Anti-Buchanan Tropes
Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for linking to letters and response regarding Gary Rosen in Commentary Magazine.
Mr. McConnell’s newfound pessimism about America’s role in the world springs, I would suggest, from distinct sources on the paleoconservative Right. There is a natural affinity between nativism at home and defeatism (or worse) abroad. After all, who are we—mongrelized and cosmopolitan as we have become—to serve as any sort of model for the rest of the world? What good can come of trying to promote overseas the very sort of liberalization that, in the paleocon scheme of things, has corrupted our own once proudly Anglo-Saxon polity?
But beyond nativism at home and defeatism (or worse) abroad - what is the distinct-est source of paleoconservative griping? You guessed it...
Where such thoughts lurk, anti-Semitism is seldom far behind...
Surprise! Scratch a paleo-con and sniff an anti-Semite. ZZZzzz - oh sorry, I fell asleep from boredom.
and there is no avoiding its presence in the long record of Mr. McConnell’s boss, Patrick J. Buchanan. The irony cannot be lost on Mr. McConnell that the leader of his own movement, which claims to resist an incipient American fascism, is himself guilty of indulging in the most au courant of anti-Semitic tropes. As Buchanan, writing in the American Conservative, so neatly encapsulated his view: “Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.” Was Mr. McConnell proud to publish this obvious play on the Nazi slogan, “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer”?- Gary Rosen
Rosen's poorly constructed paragraph leads us to expect an au courant anti-Semitic trope from Buchanan then provides a quote from Buchanan's "Whose War?" that is certainly inflammatory - but not exactly an anti-Semitic trope. It is devilish, too clever by half and intended to goad critics like Rosen.
"The irony cannot be lost.." - Sigh, again boring and tendentious. The irony cannot be lost on Rosen that neo-conservatives whose moralistic foreign policy, where the actors are good, evil or Neville Chamberlain, forged against fascism now counsels a belligerent and vulgar nationalism that seeks to impose a new order on the world. We can point fingers and squeal "Nazi" all day long.: A foreign policy realist wants trains to run on time - Just.Like.Hitler.
The Great White Whale of neoconservatism is American Conservatism in the interwar period: Restricted immigration and non-intervention in foreign affairs. Of course many neo-conservatives oppose these things generally for honorable (and gravely misguided) reasons. Their insistence that those who do generally support them do so for distinctly Anti-Semitic reasons has not only lost its rhetorical strength through careless repetition but invites deeply uncharitable readings of their own motives.
But what an odd connection between nativism and foreign policy "defeatism": poll after poll shows Americans want the border closed, they want illegal aliens deported - and a substantial amount of the people who want this the most are the most enthusiastic supporters of the war in Iraq. The "mongrelized" swipe is particularly low. Mr. McConnell's most recent article on immigration was a plea for self-policing of the immigration reform movement, and a call to recognize that America is not the same country, ethnically, that it was in the 1980s. Rosen's nativist foil McConnell (it's a trope that anti-Semites are Irish Catholic right-wingers) - turns out to be a moderate's moderate on immigration reform: warning that we can't turn back the clock. What extremism! How gauche!
Michael Brendan Dougherty
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Source: Realpolitik -
Source: Whose War?The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers ... that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?”
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f course war, rather, WAR! is the calling card neoconservatives have been dealing to dinner guests over the past decade. For neoconservatives, war reduces everyone to one of three categories: democratic revolutionaries, evil, or Neville Chamberlain (also evil). Compelling reading perhaps, but a little pat. Peace makes a cameo brief enough to be denounced and shoved offstage. Name an intervention and I'll show you the preponderance of neoconservatives were for it, and said so. Helping the KLA in
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Source: From Minutemen to MainstreamThe Euro-America that existed until roughly 1980 has passed into history. If the immigration-reform movement is not to squander its second (and likely its last) opportunity, it must learn to accommodate itself to those changes.
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Response: The Preposterous Gary RosenMr. McConnell’s newfound pessimism about America’s role in the world springs, I would suggest, from distinct sources on the paleoconservative Right. There is a natural affinity between nativism at home and defeatism (or worse) abroad. After all, who are we—mongrelized...
Reader Comments (1)
But that is to be expected, for extremist movements always arise when the status quo collapses. And under the neocons the status quo is rapidly becoming unsustainable.