Bush’s New “Axis of Evil”
George W. Bush must have been the despair of the history department of every school his daddy managed to get him into.
Consider his latest excursion into the history of the republic, at Southern Methodist, where the Great Man's papers are to be housed.
What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some "isms" that occasionally pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the '20s, for example, there was an American-first policy that said, "Who cares what happens in Europe?" ... And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians, therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we've been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. I hope that these "isms" pass.
Where to begin?
First, "America First" was the antiwar movement begun in 1940 and backed by the young John F. Kennedy and his brother Joe, Gerald Ford and ex-president Herbert Hoover. It had nothing to do with the 1920s.
In the Harding-Coolidge decade, America was deeply interested in "what happens in Europe." It began with Hoover rushing U.S. food aid to the defeated nations of World War I and even to the USSR, for which Lenin personally thanked the Americans.
In 1921, President Harding called a Washington Naval Conference that produced the greatest disarmament treaty of modern times, in which America, Britain, France, Italy and Japan agreed to deep cuts and severe limits on the strategic weapons of the day, battleships.
In 1924, Charles G. Dawes advanced the Dawes Plan to ease the reparations burden on Germany, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1927, Coolidge convened a second naval disarmament conference to bring cruisers under the same limits as battleships—but the British balked.
In 1928 came the Kellogg-Briand Pact, by which scores of nations renounced war as an instrument of national policy. Undeniably utopian, it was hardly a mark of an isolationist America.
Secretary of State Frank Kellogg won our country's fourth Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1929 came the Young Plan to further ease a reparations burden on Germany then being exploited by the rising Nazi Party.
Wrote British historian A.J.P. Taylor: "American policy was never more active and never more effective in regard to Europe than in the 1920s. Reparations were settled; stable finances were restored; Europe was pacified, all mainly due to the United States."
What is Bush talking about, and why is he trashing this Republican record like some court historian of FDR?
As for "protectionism," Harding did approve the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922, doubling rates to 38 percent. But he also slashed Woodrow Wilson's income tax rates by two-thirds, back to 25 percent.
Result: Unemployment, 12 percent when Harding took office, was 3 percent when Calvin Coolidge left. Manufacturing output rose 64 percent in the Roaring Twenties. Between 1923 and 1927, U.S. growth was 7 percent a year. At decade's end, America produced 42 percent of the world's goods.
Compare this economic triumph with the fruits of W's free-trade policy that wiped out 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs, one of every three we had, and put America in hock to China.
The protectionism Bush calls "evil" was the policy of 12 Republican presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Coolidge, who made the GOP America's Party and converted this country into the industrial marvel of mankind.
Is Bush oblivious to this? Did someone at Phillips Academy, Yale or Harvard Business School tell him Lincoln, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt were free-traders?
As for "nativism," the term dates to the mid-19th century and had to do with hostility to Catholics and Irish, not Italians and Jews.
The 1924 Immigration Act, to end the Great Wave of the previous 30 years from Southern and Eastern Europe, did seek to preserve the ethnic character of the country. Yet, after 40 years of that moratorium, the Melting Pot having done its work, America was more united and socially at peace in the Eisenhower-JFK era than she has been before or since.
Is every immigration restriction law "evil," Mr. Bush? Are Japan and South Korea evil because they have never accepted immigration? Has mass immigration benefited Europe, where David Cameron and Angela Merkel are bewailing the disaster of "multiculturalism"? Is your successor, Gov. Rick Perry, evil for calling for troops on the border to stop the invasion you failed to halt?
For eight years, Bush pursued interventionism, free trade and open borders. Result: two wars that have bled his country and reaped a harvest of hate, the deindustrialization of America and a republic on its way to becoming the new world order's Tower of Babel.
Political result: A wipeout of the GOP in 2006 and 2008, and Bush going home to Texas with the lowest job approval in presidential history.
Bush ought to sue Phillips Academy for educational malpractice.
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Entries(RSS)
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama is the axis of evil.
An excellent column.
Draw a triangle with New York City, Boston, and Washington DC as the points. Thats the axis of evil.
Pat,
The kids over at National Review want to run his brother, Jeb, in 2012. I just hope the family didn't converse much over dinner about these three evil isms. In fact the way Mr. Bush explained history to his students, sounded more like reading bedtime stories to children ---The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goat Gruffs or Clifford The Big Red Dog.
Imagine having that guy for a President!!
This is one of Buchanan's best. He's a far the better man than the mental midget he takes apart here.
Jews? Italians? He was indoctrinated enough by his educators not to say too many negroes and Mexi-cans, At least he's not a damn good yankee like is brother Jeb -- who moved to Florida.
And after the World Order has sucked the life from this land, they'll move on and turn some other place into their vision of Utopia. Who will be the unlucky host? Turkey?
The depth of Mr. Buchanan’s knowledge of history never ceases to amaze.
Just as an aside "foreign Trade", excluding Canada, was a very small part of our Economy (less than 5 percent GDP) from 1920-1970. Exports of manufactured goods were small in comparison to domestic consumption. People like Bush don't understand that during this time of low immigration, high taxes on the Rich, and "protectionism" we experienced the greatest boom in our history.
Yet, NR wants another Bush or failing that, Bush Lite aka Romney.
MD, surely we can include Hollywood in that?
What a joker Bush is. The sad thing is not that he says these things, for he is just being himself as he's always been, but that there are still 'conservatives' out there who will defend his abysmal record. Worst president since Johnson. The very fact that Bush says something ought to discredit whatever it is he says.
Nativism, isolationism? Ugh. He might as well have just saved some time and said conservatism. ¡Viva la Revolución, Jorge!
I'll bet some of you people voted for him---twice.
#10 sure enough did - twice even. Slouched toward sellersville to vote, held my nose, pulled the lever, went home, took a shower.
This Buchanan article comes after the many articles written by him defending Bush's intelligence or at worst calling him misguided.
He once wrote an article praising Bush as a new protectionist in the ranks, and defending him against free traders.
Buchanan's post-presidential legacy column for Bush said that he was "not an unintelligent man" but merely blinded by "ideology". Now, Buchanan just goes ahead and calls Bush stupid and uneducated.
Dr. Clyde Wilson, when you wrote the very excellent Yankee Problem In America column in 2000s, you said that Al Gore was only successful in elitist Deep North states while Bush was successful in mainland heartland America among true working class Americans. I am confused as to whether that was a point in Bush's favour or a point against Gore only.
The indispensable Mr Buchanan strikes the bullseye again!
Pursuant to Mr Bush, his recent book and his "library;" isn't there a requirement somewhere that one is required to have actually read a book before writing one or having a library named after you?
Dr. Wilson @ 10:
Mea culpa! or at least the once in 2000. As a veteran of two combat tours in Iraq, I believed I was helping to protect my kith and kin from the likes of Al Qaeda. I came home to my family's small town and felt honored to hear good hearted folks - my people -offer me thanks for my service. Now such thanks make me uncomfortable, for I now know my service had nothing to do with preserving freedom or protecting them. It was all about the Yankee/Liberal/Progressive/Neo-Con desire to dominate and create a utopia, a New World Order.
One hundred fifty years ago, invaders illegally and unconstitutionally entered my country, killed 350,000 of us who were attempting to defend our families, homes, way of life, and traditions. How can I turn around and do the same in another man's country, however much I may regard Islam for the evil it is? None of my business!
Bush, like other presidents on both sides of the political spectrum since Lincoln, led this and I am ashamed I ever supported him or any of the rest of it.
Only once Professor Wilson. I discovered Mr. Buchanan's writings in '03-'04 and it didn't take me long to figure out that he was right.
I think many of those voting for Bush (whether once or twice) did so because the Democrats keep nominating idiots. Lesser of two evils so to speak. I don't know how much "lesser" the evil was, but I will never again vote for someone just because he is "less evil" than the other guy. If the major parties can't or won't put anyone decent up (not holding my breath on that one) I will simply not vote or write in someone's name. If W is going to make speeches, he needs to stick with what he knows. I'm not sure what that is unless its how to save your millionaire banker friends from their own stupidity by giving them tax dollars to bail them out.
"ll bet some of you people voted for him—twice."
Well, Republicans love to fall in line and support their commander-in-chief. Plus, if we let the Democrats in we'll get massive budget deficits, out-of-control spending, Crusades to make the world safe for Democracy, Amnesty, and liberal SCOTUS judges.
Completely unlike the Republicans.
If the major parties can’t or won’t put anyone decent up (not holding my breath on that one) I will simply not vote or write in someone’s name
Amen,amen. This is really the only thing that can be done-- to withdraw support until there is a candidates that traditional christians could support with a vote. There has not been one since Pat Buchanan ran in 2000. There will not be another until the duopoly disbands.
#14 " ...and I am ashamed...". Dissuade yourself of it. Honorable motives alone merit no shame. Rather -Caveat venditor.
#16 " I will simply not vote.." "idiotis"-person disinterested in participation in public life. You don't fit the profile.
Robert- Waiting for Godot in a handbasket to hell
Well framed criticism of Bush except that Buchanan cannot help but throw in his idee fixe in the mix, that is his interpetation of US prosperity as being due to protectionism. But that is a minor point. Considering that the Republican establishment shares Bush's views, their next presidential candidate will just offer us a different leavening, so that we may swallow the same old porridge.
George W. Bush should have his mouth duct-taped and his pens confiscated until he dies.
#20 A restricted diet to be sure. The gop feeds us the same old porridge to maintain our health, obama insists we eat humble pie to regain our health.
Actually, he should have had those in 1999.
As for the so-called "conservatives" who still defend him, THEIR mouths should be duct-taped and their pens confiscated.
#23 Ah yes. The so-called market place of ideas and duct tape. What a lovely duet they make. If you cant best em, bind em.
#12. Mr. Sanjay. I don't think that is exactly what I said. I believe I indicated that Bush put forth a PR front of a normal American which captured many, and that Gore was a complete phony because he had dropped his native accent.
#16. It is always wrong to choose evil, evn a "lesser evil." Besides, I am not even sure that Bush was truly a lesser evil. It only seemed so because so many are conditioned to think of Republicans as safe and respectable.
Some of the things that Bush did - weren't they already planned under the Clinton Administration?
Wasn't Clinton the one who was complaining about Iraq having WMDs as early as 1998-99? All those medical care reforms that Clinton attempted, some of them were implemented by Bush Jr. with his Medicare reform, right?
Saying Bush was a lesser evil is strange, because it almost seems like he did what the previous administration would have done if it won a third and fourth term.
@26: Yes, although the Republicans have always been terrible at socialism... these are people who have no idea how to spend money, never have and never will. They do it badly. But now the Democrats are giving the Republicans a real run for their money.
Bush was a teetotaler. Yes, I know he was a "dry drunk," and I applaud recovered alcoholics for taking the step, but I could never fully trust a teetotaler, whether Calvinist/Progressive or Mohammedan. It's just a prejudice I have a hard time getting over.
I sincerely believe opposition to prohibitionism is a reliable litmus test of true conservatism. Prohibition won a majority of votes in every province in Canada except for Québec, where it was opposed by a margin of 83 percent--at the time, sociologically speaking, Québec was arguably the most conservative voting district in all of North America.
Dr. Wilson @ 25:
What is it my logic professor used to call it, the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle Term? "If you're not a Left/Liberal/Democrat then you must be for the Conservative/Christian/Republicans". Indeed, a false dichotomy so many of us have allowed ourselves to be duped into.
We need desperately to get over it!
#28
Excluded Middle Term?
Then we come to another fallacy that the truth is a halfway point between two untruths.
Sometimes, all three sides are wrong, including or especially the one in the supposed center. For example, you may have a FOX news talking head saying, "Obama is bad, because he is soft on terrorists." Then you may have the MSNBC guy saying, "Obama is good, because he is soft on terrorists." Then you may have the good old centrist saying, "Obama has done good and bad in foreign policy, his generosity to terrorists is okay, but he could get a little firmer."
But then anybody who actually checks will see that Obama has never been soft on terrorists in the first place, as all three sides claim, and has actually ordered more assassinations than any other American President.
So if we have to look back to the Bush years, it was this sort of centrism that may also have contributed to Bush's re-election. Anybody opposed to Iraq War is "too extreme" or too driven to one side of spectrum and should be brought back to not opposing it too much.
The true fallacy is the completely bogus assumption that "terrorism" is something possible or desirable to combat. Terrorism is, as Martin Hutchinson has pointed out, an unfortunate and ineradicable facet of modern life.
Mr. Smith,
This "“If you’re not a Left/Liberal/Democrat then you must be for the Conservative/Cristian/Republicans”.
This is the most false dichotomy of all and the most dangerous to our current circumstances. Pat Robertson,the late Jerry Falwell, political hacks like Ralph Reed, and bigger political movers who devised the republican Soutern strategy by mobilizing these sillies was the end of anything remotely resembling a conservative christian. Catholics are no better because repulsed by the emotionalism of these carpert biters, they fell for the intellectual fraud of neo-cons. Look at the little men like Wiegel, the late Father Neuhause, the signers of PNAC pronouncements one after the other. If this is Christian conservatism no wonder it has been rejected by the masses and picked up by the stupid republicans. Pat Buchanan was the last public figure of any count who could articulate the Christian tradition and do battle with her common foes. That is why he was hated so much by the establishment and betrayed by the Southern republicans ---- HE WAS A ROMAN CATHOLIC FOR GOD'S SAKE!
#30 so terrorism is simply a matter of ergonomics? i.e. problems of people adjusting to their environment-unfortunate or ineradicable.
#32
It's rather that the weapons of United States can reach Russian missile bases, but can not reach covert operators staying in civilian buildings who execute one small part of a process and then withdraw.
What did conducting 9/11 require? Just a few box-cutters and some flight experience. And it was done by people staying in United States for a short time. How do you stop that? By ordering all flights in and out of United States to stop permanently?
If United States was like Israel, it would probably choose to have a Mossad-style hit team, and have them slowly start executing their enemies across several decades. That way, it may actually penetrate its enemies and even end terrorism forever just the way Israel finished Black September forever. But that is too simple and too radical, perhaps.
#33
Israel may have finished Black September, but now it has Hamas and Hezbollah, neither of which, according to Robert Pape in "Dying to Win," were significant threats to Israel before Israel exasperated them with its anti-terrorist tactics.
Robert @ 31:
Indeed, sir, to espouse such a Christian conservatism today sounds (at least to our opponents) at best quaint, naive, and dated.
#34
Joe, if that is true, then I guess the general point still stands. We can't eliminate terror even with Israeli-style tactics.
#35 I wonder why?
Mr. Smith,
Clarence Darrow bested William Jennings Bryan in the American court of public opnion and still would today, but it was no so when he came up against the more complete tradition in his debates with G.K. Chesterton. Is it not a tad strange to you that Americans know all about the debates Darrow won, but hardly anything about those he lost? Again, I wonder why
The court of public opinion is the ignorant and malevolent press. Mencken, in so many respects an admirable man, so misrepresented Dayton and the trial that he had to leave town to avoid being lynched. It was a simple case. The prosecution was entirely right and Darrow's arguments irrelevant and dishonest. Bryan was in a bind because while he had no fixed opinion on Darwinism, he knew that it was being instrumentalized as a force for evil. As a politician, he was fearful of alienating the support base that empowered him to do what he saw as good and right. Scopes was a liar--he did not teach evolution or even biology; the ACLU entirely cynical; and Darrow a crooked lawyer contemptuous of the law. An interesting little fact. Edgar Lee Masters, a partner in Darrow's firm, left the practice when he discovered that Darrow was trying to pin the blame for one of his crooked deals on Masters. In dealing with such people, how can it possibly matter what they think or what they will say? To compare our own small plight with things far greater, why didn't Joan of Arc hire a good PR firm and look for some compromise with the English? Why didn't Plato frame his argument in such a way as to avoid offending the sophists? Why didn't Christ soften his diatribes agains the "Scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites?" Unless one has real power as at least a US Senator or White House Chief of Staff, there is not point to temporizing. You score no points with the enemy and you confuse and dishearten the people who might actually listen to you. The American people can only begin to get better if they can be brought to realize how stupid, ignorant, and evil they are. If they can once realize their "opinions"--really nothing but the residue of lies they pick up in school and from TV--are as worthless as the lives they lead (but do not live, they might be open to the truths that will give the lives worth living. To say less to them is a waste of time. Go fishing instead.
#36
Prateek, I think we can't eliminate terrorism especially with Israeli style tactics.
Dr. Fleming,
The debate between Chesterton and Darrow illustrate your points more jovially than you do. Chesterton thought Darrow an unworthy opponent and was disappointed in his shallow understanding of science. Menken the respectable and Bryan the hapless Calvinist was part of the problem notthe solution, then or now.
Gentlemen:
I'm afraid you ask far too much of us, the American citizenry, to actually think. We are, however, highly qualified when it comes to empty sentimentality and emoting. But thinking? Please!
More jovially? Impossible. There is thinking and thinking. I do not expect the American people to earn how to divide fractions or understand the First Amendment, but it may not be entirely vain to think that if they are being robbed and abused by, for example, a government in league with illegal alien gangsters, they may begin to "think" about some of the bad premises that have got them into this situation. Yesterday I was speaking with a reasonably intelligent Republican woman who told me that while she did not believe in wasting money, some expenditure on inner-city black schools should be encouraged and increased because of the history of discrimination etc etc. I know I did not succeed in getting through to her the utter folly of her argument--explaining that the more that is spent, the worse we make it, the futility of Head Start and Affirmative Action, the need to allow a kind of natural selection to take its course which would permit able and hardworking blacks to rise. But what about the roughly 40-50 % with 70-80 IQ. What about it, I asked. You tell me what can be done other than to end all welfare and let them work for the best wages and terms thy can get. Some day, when the government is consuming not just 50% of her income but 75 % and when it is no longer safe to live in suburban enclaves, she will begin to "think" at least at the level at which a virus responds to threats to its existence.
Gentlemen:
I come to this site for the intellectual (and moral) affirmation it gives to my paleo-conservative instincts. I have the priviledge of reading articles by Drs. Fleming, Wilson, Trifkovic, et al. (not to mention posters like Robert, Mr. Gervais - and sooo many others). Even if I disagree (not often!), it's on so much higher a level than I can get in so many other places! Oh how I wish my countrymen would wake up, would at least see the inconsistencies in what they've been duped into believing!
My hats off to you all! I just hope and pray that, as Dr. Fleming seemed to indicate in his post at #43, enough of our folk will begin to see, if from no other motive than enlightened self-interest, that the pragmatic (?) policies they've supported for so long are not only wrong but destructive in the long run. Think, people, think!
"Republican woman who told me that while she did not believe in wasting money, some expenditure on inner-city black schools should be encouraged and increased "
Well,she at least thought more of her own citizens than citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. My own republican friends want to cut all domestic expenditures except for the military industrial complex, Iraq, Afghanistan, bases all over the world, and aid to our only reliable ally in the Middle East.
It reminds me of the family with financial problems who can't decide where to cut back --- their gambling losses, drug and alcohol addictions, trips to the Chicken Ranch in Las Vegas or contributions to the United Way.
By the way, I read a nice little piece and compliment to Abilene, Texas the other day from President Eisenhower's son. He said that when his Father was speaking about the military/industrial/complex, Abilene was still similar to a town of the High Middle Ages, and his Father was fearful of it becoming something much different. Which it has and so have we.
You left out Hollywood.
The Republican party seemed "safe and respectable" (however false that may have been) only in comparison to what the Democratic Party has become over the past few decades. Still, what may have seemed plausible at one time has been shown over and again to be false. There is precious little safety or respectability with either party. Had the Democrats remained the party of constitutional government, states' rights, etc. I would have been a Democrat. By the time I was old enough to think about these things, Democrats meant Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society to me. The GOP (so I thought) offered a "conservative" alternative. Well, it took a while but in the words of Hank Williams "I saw the light."
Mr. Smith,
Thank you for your kind words. It is the same for me as well. I hope you will continue to participate as it makes the conversations much better. I am signing off for a couple of weeks because duty calls and my lovers quarrel with the world takes me to another duty more familiar and closer to home. But I will lurk from time to time when opportunity affords and hope to see your good posts when I do.
Palin will NEVER beat Obama.
If you want Obama out of the White House we HAVE to go with Ron Paul.
Obama only won the last election because he got the independent vote- it was anyone other than McCain/Palin. Paul is the only Republican who can get the Independent/Democrat vote. Romney/Mitchell/any of the the others will NOT beat Obama. Paul is our ONLY chance.
Think about it- he has the most devoted following for a reason. Look at what the internet did for the Egyptians, and what it has done and will continue to do for Paul.
Reconsider what you think you know about Paul and do your research. If you care about the future of our country and the global economy, and you want Obama OUT of the White House, we have to get the media to stop downplaying Ron Paul!
"Some day, when the government is consuming not just 50% of her income but 75 % and when it is no longer safe to live in suburban enclaves, she will begin to “think” at least at the level at which a virus responds to threats to its existence."
That day has already passed us by. The government robs its citizens with not only taxes but also inflation, and suburban delinquency is on the rise as the homeless, crazies and drug lords are pushed out of gentrified urban zones and squatt on abandoned McMansions, ripping out copper wires and sending stray bullets into the bedrooms of children of former New Yorkers who left the bustling city for Pleasantville, North Carolina.
(Yes, I read that in the news!)
I truly believe some people, however intelligent they might be, just live in caves.