{"id":137226,"date":"2019-07-02T04:44:32","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T08:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/?p=137226"},"modified":"2019-07-02T04:44:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T08:44:32","slug":"remembering-justin-raimondo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/remembering-justin-raimondo-137226","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Justin Raimondo"},"content":{"rendered":"

By James Antle III at The American Conservative<\/a><\/p>\n

The last \u201cAmerica First\u201d candidate Raimondo supported actually became president of the United States, defeating the Democrat he aptly labeled \u201cHillary the Hawk\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The man who once said, \u201cit is Buchananism\u2014or barbarism. The choice is yours to make,\u201d made his mark on TAC, and anti-war activism.<\/p>\n

Justin Raimondo once recalled when he first decided to support Pat Buchanan for president. It was at the 1991 California Republican convention after the start of the Persian Gulf War. For a small group of conservatives, it was the first U.S. war they had publicly opposed. Buchanan was arguably the most prominent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PAT BUCHANAN: PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN NATIONALIST<\/strong><\/span>
\nby Justin Raimondo
\n— August 16, 1999<\/span>
\nRead on Antiwar.com…<\/a><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A decade later, Raimondo was speaking in Long Beach, Calif., at the Reform Party\u2019s national convention on behalf of Buchanan\u2019s third presidential campaign. \u201cLadies and gentlemen, the choice before us is clear: it is either a foreign policy that puts America first, or else one that guarantees perpetual war,\u201d he told the audience. \u201cIt is Buchananism\u2014or barbarism. The choice is yours to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Based on that election and the endless wars that would subsequently follow, it would have been easy to despair. The people chose barbarism, masked in happy talk about a humble foreign policy. Raimondo did not. By the time he was boosting Buchanan at that raucous convention in Long Beach, Raimondo was already established as an internet journalist and editorial director of the invaluable Antiwar.com<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Antiwar.com<\/strong><\/a> launched, neoconservatives and other assorted war hawks were baying for military intervention in the Balkans. For another generation of conservatives, Kosovo was the first U.S. war we had publicly opposed. That was true for my friend TAC alumni Michael Brendan Dougherty, who wrote about the experience in his chapter in the Jonah Goldberg-edited compilation Proud to Be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation.<\/p>\n

Raimondo died last week at age 67 after a long, painful struggle with cancer. His storied career covered many of the themes that gave rise to this magazine and he labored tirelessly inside the coalition that has supported TAC from the beginning, a veteran of both libertarianism\u2014though not necessarily, he would be quick to remind you, the Beltway-approved variety\u2014and 1990s paleoconservatism. Thus Raimondo emerged as an important voice here and contributing editor until his death.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It was the project of Raimondo\u2019s life to try to restore an older American conservatism that was far more skeptical of war and the use of military power to shape political outcomes than it had become during the Cold War. His book Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement was a major contribution to that history. Buchanan, one of our founding editors, wrote the foreword. Later editions included contributions by the conservative scholar George Carey, libertarian intellectual David Gordon, and then Chronicles executive editor Scott Richert. (Raimondo was also a longtime regular contributor to Chronicles).<\/p>\n

Like his idol Murray Rothbard, Raimondo did not forsake electoral politics for purely intellectual pursuits. An occasional Republican and Libertarian Party candidate for office himself, Raimondo was a big supporter of the Buchanan presidential campaigns\u2014the media was frequently bewildered by the idea of a gay Buchananite, prompting Justin to tell a San Francisco newspaper in 1996, \u201cHe does not think that homosexuality is all that great a thing. But I don\u2019t need his approval. Why does any gay person need anyone\u2019s benediction?\u201d\u2014as well as Ron Paul\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The last \u201cAmerica First\u201d candidate Raimondo supported actually became president of the United States, defeating the Democrat he aptly labeled \u201cHillary the Hawk\u201d in a 2016 TAC cover story. Raimondo was a tireless defender of Donald Trump despite disagreements within his circles prompted by Trump\u2019s employment of hawks like John Bolton and vacillating on foreign policy. Raimondo nevertheless saw Trump as a populist with pro-peace instincts. His generation of paleocons tends to be impatient with complaints about Trump\u2019s intellectual rigor or uncouth behavior\u2014they remember that during that Buchanan gave them a purer, more knowledgeable and gentlemanly proponent of what came to be known as \u201cTrumpism\u201d and he was similarly savaged.<\/p>\n

Raimondo never shied away from disagreement: not in the comments, on Twitter or in his thousands of columns. If he had a bone to pick with your argument, whether tactical or substantive, he was not afraid to share it with you, friend or foe. I was not spared myself. He frequently reminded me, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, that extremism in defense of peace was no vice and moderation in pursuit of liberty was no virtue.<\/p>\n

TAC readers can be grateful for the virtues Raimondo shared with us in his busy, ultimately too short, life.<\/p>\n

Read more at: The American Conservative<\/a><\/p>\n

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By James Antle III at The American Conservative The last \u201cAmerica First\u201d candidate Raimondo supported actually became president of the United States, defeating the Democrat he aptly labeled \u201cHillary the Hawk\u201d The man who once said, \u201cit is Buchananism\u2014or barbarism. The choice is yours to make,\u201d made his mark on … <\/p>\n

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