Pat Buchanan

Pat Buchanan
Pat Buchanan in 2008
Born	(1938-11-02) November 2, 1938 Washington, D.C., United States
Occupation(s)	Writer, political commentator
Spouse	Shelley Ann Scarney
Parent(s)	William Baldwin Buchanan II and Catherine Elizabeth Crum Buchanan

Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan (born November 2, 1938) is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster. Buchanan was a senior advisor to American presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and was an original host on CNN's Crossfire. He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996. He ran on the Reform Party ticket in the 2000 presidential election.

He co-founded The American Conservative magazine and launched a foundation named The American Cause. He has been published in Human Events, National Review, The Nation and Rolling Stone. He is currently a political commentator on the MSNBC cable network including the show Morning Joe and a regular on The McLaughlin Group.

Personal life

Buchanan was born on November 2, 1938, in Washington, D.C., a son of Catherine Elizabeth (née Crum) (Charleroi, Washington County, Pennsylvania, December 23, 1911 – Oakton, Fairfax County, Virginia, September 18, 1995), a nurse and a homemaker, and William Baldwin Buchanan (Virginia, August 15, 1905 – Washington, D.C., January 1988), a partner in an accounting firm, who married on December 28, 1936. Buchanan had six brothers (Brian, Henry, James, John, Thomas, and William Jr.) and two sisters (Kathleen Theresa and Angela Marie, nicknamed Bay). Bay served as U.S. Treasurer under Ronald Reagan. Buchanan has English, German, Scots Irish, and Irish ancestry. He had a great-grandfather who fought in the American Civil War on the Confederate side. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and admires Robert E. Lee.

Buchanan was baptized into the Catholic Church and attended Blessed Sacrament School, the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College High School, and Georgetown University.

While studying at Georgetown Buchanan served in ROTC and received his draft notice in 1960. However, a District of Columbia draft board rejected him from military service due to reactive arthritis, declaring him 4-F. After Georgetown, Buchanan earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia in 1962. He wrote his master's project at Columbia on the expanding trade between Canada and Cuba.

Buchanan married White House staffer Shelley Ann Scarney in 1971. They have no children.

Professional career

St. Louis Globe-Democrat Editorial Writer

Buchanan joined the St. Louis Globe-Democrat at age 23. The first year of the United States embargo against Cuba in 1961, Canada-Cuba trade tripled. The Globe-Democrat published a rewrite of Buchanan's Columbia master's project under the eight-column banner "Canada sells to Red Cuba - And Prospers" eight weeks after Buchanan started at the paper. According to Buchanan's memoir Right from the Beginning, this article was a career milestone. However, Buchanan later said the embargo strengthened the communist regime and he turned against it. Buchanan was promoted to assistant editorial page editor in 1964 and supported Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. However, the Globe-Democrat did not endorse Goldwater and Buchanan speculated there was a clandestine agreement between the paper and President Johnson. Buchanan recalled: "The conservative movement has always advanced from its defeats. . . I can't think of a single conservative who was sorry about the Goldwater campaign." According to the foreword (written by Pat Buchanan) in the most recent edition of Conscience of a Conservative, Buchanan was a member of the Young Americans for Freedom, and wrote press releases for that organization. He served as an executive assistant in the Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander, and Mitchell law offices in New York City in 1965.

Work for the Nixon White House

The next year, he was the first adviser hired to Nixon's presidential campaign; he worked primarily as an opposition researcher. For his speeches aimed at dedicated supporters, he was soon nicknamed "Mr. Inside."

Buchanan traveled with Nixon throughout the campaigns of 1966 and 1968. He made a tour of Western Europe, Africa, and in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War, the Middle East. When Nixon took the Oval Office in 1969, Buchanan worked as a White House adviser and speechwriter for Nixon and vice president Spiro Agnew. Buchanan coined the phrase Silent Majority and helped shape the strategy that drew millions of Democrats to Nixon; in a 1972 memo he suggested the White House "should move to re-capture the anti-Establishment tradition or theme in American politics." His daily duties included developing political strategy, publishing the President's Daily News Summary, and preparing briefing books for news conferences. He accompanied Nixon on his trip to China in 1972 and the summit in Moscow, Yalta, and Minsk in 1974. He suggested to Nixon to label Democratic opponent George McGovern as an extremist and burn the White House tapes.

Buchanan remained as a special assistant to the president through the final days of the Watergate Scandal. He was not accused of wrongdoing, though some mistakenly suspected him as Deep Throat. When the actual identity of the press leak was revealed as FBI Associate Director Mark Felt in 2005, Buchanan called him "sneaky," "dishonest," and "criminal." Due to his role in the Nixon campaign's "Attack Group," Buchanan appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee on September 26, 1973. He told the panel:

The mandate that the American people gave to this president and his administration cannot and will not be frustrated or repealed or overthrown as a consequence of the incumbent tragedy.

When Nixon resigned in 1974, Buchanan briefly stayed on as special assistant under incoming President Gerald Ford. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig approved Buchanan's appointment as ambassador to South Africa, but Ford refused it. Buchanan remarked about Watergate:

The lost opportunity to move against the political forces frustrating the expressed national will ... To effect a political counterrevolution in the capital—... there is no substitute for a principled and dedicated man of the Right in the Oval Office.

Long after his resignation, Nixon called Buchanan a confidant and said he was neither an anti-Semite nor a "hater," but a "decent, patriotic American." Nixon said Buchanan had "some strong views," such as his, "isolationist" foreign policy, with which he disagreed. While the former president did not think Buchanan should become president, he said the commentator "should be heard."

News Commentator

Buchanan returned to his column and began regular appearances as a broadcast host and political commentator. He co-hosted a three-hour daily radio show with liberal columnist Tom Braden, called the Buchanan–Braden Program. He delivered daily commentaries on NBC radio from 1978 to 1984. Buchanan started his TV career as a regular on The McLaughlin Group and CNN's Crossfire (inspired by Buchanan-Braden) and The Capital Gang, making him nationally recognizable. His several stints on Crossfire occurred between 1982 and 1999; his sparring partners included Braden, Michael Kinsley, Juan Williams, and Bill Press.

Work for the Reagan White House

Buchanan served as White House Communications Director from 1985 to 1987. To help garner opposition to Nicaragua's Sandinista government and support of the opposing rebels he coined the phrase I'm a contra too.

Buchanan supported President Reagan's plan to visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg in 1985, where among buried Wehrmacht soldiers, were 48 buried Waffen SS members. Over the vocal objections of Jewish groups, the trip went through. In an interview, author Elie Wiesel described attending a White House meeting of Jewish leaders about the trip:

The only one really defending the trip, was Pat Buchanan, saying, 'We cannot give the perception of the President being subjected to Jewish pressure.'

Buchanan accused Wiesel of fabricating the story in an ABC interview in 1992:

I didn't say it and Elie Wiesel wasn't even in the meeting. [...] that meeting was held three weeks before the Bitburg summit was held. If I had said that, it would have been out of there within hours and on the news.

In a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in 1986, Buchanan said about the "Reagan Revolution,"

Whether President Reagan has charted a new course that will set our compass for decades—or whether history will see him as the conservative interruption in a process of inexorable national decline—is yet to be determined.

A year later, he remarked "the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan." While her brother was working for Reagan, Bay Buchanan started a "Buchanan for President" movement in June 1986. She said the conservative movement needed a leader, but Buchanan was initially ambivalent. After leaving the White House, he returned to his column and Crossfire. Out of respect for Jack Kemp he sat out the 1988 race, although Kemp later became his adversary.

Political career

1992 presidential primaries

In 1990, Buchanan published a newsletter called Patrick J. Buchanan: From the Right; it sent subscribers a bumper sticker reading: "Read Our Lips! No new taxes."

In 1992, Buchanan explained his reasons for challenging the incumbent, President George H. W. Bush:

If the country wants to go in a liberal direction, if the country wants to go in the direction of [Democrats] George Mitchell and Tom Foley, it doesn't bother me as long as I've made the best case I can. What I can't stand are the back-room deals. They're all in on it, the insider game, the establishment game—this is what we're running against.

He ran on a platform of economic nationalism, immigration reduction, and social conservatism, including opposition to multiculturalism, abortion, and gay rights. Buchanan seriously challenged Bush (whose popularity was waning) when he won 38 percent of the seminal New Hampshire primary. In the primary elections, Buchanan garnered three million total votes.

Buchanan later threw his support behind Bush, and delivered a keynote address at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which became known as the culture war speech, in which he described "a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America." In the speech, he said of Bill and Hillary Clinton:

The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on America—abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units—that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call God's country.

The enthusiastic applause he received prompted his detractors to claim that the speech alienated moderates from the Bush/Quayle ticket.

Off the campaign trail

Buchanan returned to his column and Crossfire. To promote the principles of federalism, traditional values, and anti-intervention, he founded The American Cause, a conservative educational foundation in 1993. Bay Buchanan serves as the Vienna, Virginia-based foundation's president and Pat is its chairman.

Buchanan returned to radio as host of Buchanan and Company, a three-hour talk show for Mutual Broadcasting System on July 5, 1993. It pitted him against liberal co-hosts, including Barry Lynn, Bob Beckel, and Chris Matthews, in a time slot opposite Rush Limbaugh's show. To launch his 1996 campaign, Buchanan left the program on March 20, 1995.

1996 presidential primaries

Buchanan won primaries or caucuses in four states: New Hampshire, Missouri, Louisiana and Alaska

1996 saw Buchanan's most impressive attempt to win the Republican nomination. With a Democratic President (Bill Clinton) seeking re-election, there was no incumbent Republican with a lock on the ticket. Indeed, with defeated President George H. W. Bush having made clear he was not interested in re-gaining the office, the closest the party had to a front-runner was the Senate Majority leader Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas, who was considered to have many weaknesses. Buchanan sought the Republican nomination from Dole's right, voicing his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Other candidates for the nomination included Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander and the multi-millionaire publisher Steve Forbes.

In February, the Center for Public Integrity issued a report claiming Buchanan's presidential campaign co-chairman, Larry Pratt, appeared at two meetings organized by white supremacist and militia leaders. Pratt denied any tie to racism, calling the report an orchestrated smear before the New Hampshire primary. Buchanan told the Manchester Union Leader he believed Pratt. Pratt took a leave of absence "to answer these charges," "so as not to have distraction in the campaign."

Buchanan defeated Senator Bob Dole by about 3,000 votes to win the February New Hampshire primary, getting his campaign off to an energetic start. He went on to win three more states (Alaska, Missouri and Louisiana), and finished only slightly behind Dole in the Iowa caucus. His insurgent campaign used his soaring rhetoric to mobilize grass-roots right wing opinion against what he saw as the bland Washington establishment (personified by Dole) which he believed had controlled the party for years. At a rally later in Nashua, he said:

We shocked them in Alaska. Stunned them in Louisiana. Stunned them in Iowa. They are in a terminal panic. They hear the shouts of the peasants from over the hill. All the knights and barons will be riding into the castle pulling up the drawbridge in a minute. All the peasants are coming with pitchforks. We're going to take this over the top.

While campaigning, Buchanan used a slogan with his supporters, "The peasants are coming with pitchforks", occasionally appearing with a prop pitchfork, thus earning him the nickname "Pitchfork Pat."

In the Super Tuesday primaries, however, Dole defeated Buchanan by large margins. Having collected only twenty one percent of the total votes in Republican primaries, Buchanan suspended his campaign in March. He declared however that If Dole were to choose a pro-choice running mate, he would run as the U.S. Taxpayers Party (now Constitution Party) candidate. In the event, Dole chose Jack Kemp and he received Buchanan's endorsement. After the 1996 campaign, Buchanan returned to his column and Crossfire. He also began a series of books with 1998's The Great Betrayal.

2000 presidential campaign

Buchanan announced his departure from the Republican Party in October 1999, disparaging them (along with the Democrats) as a "beltway party." He sought the nomination of the Reform Party. Buchanan's strong rhetoric and supposed involvement with "dirty tricks" in the Nixon administration made many party members uncomfortable. Many reformers backed Iowa physicist John Hagelin, whose platform was based on transcendental meditation. Party founder Ross Perot did not endorse a candidate, but his former running-mate Pat Choate endorsed Buchanan.

Supporters of Hagelin charged the results of the party's open primary, which favored Buchanan by a wide margin, were "tainted." The Reform Party divisions led to dual conventions being held simultaneously in separate areas of the Long Beach Convention Center complex. Both conventions' delegates ignored the primary ballots and voted to nominate their presidential candidates from the floor, similar to the Democratic and Republican conventions. One convention nominated Buchanan while the other backed Hagelin, with each camp claiming to be the legitimate Reform Party.

Ultimately, when the Federal Elections Commission ruled Buchanan was to receive ballot status as the Reform candidate, as well as about $12.6 million in federal campaign funds secured by Perot's showing in the 1996 election, Buchanan won the nomination. In his acceptance speech, Buchanan proposed U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and expelling the U.N. from New York, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, taxes on inheritance and capital gains, and affirmative action programs.

As his running mate, Buchanan chose African-American activist and retired teacher from Los Angeles, Ezola B. Foster. Buchanan was supported in this election run by future Socialist Party USA presidential candidate Brian Moore, who said in 2008 he supported Buchanan in 2000 because "he was for fair trade over free trade. He had some progressive positions that I thought would be helpful to the common man." On August 19, the New York Right to Life Party, in convention, chose Buchanan as their nominee, with 90% of the districts voting for him .

In the 2000 presidential election, Buchanan finished fourth with 449,895 votes, 0.4% of the popular vote. (Hagelin garnered 0.1 percent as the Natural Law candidate.) In Palm Beach County, Florida, Buchanan received 3,407 votes—which some saw as inconsistent with Palm Beach County's liberal leanings, its large Jewish population and his showing in the rest of the state. As a result of the county's now-infamous "butterfly ballot," he is suspected to have gained thousands of inadvertent votes. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, "Palm Beach county is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3,407 votes there." However, Reform Party officials strongly disagreed, estimating the number of supporters in the county at between 400 and 500. Appearing on The Today Show, Buchanan said:

When I took one look at that ballot on Election Night. . . it's very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore.

Some observers said his campaign was aimed to spread his message beyond his white base, while his views had not changed.

Following the 2000 election, Reformers urged Buchanan to take an active role within the party. Buchanan declined, though he did attend their 2001 convention. In the next few years, he identified himself as a political independent, choosing not to align himself with what he viewed as the neo-conservative Republican party leadership. Prior to the 2004 election, Buchanan announced he once again identified himself as a Republican, declared that he had no interest in ever running for president again, and reluctantly endorsed Bush's 2004 re-election, writing:

Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and values. Kerry is right on nothing.

Return to private life

MSNBC Commentator

Buchanan being interviewed in 2008

Although CNN decided not to take him back, Buchanan's column resumed. A longer variation of the Crossfire format was aired by MSNBC as Buchanan and Press on July 15, 2002, reuniting Buchanan and Press. Billed as "the smartest hour on television", Buchanan and Press featured the duo interviewing guests and sparring about the top news stories. As the Iraq War loomed, Buchanan and Press toned down their rivalry, as they both opposed the invasion. Press claims they were the first cable hosts to discuss the planned attack. MSNBC Editor-in-Chief Jerry Nachman once jokingly lamented this unusual situation, saying:

So the point is why does only Fox [News Channel] get this? At least, we work at the perfect place, the place that's fiercely independent. We try to have balance by putting you two guys together and then this Stockholm syndrome love fest set in between the two of you, and we no longer even have robust debate.

Just hours after his talk show debuted, Buchanan was a guest on the premiere of MSNBC's ill-fated Donahue program. Host Phil Donahue and Buchanan debated the separation of church and state. Buchanan called Donahue "dictatorial" and teased that the host got his job through affirmative action.

After MSNBC President Eric Sorenson canceled Buchanan and Press on November 26, 2003, Buchanan stayed at MSNBC as a political analyst. He regularly appears on the network's talk shows. He occasionally filled in on the nightly show Scarborough Country during its run on MSNBC. Buchanan is now a frequent guest and co-host of Morning Joe as well as Hardball, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and The Rachel Maddow Show.

The American Conservative Magazine

In 2002, to start a new magazine featuring conservative viewpoints on the economy, immigration and foreign policy, Buchanan joined with former New York Post editorial page editor Scott McConnell and financier Taki Theodoracopulos. The American Conservative's first issue was dated October 7, 2002. Paid circulation in April, 2004, was 12,600. Buchanan is currently listed as Editor Emeritus on the masthead.

Political positions

Republican politics today

In contrast to neoconservatives or the old Rockefeller Republicans, Buchanan calls himself a traditional conservative.

Some of Buchanan's contemporary positions reflect the influence of the magazine Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Many of his views, particularly his opposition to American imperialism and the managerial state, echo those of the Old Right Republicans of the first half of the 20th century. For example, Buchanan decries US entry into the Spanish-American War and every war since, and supports abolishing many government agencies, such as the Department of Education and the Bureau of Land Management. Buchanan said in 2005:

We do not consider 'Big Government conservatism' a philosophy, we consider it a heresy.

Following his return to the Republican Party, he maintains the Republican party has largely abandoned traditional anti-war, anti-imperialist conservative principles for neoconservatism. On MSNBC before the 2006 State of the Union Address, he characterized President Bush as a "Great Society" Republican.

He is Woodrow Wilson in foreign policy, FDR in trade policy, he's LBJ on immigration, but he's Reagan on judges.

He says both parties are now barely distinguishable. He told a public radio interviewer that:

The Republican Party in Washington D.C. today are the sort of people we went into politics to run out of town.

Foreign Policy

Buchanan strongly opposes military interventionism. "Interventionism is the incubator of terrorism," he said in 2001. He approvingly quotes George Washington and Thomas Jefferson regarding the dangers of "entangling alliances" and foreign military adventures. Buchanan opposes military intervention and free trade - e.g. he supports trade barriers that are (in his view) in the national interest, as well as strong restrictions on immigration.

Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
—Pat Buchanan–A Republic, Not an Empire

Catholicism

Buchanan is a member of the traditionalist movement within Roman Catholicism, attending the Tridentine Mass in the Latin language at Saint Mary, Mother of God Church in Washington, D.C. on Sundays and holy days. In a 1993 speech against multiculturalism, he declared:

Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free.

He says for rejecting Christian dogma and theology, the Western World is approaching a grim future. and says if politicians do not "defend the moral order rooted in the Old and New Testament and Natural Law," society faces "a permanent downhill run"—and that this matters more than "economic or political" problems. Buchanan charges the New York Times with Anti-Catholic bias. He has referred to John Kerry and other Catholics who claim views on abortion and homosexual unions which dissent from official Catholic Doctrine, as scandalous heretics. On the direction of the Catholic Church since Vatican II, he has stated:

The Church is in crisis today not because it failed to adjust its teaching and practices to the sexual revolution, but because it tried both to be true to its teachings and to keep in step with an immoral age, which is an impossibility. The way for the Church to restore its lost moral authority is to retrace its steps."

Buchanan praised Pope John Paul II's views on abortion, homosexuality, and extramarital sex, calling him "the most politically incorrect man on Earth." Buchanan says post-Vatican II liberalism is hurting Mass attendance and reducing the numbers of priests and nuns. He later praised the pope's successor, Benedict XVI, as uncompromising on Catholic doctrines, including divorce, contraception and women's ordination. On the other hand, he said Pope John Paul II was wrong on the death penalty, saying:

It is the Holy Father and the bishops who are outside the Catholic mainstream, and at odds with Scripture, tradition and natural law.

Buchanan said of Mel Gibson's film Passion of the Christ:

Because of the over-the-top attacks on Gibson, millions who see 'The Passion' will also come to see the slur of 'anti-Semite!' for what it has all too often become, an attempt to smear, silence, intimidate, ostracize and blacklist.

Responding to charges Pope Pius XII remained silent during the Holocaust, Buchanan called the claim, "a blood libel that is Hitlerite in dimension." He notes the Nazis despised the Pontiff, while the victims of Nazism (and the 1940s New York Times) praised him. He says Pius XII reigned during "a time of explosive growth in the Church" and supports proposals to have him declared a saint.

Social conservatism

Culture war

Pat Buchanan says that America is divided by a culture war. He calls it a conflict over the power to define society's definition of right and wrong. Fronts include environmentalism, feminism, abortion, gay rights, freedom of religion, women in combat, display of the Confederate Flag, recognition of Christmas and taxpayer-funded art. He also said that the controversy given this idea of culture wars was itself evidence of polarization.

When Buchanan ran for president in 1996, he promised to fight for the conservative side of the culture war, saying:

I will use the bully pulpit of the Presidency of the United States, to the full extent of my power and ability, to defend American traditions and the values of faith, family, and country, from any and all directions. And, together, we will chase the purveyors of sex and violence back beneath the rocks whence they came.

In a 2004 column, he wrote:

Who is in your face here? Who started this? Who is on the offensive? Who is pushing the envelope? The answer is obvious. A radical Left aided by a cultural elite that detests Christianity and finds Christian moral tenets reactionary and repressive is hell-bent on pushing its amoral values and imposing its ideology on our nation. The unwisdom of what the Hollywood and the Left are about should be transparent to all.

Buchanan says pornography is a symptom of society's displacement of Christianity. He argues capitalism's power should not extend to such material. He referred to hardcore pornography as:

The sort of squalid, grungy stuff that, not long ago, would have had the men who produced and distributed it sent to prison for years, after being denounced from the bench as perverts.

Abortion and Euthanasia

Buchanan believes life begins at conception and says of abortion:

I don’t care about the circumstances of a child’s conception... You want to execute somebody in the case of rape, execute the rapist and let the unborn child live.

He has described Mifepristone as a 'human pesticide'. While certain there is no correlation between a lack of gun control and violence in society, he says this is very much so for the legal availability of abortions, comparing legalization to the downfall of Weimar Germany. As a result, he opposes Planned Parenthood, UNFPA and fetal-tissue research. Buchanan wants Congress to hold hearings on when life begins and confer "personhood" on the unborn. He believes modern technology can be used to prove life begins at conception and:

To reach hearts, we must first teach. Some hearts that are closed and cold will open. We will reach them. It has worked before.

Buchanan believes the right to die does not exist, and compares Euthanasia to the culture of the pre-Christian Roman Empire, calling euthanasia a "crime against humanity." He claims in the Terri Schiavo case, that Florida murdered Schiavo by starving her to death. He argues such practices will physically destroy Western civilization. He predicted in 2002 that:

In coming decades, involuntary euthanasia will be commonplace in Europe, and Generation X battles to stay alive into old age will be treated with the same cold contempt as they treated the silent screams of the unborn. Millions will be put to sleep like aged and incontinent household pets. Since the 1960s, the radical young have pleaded for a world free of the strictures of the old Christian morality. They are close to getting what they have demanded... and my sense is that they will not like what they get.

Education and faith

Buchanan

In announcing his 1996 presidential campaign, he said:

Today, in too many of our schools our children are being robbed of their innocence. Their minds are being poisoned against their Judeo-Christian heritage, against America's heroes and against American history, against the values of faith and family and country. Eternal truths that do not change from the Old and New Testament have been expelled from our public schools, and our children are being indoctrinated in moral relativism, and the propaganda of an anti-Western ideology.

Buchanan deplores that Christianity and the Ten Commandments were "expelled" from public education. To allow state-sanctioned prayer in public schools, he supports passing a constitutional amendment. In a 1999 interview, he said:

Ever since the judges have gotten heavily into education, and the National Education Association has gotten into control of that Department of Education, test scores go down, there’s violence in classroom, things are going wrong.

In Right from the Beginning, he said:

A National Day of Prayer, conducted inside the classrooms of America's public schools, by Christian teachers, in open defiance of Supreme Court edicts, would send a message of political strengths the Secular City could not ignore.

Buchanan writes about evolution:

'Darwinism' contains dogmas men may believe, but cannot stand the burden of proof, the acid of attack or the demands of science.

He endorses the concept of intelligent design, and argues the laws of science "imply the existence of a lawmaker."

Homosexuality and AIDS

Referring to AIDS in 1983, Buchanan wrote in his syndicated column gays have "declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution." In later years he urged New York City Mayor Ed Koch and New York State Gov. Mario Cuomo to cancel the Gay Pride Parade or else "be held personally responsible for the spread of the AIDS plague." In a 1990 interview, he stated he was, "the first national columnist to demand why the government wasn’t dealing with this national epidemic," and stood by his view that AIDS is a consequence of immoral sex. In 1993, Buchanan called homosexuality unhealthy and said most people will describe sex between two men as, "not only immoral, but filthy." Further, Buchanan said public acceptance of homosexuality inevitably leads to societal decay and the collapse of the family. In his autobiography, he wrote:

Someone's values are going to prevail. Why not ours? Whose country is it, anyway? Whose moral code says we may interfere with a man's right to be a practicing bigot, but must respect and protect his right to be a practicing sodomite?

However, Buchanan does not reject gays as political supporters. Notably, due to their common Old Right anti-war views, he developed professional ties with gay paleolibertarian Justin Raimondo.

Feminism

In a 1983 syndicated column, Buchanan wrote that women are:

Simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism.

In Right from the Beginning, Buchanan wrote:

The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers; they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer.

He went on to explain these conveniences allowed "Mom" to spend more time reading, teaching or getting involved in the community. He vocally opposed the policy of allowing women to serve in military combat. In Death of the West, he wrote that early campaigners for women's rights such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton held social views distinctly different from those of second-wave feminists of the 1960s. He has expressed his belief that the latter hold much of the responsibility for imperiling Western civilization. During a heated 2008 debate with fellow MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews over the media's coverage of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Matthews claimed Buchanan's views on women and feminism had unconvincingly changed ever since the 2008 Democratic primaries, when Buchanan defended longtime foe Hillary Rodham Clinton from what he considered unfair and treatment by the media. Matthews said:

When did you become Dr. Phil [Donahue]? ... Now you've become the foster father of all women politicians.

Buchanan retorted:

What's your problem with strong women, buddy?

He noted that Matthews once had to publicly apologize for what was widely perceived as a sexist comment about Hillary Clinton. Buchanan added that "The 'M-S' in 'MSNBC' should not stand for 'misogyny'." He delighted in the fact that Palin was a feminist, and expressed admiration for the organization Feminists for Life.

Guns and Crime

Buchanan believes that gun ownership and violence are not linked, saying the gun owner bears responsibility of keeping weapons away from children. In his 2000 presidential campaign he said:

The Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to own, possess, and use personal firearms, and as President I will ensure that this right is not compromised. People convicted of violent crime should forfeit their right to own firearms, but sportsmen, hunters, & law-abiding Americans should be allowed to use guns for pleasure or personal or family safety. Private ownership of guns gives citizens of this free republic the means to protect life, liberty and property–and I will fully & faithfully protect that right.

Buchanan endorsed armed resistance to urban unrest, saying:

There is one root cause that is common to all riots: rioters. When such people–as they did early in May–attack a bus carrying terrified commuters, they do not need to hear a lot of bullhocky about 'communicating' and 'dialogue.' They need to hear through a local bullhorn the three little words that say it all: 'Lock and load!'

Buchanan supports the war on drugs and, opposing marijuana legalization, he has said marijuana use is not a victimless crime. On the other hand, he has also declared that marijuana use for medicinal purposes should be a matter between patient and doctor. Buchanan told the Charlotte Observer:

If a doctor indicated to his patient that this was the only way to alleviate certain painful symptoms, I would defer to the doctor's judgment.

He has denied using illegal drugs. He once answered a New York Daily News reporter's question, "No to cocaine. No to marijuana. And a question mark over Jack Daniel's."

National identity and immigration reform

Buchanan is a syndicated columnist on VDARE, a website advocating immigration reduction.

Assimilation and National Security

In 1992, he said:

If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?

He says an open Mexican border invites the drug trade, which he does not consider a victimless crime and supports maintaining the federal ban on marijuana. In Where the Right Went Wrong he claimed:

The Communist Chinese government has the secret loyalty of millions of 'overseas Chinese' from Singapore to San Francisco.

He also opposes Muslim immigration to the United States and Europe because of the security risk and porous borders that making America vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

Buchanan has vocally criticized large-scale immigration, both legal and illegal, especially coming across the Mexican border. He supports increased border security and opposed President Bush's guest worker program (which he labeled amnesty) for illegal immigrants.

He states many left-wing Mexican-Americans have a revanchist view on territories lost to the United States in the Mexican-American War. He declares their high birthrates threaten the social cohesion of certain parts of the country. In State of Emergency, he warned that the American Southwest could "become a giant Kosovo," still part of the United States, but Mexican in "language, ethnicity, history and culture."

Race

In a 2002 speech, he said:

In the next 50 years, the Third World will grow by the equivalent of 30 to 40 new Mexicos. If you go to the end of the century, the white and European population is down to about three percent. This is what I call the death of the West. I see the nations dying when the populations die. I see the civilization dying. It is under attack in our own countries, from our own people.

Buchanan's book The Death of the West deplores the decline in non-Hispanic whites and argues no nations have held together without an ethnic majority. Buchanan believes if immigration and birth rate trends continue, young Americans (in that case the Millennial Generation) will spend their golden years in a "third world America", which will reduce the nation to a conglomeration of peoples with nothing in common. He believes this can be credited to the 1965 Immigration Act and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. He notes past immigration was European, while 90 percent of new legal immigrants are Asian, African, and Latin American and they are not "melting and reforming." In State of Emergency, he writes:

Any man or any woman, of any color or creed, can be a good American. We know that from our history. But when it comes to the ability to assimilate into a nation like the United States, all nationalities, creeds, and cultures are not equal. To say that is ideology speaking, not judgment born out of experience.

During an interview promoting the book, Buchanan said he did not prefer only white immigrants, yet lamented changes in demographics of the United States.

I'd like the country I grew up in. It was a good country. I lived in Washington, D.C., – 400,000 black folks, 400,000 white folks, in a country 89 or 90 percent white. I like that country.

Asked if he believed the country should try to keep such ratio he replied:

No, no. What I believe is that people should not deliberately alter the character and composition of the country without consulting the American people. If you adopt two children, Alan, you're going to go in and you're going to decide who comes. Who should decide who comes and who doesn't? First, illegals should not come. Secondarily, the American people should be consulted about how many immigrants come, what are the criteria. – And we haven't been consulted.

Platform

In 'State of Emergency', Buchanan proposes the following immigration policy:

• 10-year moratorium on all legal immigration at a level between 150,000 and 250,000 per year
• A 2000-mile double-line security fence between the United States and Mexico
• A federally legislated end to all social welfare benefits for illegal aliens, except for emergency medical services
• A crackdown on major businesses that chronically hire illegal aliens and the elimination of deductibility for all wages paid to illegals
• A federal law to "restate the true meaning of the 14th Amendment" and denial of automatic citizenship to "anchor babies" born to illegal aliens
• A policy allowing immigrants to bring in only wives and non-adult children
• An end to dual citizenship in the United States
• A deportation program beginning with all aliens convicted of felonies and every gang member who is not a citizen of the United States

Racial issues

Buchanan says he supports "equal justice under law," and opposes "reverse discrimination" against whites. Buchanan sees affirmative action as discrimination and is a critic of the NAACP and others he sees as distancing blacks from "the American mainstream." He often accuses Republicans of pandering to such organizations out of their fear of being called racist. Buchanan feels that preferring to associate with one's race is acceptable, as long as it is done respectfully and does not divide America. However, he feels racial politics is dividing America.

Buchanan writes in State of Emergency:

Race matters. Ethnicity matters. History matters. Faith matters. Nationality matters. While they are not everything, they are not nothing. Multiculturalism be damned, this is what history teaches us.

He attacked Bill Clinton for pandering for, and then benefiting from receiving a majority of the African-American vote in the 1992 General Election. Then, once having emerged victorious, relegating the black members of his own Clinton Administration largely to positions of political irrelevence:

Section Eight housing–secondary cabinet positions which have no influence in the inner core of an administration.

Civil rights, crime, and immigration

Buchanan says while he did not oppose all aims of the Civil Rights Movement, he deplored what he saw as its increasingly left-wing orientation. Buchanan expresses preference for the social and cultural views of most of Black America prior to the baby boom generation. In his 2001 book Death of the West Buchanan shows a more positive opinion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but assails African-Americans who do not consider themselves part of American culture.

In his 2006 book State of Emergency, Buchanan writes having the federal government repeal the Jim Crow laws were the right decisions, but racial quotas and busing are/were not. He maintains Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy was a good idea, and dedicates an entire chapter called "The Suicide of the G.O.P." to his view the Republican Party's new strategy of courting minority votes at the expense of its traditional base will spell doom.

State of Emergency also details his take on the importance of race, statistics dealing with race, crime and education, and America's history concerning race. In the book, Buchanan praises the anti-immigration positions of black leaders like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, his favorite black American leader, and W. E. B. Du Bois. He has especially praised Washington's pleas with industrialists to hire Blacks instead of immigrants. He attacks modern day African-American leaders (along with today's union and business leaders) for not taking the same position. The book's view of the African-American community in general is critical in some instances and supportive in others, often taking the contemporary black community to task for the country's high crime rates but also portraying blacks as victims of illegal immigration and at times taking a sympathetic historical view of black Americans.

America did not listen [to Booker T. Washington's concerns]. Millions of jobs in burgeoning industries went to immigrants who poured into the United States between 1890 and 1920. These men and women enriched our country. But they also moved ahead of and shouldered aside black men and women whose families had been here for generations and even centuries. Not until immigration had been dramatically cut in the Coolidge era, and World War II created an all-consuming demand for industrial workers, were black Americans brought by the hundreds of thousands north to the manufacturing cities of America. And when they were, a Black middle class was created upon which the civil rights movement was built. When immigration stopped, Black America advanced, as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and A. Philip Randolph said it would.[p.231]

American Civil War

Buchanan has openly ridiculed those who oppose the display of Confederate flags in State capitals. He has written the American Civil War was about States' Rights, self-determination, and "the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance", as well as irreconcilable cultural differences between the North and the South at the time. In The Death of the West, Buchanan cites this as an example of how culture is more important than political ideologies, because:

The South was 'attached to the same principles of government' as the North. But that did not prevent Southerners from fighting four years of bloody war to be free of their Northern brethren.

However, like other Southern conservatives of past generations, he has also expressed admiration for President Abraham Lincoln, calling him "the great protectionist of the Republican Party."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Buchanan once heard King speak at a Baptist church in north St. Louis in 1962. He claims King accused the 1964 Goldwater presidential campaign of, "dangerous signs of Hitlerism." He opposed making King's birthday a national holiday. Buchanan urged Nixon not to visit King's widow Coretta Scott King in 1969, because:

It would outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue, and perhaps worse. ... It does not seem to be in the interests of national unity for the president to lend his national prestige to the argument that this divisive figure is a modern saint.

In a 2000 public radio interview, Buchanan said King was a divisive figure.

[I said that in] a memo in 1969 whether we should recognize the day or go down and see Mrs. King, and I suggested we not see Mrs. King. I said, 'Martin Luther King was one of the most divisive men. Some see him as the messiah of the nation, others think he’s a dreadful person. He is a divisive figure.' Look, I knew Martin Luther King. I am the only candidate who was at the march on Washington. I was in the Lincoln Memorial. I was in Mississippi covering the civil rights demonstrations... Like every great movement, the civil rights movement had things that were attractive and things that were not. And for my history, friends, we make no apologies.

Death of the West displays a more positive view of King and State of Emergency quotes him with approval.

The Political Cesspool

The Anti-Defamation League noted that Buchanan has made several appearances on The Political Cesspool, a white nationalist radio talk show. In his June 2008 appearance on the show, he said that he plans to write a book that will describe the possibility of a future race war.

Global affairs

Main article: Political views of Pat Buchanan on global affairs

Buchanan argues that the United States' ability to control its own affairs is under siege due to free trade ideology, globalism, globalization and other issues, discussed below. He once remarked, "we love the old republic, and when we hear phrases like 'new world order,' we release the safety catches on our revolvers."

Environmental protection

=Environmentalism, property rights and trade

Buchanan says while he wants endangered species to survive, regulations protecting habitats are unconstitutional takings from private landowners. During his 2000 presidential campaign, he explained:

We have a Biblically-based obligation to be good stewards of the land as 'keepers of the commons.' However, the modern environmental movement has been co-opted by globalists who use international treaties to regulate our industries, and violate property rights by converting private holdings into public 'habitats.' No one is more qualified to conserve land than the people who live on it. The government should not trample states' rights by turning local land into public property.

In The Great Betrayal, Buchanan argues that free trade contributes to environmental destruction. He blames multinational corporations, saying they do not have the same vested interest in respecting nature as "economic patriots." He also opposes the Kyoto Protocol.

In a debate with Tom DiLorenzo, Buchanan referred to Alexander Hamilton as "my hero," and attributed "the greatest economic expansion" in American history to Hamiltonian economics.

Animal welfare

PETA gave Buchanan the 2005 "Strongest Backbone" Proggy Award after his American Conservative magazine ran cover stories criticizing "factory farms and slaughterhouses." The group said Buchanan made a "gutsy decision" to cover animal rights topics. The articles were "Fear Factories" and "Dominion" by Matthew Scully, a former George W. Bush speechwriter.

Buchanan says that being a lifelong "cat fan" is what sparked his interest in the issue of animal cruelty. "I've always been disgusted by that," he remarked, "even though I'm not a vegetarian".

Accusations of Anti-semitism

Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust

Pat Buchanan says Adolf Hitler only sought to dominate Europe, while making "no physical threat to the US" after 1940. He observes that to push Japan into starting a war, Franklin Delano Roosevelt "froze all Japanese assets, cutting off trade, including oil." He refers to Roosevelt as "a base appeaser of Stalin" and that his administration was "shot through with Communist spies and traitors." "In World War II," he writes, "patriots argued the wisdom of FDR's 'Europe First' policy that left our men on Corregidor to the mercy of the butchers of Bataan". He says:

Responsibility for the lack of American preparedness at the time of Pearl Harbor rests wholly with FDR. He had been in power nine years and had controlled both Houses of Congress for all nine of those years. Blaming our lack of preparedness on the isolationists (or even on the Communists) is the shilling of court historians.

Buchanan called for ending prosecution of Nazi camp guards, saying it was "running down 70-year-old camp guards."

During the 2000 campaign, he elaborated on his interpretations of the roots of WWII:

It was Wilsonism, liberal interventionism, not 'isolationism,' that created the moral-political swamp in which fascism, Hitlerism, and Stalinism were spawned. Unable to deal with the truth - that their own heroes produced the disasters that may yet ring down the curtain on Western Civilization - the blind children of Wilson now scapegoat Pius XII and America First. Do those attacking me realize they are defending the policies that produced World War II and virtual annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe? While the West is busy erecting Holocaust museums, it has failed to study the history that produced it.

In A Republic, Not an Empire, he refers to Auschwitz and Katyn as places "where SS and NKVD killers roamed free and labored long into the night." In another column, Buchanan mentions the Holocaust as one of the horrors of World War II along with "the collapse of the British Empire, the Stalinization of 11 nations of Eastern Europe, 50 million dead and half a century of Cold War."

In his book State of Emergency, Buchanan blames Hitler and the Holocaust for contemporary "white guilt" and political correctness. He quotes several Jewish voices in support of the melting pot concept contrary to multiculturalism, and gives examples of anti-Jewish sentiment on the part of some Mexican immigrants.

In defending himself against charges of Nazi sympathies, Buchanan calls Hitler a "monster" guilty of "ugly actions and discriminatory laws". He says the Holocaust did not become a Final Solution until the Wannsee conference in 1942, after the Pearl Harbor attack ended the debate over U.S. involvement in World War II. Until then, the Holocaust was no more of a concern for U.S interventionist leaders than it was for the isolationists. Buchanan says America fought on the right side of the conflict—and after Hitler declared war on the United States, had no choice but to fight.

"Great courage" controversy

In a 1977 Globe-Democrat column discussing John Toland's biography of Adolf Hitler, Buchanan wrote:

Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him...Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.

Slate's Jacob Weisberg takes credit for finding this quote as one evidence of Buchanan's alleged bigotry. Buchanan supporters say the paragraph is easily taken out of context. They point out that in the same review Buchanan praised Winston Churchill for seeing that "Hitler was marching along the road toward a New Order where Western civilization would not survive" and concluded that modern-day statesmen were not following that example.

Charles Lindbergh

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, in an October 11, 1999, letter to the Washington Post claimed that A Republic, Not an Empire "defends Charles Lindbergh against charges of anti-Semitism, not mentioning the infamous 1940 [sic] speech in which he accused the Jews of warmongering." Buchanan denies this and points out Foxman's error, saying that he mentioned the 1941 speech to say it "ignited a national firestorm," which lingered after the aviator's death, and shows "the explosiveness of mixing ethnic politics and foreign policy". Buchanan also said in 2002:

There was nothing immoral, or unwise, about the isolationists’ position of 1940-41. Because of the courageous efforts of Lindbergh and America First, the United States stayed out of the war until Hitler threw the full force of his war machine against Stalin. Thus, the Soviet Union, not America’s young, bore the brunt of defeating Nazi Germany.

John Demjanjuk

Buchanan asserted that six men accused of Nazi-era war crimes were innocent, or had not received just legal treatment: John Demjanjuk, Karl Linnas, Arthur Rudolph, Frank Walus, Ivan Stebelsky, Tscherim Soobzokov. Ukrainian born Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland autoworker accused of operating the gas chambers at the Treblinka concentration camp, received the most attention. Buchanan called his trial a witch hunt and said "Demjanjuk had never even been at Treblinka." After a highly publicised trial, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death by an Israeli court, but his conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel on the grounds of mistaken identity. Buchanan wrote at the time that this spared Israel the disgrace of hanging an innocent man.

In a 1990 column defending Demjanjuk, Buchanan also claimed:

Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. In 1988, 97 kids, trapped 400 feet underground in a Washington, D.C., tunnel while two locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the car, emerged unharmed after 45 minutes. Demjanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill.

When asked for his source, Buchanan said, "somebody sent it to me." Critic Jamie McCarthy says this claim may have come from the German American Information and Education Association's newsletter, a publication he accused of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. He also argues that:

Unlike the locomotive engineer in Buchanan's example, who was concerned with saving the lives of trapped people, the Nazis had no qualms about opening the engine's throttle and restricting the air intake.

The Washington Post reported in 1989, before the controversy, that:

An Amtrak train had been stalled in a tunnel for half an hour, and smoke from the diesel engine had filled the first car, where there were 97 fifth-grade pupils and 27 adult chaperones. [EMT Cynthia] Brown boarded the train, guided the passengers -- most of whom suffered from smoke inhalation -- from the car and assisted those who needed immediate attention.

In an April 14, 2009, column, Buchanan likened the persecution of Demjanjuk to that of Jesus Christ on Calvary Hill stating:

It is the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago.

U.S.–Israel Policy

Although he regularly criticizes U.S. policy in the Middle East, Buchanan says he favors "a strong, independent state of Israel." He wrote in 1999:

As for my views on Israel, they have changed. With the Intifada, I came to believe that Israel's survival now mandated a homeland, a flag, and a nation of their own for the Palestinian people. A friend I made in Israel at the end of the Six Day War, Yitzhak Rabin, reached the same conclusion at the same time. For attempting to negotiate peace with Arafat, Rabin, too, was called an anti-Semite and Nazi, and was murdered in that climate of hatred.

In Buchanan's opinion:

The Israeli people are America’s friends and have a right to peace and secure borders. We should help them secure these rights.

He believes that the United States has a "moral commitment" to recognize Israel's right to defend itself:

But U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical. They often collide, and when they do, U.S. interests must prevail.

Buchanan argues that much American "meddling" in the Middle East is not to protect the U.S. national interest but largely done to support Israel. Buchanan has referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory." In 1991 he wrote Congress has become "a Parliament of Whores incapable of standing up for U.S. national interests if AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is on the other end of the line." He accuses Israel of spying on the U.S. in many instances other than the well-publicized case of Jonathan Pollard, about whom he wrote:

Israel suborned Jonathan Pollard to loot our secrets and refuses to return the documents, which would establish whether or not they were sold to Moscow. When Clinton tried to broker an agreement at Wye Plantation between Israel and Arafat, Bibi Netanyahu attempted to extort, as his price for signing, release of Pollard, so he could take this treasonous snake back to Israel as a national hero.

In the 1990s, he endorsed the "land for peace" policy in the Middle East. He also strongly praised Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, calling him "the statesman who brought peace after a half century of fighting for Israel's place in the sun".

The first widespread accusations of anti-Semitism against Buchanan concerned the September 15, 1990, McLaughlin Group program. On it, Buchanan said that:

There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East—the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States. The Israelis want this war desperately because they want the United States to destroy the Iraqi war machine. They want us to finish them off. They don't care about our relations with the Arab world.

This sparked New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal to complain of "venom" and a "blood libel" against Jews, saying "that to be silent about anti-Semitism would be a sin with which I could not live." ("Amen corner" is a slang term used by some American Protestants to describe a group of people who sit in near one another in church and shout "Amen!" whenever the preacher makes a point.)

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said before the 1990 invasion of Iraq, Buchanan made "an appeal to anti-Semitic bigotry" and "accused Israel's American supporters of goading the United States into the Persian Gulf War" by writing in one column:

'The civilized world must win this fight,' the editors thunder. But, if it comes to war, it will not be the 'civilized world' humping up that bloody road to Baghdad; it will be American kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown.

Buchanan doesn't see anything anti-Semitic about this statement, and he responded:

If it is the lack of Jewish names among those soldiers, why is my list not also anti-Italian, anti-Greek, and anti-Polish?

A Palestinian State

Buchanan supports an independent Palestinian state, but criticized the leadership of the former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (who died in 2004). He compared the 2002 Battle of Jenin to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and describes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the battle of intractable foes. He says a Palestinian state is the only hope for peace—and would give the Palestinians "a huge stake" in "preventing acts of terror against Israel – i.e., national survival". He also said that "Israeli repression" made the Palestinians radical—and describes U.S. policy as "waging war on innocents to break their political leaders" and fueling anti-American hatreds.

Anti-War

Since the end of the Cold War, Buchanan has consistently been opposed to U.S. intervention and has advocated a conservative, anti-interventionist foreign policy.

Iraq

From the earliest days, consistent with his opposition to the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991, Buchanan is an outspoken critic of the 2003 Iraq War. He argues it is largely fought to defend Israeli and American oil interests and is a useless war based on deception and imperialism.

Lebanon

During Israel's conflict with Lebanon in July 2006, he accused President Bush of "subcontracting U.S. policy out to Tel Aviv, thus making Israel the custodian of our reputation and interests in the Middle East." Further, he said when Bush was asked if he would urge Israel to restrain airstrikes, he "sounded less like the leader of the Free World than some bellicose city councilman from Brooklyn Heights." He concluded there is no proof to substantiate Bush's claim Syria was behind Hezbollah's capture of the Israeli soldiers, and added those "whispering in his ear" are:

The same people who told him Iraq was maybe months away from an atom bomb, that an invasion would be a 'cakewalk,' that he would be Churchill, that U.S. troops would be greeted with candy and flowers, that democracy would break out across the region, that Palestinians and Israelis would then sit down and make peace? How much must America pay for the education of this man?

Terrorism and 9/11

Buchanan argues Islamic terror groups target America, "for what we do, not who we are." He is critical of the aggressive post September 11 War on Terrorism which he claims: ignores the root causes of terror in favor of short-term military victories. He advocated the use of torture to get information from terrorists.

Neoconservatism

Buchanan vocally opposes those neoconservatives whom he calls "undocumented aliens from the Left, carrying with them the viruses of statism and globalism". He describes their first generation as people who began as "Trotskyist, socialists or Social Democrat", then became "JFK-LBJ Democrats", but broke with the Left during the Vietnam War and "came into their own" during Reagan's administration. He said he welcomed the Neocons during the early 1970s, but that it has become an inquisition, "hurling anathemas at any who decline to embrace their revised dogmas." Buchanan compares "Neocons" to squatters who take over a once-beloved home (the Republican Party) and convert it into a crack house.

Buchanan also denies the neoconservative maxim that the United States is "the first universal nation," one that embodies rational, democratic principles about freedom, equality and virtue that are applicable everywhere. About sharing a common heritage, culture and language, he says:

Every true nation is the creation of a unique people. Americans are a people apart from all others, with far more in common than political beliefs.

He also says that America's modern-day sexual immorality and "imperial decadence" are not worth emulating: In his opinion:

A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's 'emancipation,' that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional—better yet, an exorcist—rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of 'American values.'

In March 2003, Buchanan wrote an American Conservative cover story arguing that neoconservatives want "to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interest." He claimed that Lawrence Kaplan, David Brooks, Max Boot, Robert Kagan and others used anti-Semitism charges to intimidate Iraq War critics. Buchanan wrote that the American national interest is at stake and "warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon." He argued that a group of "polemicists and public officials" was "colluding with Israel" to start wars, wreck the Oslo Accords, damage U.S. relations with Arab states, alienate Western and Islamic allies, and threaten the peace won by winning the Cold War.

See also: Neoconservatism

In popular culture

• Hunter S. Thompson considered Buchanan a friend. Buchanan was among dozens who offered a statement in Rolling Stone after the journalist's suicide in 2005. About Buchanan, Thompson once wrote, "We disagree so violently on almost everything that it's a real pleasure to drink with him."
• The 1992 Bush re-election campaign ran a TV ad in Michigan that mocked Buchanan's economic nationalism. In it, a voiceover read, "Pat Buchanan tells us 'America First.' But while our auto industry suffers, Pat Buchanan chose to buy a foreign car, a Mercedes-Benz. Pat Buchanan called his American cars 'lemons.'" At the time Buchanan said he bought it in 1989 "for the missus" and that unloading it would be an empty gesture. He later sold the car back to its previous owner. In 2002, he said he drove a Lincoln Navigator and a Cadillac STS.
• Garry Wills mentioned Buchanan in his 1968 book Nixon Agonistes. "As usual he has a black overcoat on," he wrote. "with the collar wrapped up around his lumpy raw face -- a 40-year-old torpedo, hands on the iron in his pockets? No, he is 29, a writer, one of Nixon's fresh batch of intellectuals." Buchanan memorized the description.
• Buchanan was portrayed by actor James M. Connor in the 2009 film Watchmen taking part in a fictionalized news debate.
• During the campaign for the 2000 Presidential elections, the comic strip Doonesbury included a story line where Buchanan is implied to be a neo-Nazi, using dirty tricks to keep the Doonesbury character Uncle Duke from becoming a competitor for the Reform Party of the United States of America nomination.
• Buchanan is distantly related to shock rock singer Marilyn Manson.
• Underground Post-Punk band Le Rug has a song called Pat Buchanan which opens with the line "I wanna be Pat Buchanan." and later has a hook with the line "Deregulate, Deregulate the market, put those profit margins right on target."

Electoral history

Main article: Electoral history of Pat Buchanan

Books and articles

Books

• Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World (May 27, 2008) ISBN 0-307-40515-X
• Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart (November 27, 2007) ISBN 0-312-37696-0
• State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (August 22, 2006) ISBN 0-312-36003-7
• Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency (2004) ISBN 0-312-34115-6
• The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (2002) ISBN 0-312-28548-5
• A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny (1999) ISBN 0-89526-272-X
• The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy (1998) ISBN 0-316-11518-5
• Right from the Beginning (1988) ISBN 0-316-11408-1
• Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories: Why the Right Has Failed (1975) ISBN 0-8129-0582-2
• The New Majority: President Nixon at Mid-Passage (1973)

Major speeches

• 1992 Republican National Convention keynote, August 17, 1992
• 1996 campaign announcement, March 20, 1995
• 1996 campaign speech, Georgia primary stump speech February 29, 1996
• 2000 campaign announcement, March 2, 1999
• 2000 Reform Party nomination acceptance, August 12, 2000
• The Cultural War for the Soul of America, September 14, 1992
• Death of The West, Commonwealth Club speech January 14, 2002
• Free Trade, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations speech November 18, 1998
• A Time for Truth about China, Commonwealth Club speech April 5, 1999
• To Reunite a Nation, Richard Nixon Library speech on immigration January 18, 2000

Selected articles

• Blowback From Bear Baiting, column August 15, 2008
• PJB: A Brief For Whitey, column March 21, 2008
• The Dark side of Diversity column May 1, 2007
• The Aggressors in the Culture Wars, column March 8, 2004.
• The Death of Manufacturing, American Conservative August 11, 2003.
• The Death of the West, book excerpt on MSNBC.com, Oct 30, 2003.
• Ghostbusting the Smoot-Hawley Ogre, column October 20, 1993
• 'Ivan The Terrible' - More Doubts, column March 17, 1990
• A Lesson in Tyranny Too Soon Forgotten, column August 25, 1977
• The Old Right and the Future of Conservatism, by Patrick J. Buchanan. Foreword to the second edition of Justin Raimondo's 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right
• The Sad Suicide of Admiral Nimitz, column January 18, 2002
• Response to Norman Podhoretz, letter to The Wall Street Journal November 5, 1999
• Time for Economic Nationalism, column June 12, 1995
• True Fascists of the New Europe, column April 30, 2002
• What Do We Offer the World?, column May 19, 2004
• Whose War?, American Conservative March 24, 2003
• Where are the Christians?, column July 18, 2006

The American Cause archives several years of Buchanan's newspaper columns. VDARE archives many articles written by Buchanan.

Interviews

• Ten Questions for Pat Buchanan by Jeff Chu, Time, Aug. 20, 2006
• Is This the Face of the Twenty-First Century?, by Bill Kauffman, The American Enterprise, July/August 1998.
• Pat Buchanan Defends Controversial Immigration Comments Fox News partial transcript, Hannity & Colmes," August 22, 2006
• Republicans: Whitman, Buchanan and Terror, "Open Source" public radio show. (audio)
• Pat Buchanan discusses his book State of Emergency on Book TV, August 24, 2006 (Video)

See also

• Antifeminism
• Constitution Party (United States)
• Culture war
• Ezola B. Foster
• Globe-Democrat
• Non-interventionism
• Old Right
• Populism
• Protectionism
• Reform Party of the United States of America

External links

Buchanan-affiliated

• Buchanan.org
• Buchanan blog
• Buchanan's twice-weekly column
• Pat Buchanan archive on LewRockwell.com
• Podcasts of Buchanan's recent articles
• Pat Buchanan Podcast Interview with Fred Flannigan from WKRS 1220AM WKRS.com
• Pat Buchanan Podcast Interview with The Right Perspective
• The American Conservative magazine
• The American Cause
• Pat Buchanan Features, from Creators Syndicate, distributor of Buchanan's columns.

News and analysis

• Right Wing Populist, by Eyal Press, The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1996.
• The Voice of Economic Nationalism, by Steven Stark The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1998.
• Buchanan claims Reform Party nomination, CNN.com August 12, 2000
• Buchanan 2000: What Went Wrong, enterstageright.com.
• Buchanan and Palm Beach county controversy, Salon.com.
• Buchanan attacked with salad dressing, video April 1, 2005
• Buchanan sees 'war' within conservatism, by Ralph Z. Hallow. Washington Times, May 17, 2005.
• Buchanan warns of flood of illegals, by Eric Pfeiffer. Washington Times, August 22, 2006
• Pat Buchanan and the Great Right Hope by Sidney Blumenthal, The Washington Post, January 8, 1987
• Pat Buchanan Book Hits Amazon No. 1 Spot, NewsMax, August 23, 2006.
• Pat Buchanan, Populist Republican, by Robert Novak, National Review August 14, 1995
• Reform Party Split Deepens, BBC News August 12, 2000
• Third Party presidential candidates in 2000, PBS.org

Also

• Ezola Foster: Pat Buchanan's Far Right Hand by Peter Carlson, The Washington Post September 13, 2000
• Reagan Joins Kohl in Brief Memorial at Bitburg Graves by Bernard Weinraub, The New York Times May 6, 1985

Campaign materials

• Articles, Essays and Speeches, from 1991 to 2000
• Buchananism or Barbarism, by Justin Raimondo, Reform Party Nominating Convention speech August 12, 2000
• On the Issues from Buchanan's 2000 campaign.
• Press Releases from Buchanan's 2000 campaign.
• Reclaiming America’s Destiny, Pat Buchanan for President 2000 Campaign Brochure
• Setting the Record Straight on Anti-Semitism, Buchanan campaign press release March 1, 1996

Supporting views

• Buchanan Is Right On Trade Sanctions, by Bruce Bartlett, column January 3, 2000
• Learning to Love Pat Buchanan by Knute Berger, Seattle Weekly, October 13, 2004.
• The Anti-Buchanan Hysteria, by Burton S. Blumert, LewRockwell.com, November 1, 1999.
• Buchanan is Right about the Right, by Darrell Dow.
• Pat Buchanan, antiwar candidate by Lenora Fulani, WorldNetDaily, December 28, 1999.
• My Guy: Paul Gottfried on Patrick Buchanan, Policy Review, Summer 1995.
• Buchanan: The Epilogue, by Scott McConnell, VDARE, November 26, 2000.
• Portrait of an American Nationalist, by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, August 16, 1999.
• Pat Buchanan and The Menace, Murray Rothbard, 1990 libertarian defense of Buchanan.
• Is Patrick Buchanan an anti-Semite?, by George Szamuely, New York Press, November 4, 1999.
• Lies, Myths, and Vicious Slander, Archived "Students for Buchanan" Illinois site from 2000; contains collection of links
• Pat Buchanan profile by Derek Wallace, virtuemag.org.

Opposing views

• Know Your Right-Wing Speakers: Pat Buchanan, CampusProgress.org
• Pat Buchanan's Skeleton Closet, RealChange.org.
• Overview and critique of Buchanan's diesel engine assertion
• Pat Buchanan on Jews and Israel, Anti-Defamation League, September, 1999.
• Pat Buchanan in His Own Words, FAIR press release February 26, 1996
• Buchanan's White Whale by Lawrence Auster, Frontpagemag.com March 19, 2004
• Will The Real Pat Buchanan Please Stand Up?, by Bill Barnwell, Lew Rockwell.com, May 15, 2000.
• The Truth About Trade in History, by Bruce Bartlett, Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, n.d.
• The Buchanan Doctrine, by John Judis, New York Times, October 3, 1999.
• Who's afraid of Pat Buchanan?, by Jake Tapper, Salon, September 4, 1999.
• Buchanan and Market, by Jeffrey A. Tucker, Lew Rockwell.com, March 23, 2002.
• Glimpses of the Decline Photo essay featuring young Buchanan supporters, July/August 1996
• Hawking Racism -- Pat Buchanan's latest book is a White Nationalist Screed, by Alexander Zaitchik, for Afro Articles, March 12, 2007.

Miscellaneous

• Buchanan ancestry through nine generations.
• Draft Buchanan 2008
• On The Issues listens dozens of Buchanan's stated positions.
• Pat Buchanan at IMDb
• NNDB.com profile
• Pat Buchanan talks about his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America video