Nathan Newman exults:
> This column by Pat Buchanan is remarkable in its near-repudiation of his
> old boss, Ronald Reagan, arguing that economic conservatism is ultimately
> the enemy of the social conservatism that is Buchanan's true loyalty. (In
> this, he echoes scholar Daniel Bell's thesis on the cultural
> contradictions of capitalism.)
valis then wrote:
-Get excited if you (pl.) must, but I wouldn't believe Buchanan if he
-stated the color of his eyes. This loathsome lizard, who has spent his
-entire life turning sentences around, is simply testing the fickle winds
-for another crack at the presidency, where he'd do...what?
I'm less excited than interested in it as a piece of evidence on the
conservative divisions that are growing and paralyzing much of the rightwing
agenda.
I also happen to think that Buchanan is one of the more honest conservatives,
however lothesome his beliefs. He has become no less conservative, just evolved
into a different species than the liberatarian globalists that came to dominate
the Republicans under Reagan.
An anti-globalist nationalist conservative was once not an oddity but the common
species. Buchanan specifically hawks back to that xenophobic "America First"
tradition of the 1930s. What is interesting is that the anti-communism that was
used by William Buckley, Paul Weyrich and Reagan himself to bind together the
disparate strands of conservatism into a united global conservative viewpoint
has begun to come apart. Divisions over social issues, globalism, even being
pro-corporate have reemerged.
This doesn't mean the constituent parts will suddenly join the Left, but much of
the membership will become more free-floating as the ideological unity of the
Right weakens. That is the opportunity for the Left-- to challenge the
xenophobia of Buchanan's followers and argue for a tolerant class-based view of
the world.
--nathan newman
