus room that could blast them out of power in 2000 if not defused.

by Patrick J. Buchanan – January 1, 1999

Is the Ivy League the last acceptable bastion of prejudice in America?

That seems a not unfair question, given the reaction to a recent column of this writer.

That column, based on a piece by political activist Ron Unz, noted that the ethnic composition of Harvard’s student body looks like a voter profile of the Greenwich Village Democratic Club.

The percentages of black and Hispanic students at Harvard (7 percent and 8 percent) are approaching their shares of the population, wrote Unz, and the percentages of Asian and Jewish students (20 percent and 25-33 percent) far exceed their shares of the population (3 percent and 2.5 percent).