By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 29, 2001

“Economic unity and political unity are twins: one cannot be born without the other following,” said Friedrich List, the famed German economist and nationalist. Again and again, history has proven List right.

Economic union leads inexorably to political union. The left has always understood this. The right never does, until too late.

When Hamilton created a free-trade zone across 13 states, a strong U.S. central government was baked in the cake. Bismarck used a customs union, the Zollverein, to harness Germany under Prussia’s whip hand.

By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 27, 2001

Two thousand years after the first Christmas, Israeli tanks were firing in Manger Square in Bethlehem and Jewish children were being massacred by suicide-bombers in Jerusalem. The city of Christ’s birth and the city of his death were alike awash in hatred.

Is peace possible in the Holy Land? If not, endless suffering and ultimate tragedy lie ahead for Israelis and Palestinian alike.

What is now manifest is that neither Sharon nor Arafat can make peace. As Zbigniew Brzezinski argues in the Washington Post, “Neither side is able to take the ultimate steps for a grand, but also painful, historical reconciliation.” This is now apparent to all.

By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 21, 2001

When I was a boy, Kensington was a village half an hour north of Chevy Chase Circle where, inside an ice-cold armory, Catholic kids practiced basketball. Montgomery County was a bedroom suburb of D.C. Nothing beyond existed, except for the Rockville drive-in.

This fall, both precincts became world-famous as citadels of wacko liberalism. The Montgomery County Council voted to fine homeowners $500 who let cigarette smoke escape into neighbors’ houses. And the Kensington council voted to purge Santa from its 30-year-old tradition of lighting a pine tree in front of town hall.

By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 18, 2001

“John M. Culbertson, an economist known for mounting an articulate defense of protectionist economic policy long after the tenets of free trade were de rigueur among his colleagues, died on Sunday, in Madison, Wis. He was 80.”

So read Sunday’s obit in The New York Times, which went on to quote a Culbertson essay in 1986: “The future of the United States depends on whether we can escape from the childish dream world in which ‘free trade’ is The Good Fairy and ‘protectionism’ is The Wicked Witch of the West.”

By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 14, 2001

As every schoolchild used to know, the Trojan Horse was the scheme of the “wily Ulysses,” one of the Greek warriors besieging Troy. For a decade, the Greeks had failed to capture the great city. In defeat and resignation, they adopted Ulysses’ plan.

They would build a great wooden horse and leave it outside the city walls, ostensibly as a tribute to the goddess Minerva. The Greek army would then board ships, sail over the horizon and wait – for the Trojan Horse was hollow, and filled with Greek warriors.

By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 11, 2001

Of all the days that will “live in infamy” in American history, two stand out: Sept. 11, 2001, and Dec. 7, 1941.

But why did Japan, with a 10th of our industrial power, launch a sneak attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, an act of state terror that must ignite a war to the death it could not win? Were they insane? No, the Japanese were desperate.

To understand why Japan lashed out, we must go back to World War I. Japan had been our ally. But when she tried to collect her share of the booty at Versailles, she ran into an obdurate Woodrow Wilson.

By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 7, 2001

With the ouster of the Taliban and eradication of the al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Islamic extremism has sustained a crushing defeat. But what continues to unsettle Americans is that film of Arab and Islamic people, wildly cheering the barbaric atrocities of Sept. 11.

Is a war of civilizations coming?

Clearly, not a few in the Islamic world and the West so believe, and ardently desire. And, with the War Party cawing for an attack on Iraq, with Sharon unleashed after the atrocities in Jerusalem and Haifa, with the U.S. press calling for a reappraisal of our ties to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a clash of civilizations has moved from the possible to the probable.

By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 4, 2001

Whether the slaughter of 26 Israelis was a reprisal for Israel’s assassination of a Hamas leader or an attempt to kill President Bush’s peace initiative, it has succeeded.

With Israelis justifiably enraged, peace negotiations are off the table. And given the revulsion felt by Americans at what those suicide bombers did, Bush is not going to be pressuring Ariel Sharon to trade “land for peace,” any time soon, with Yasser Arafat.