Every form of so-called but grossly mislabeled conservatism in America today is revolutionary in its longing to destroy the real, the actually existing America.
Every form of so-called conservatism in America wants to roll back over a century of progressivism, from the achievements of TR, Taft, and Wilson through those of FDR, Truman, LBJ, and Nixon, right up to those of Barack Obama, America's first African-American president and one of our best.
All of the American right is the radical right.
And the worst of it is the white nationalist, Buchananist right currently led by Donald Trump, The Duce of the new America First movement, even more repugnant than the original.
An Establishment in Panic.
Pat Buchanan, himself, has gone full-bore revolutionary anti-American.
He now hates the system and the establishment, what America has become since the dawn of the 20th Century, so mightily, that there is really no excuse for it in his view.
In the mind of Pat Buchanan, bringing down America is now the work of patriots.
In Pat Buchanan's inverted world, the America of pre-1950 white supremacy and clericalism is the only legitimate America, the only America worthy of love, loyalty, and respect.
And the bare-knuckle capitalism of the McKinley era is the touchstone of legitimacy.
The former damns nonwhite immigration and would exclude nonwhite Americans from political equality, while the latter damns the Welfare State and the Regulatory State - indeed the whole edifice of over a century of progressivism - as ugly corruptions of the Republic.
And he thunders that his real Americans, the 35 to 40% rump of bitterly resentful, ignorant, and stupid white folks (I no longer think it uncivil to call Trump supporters "lizard brained") who he thinks think just like him, would be right to bring it all down with revolution.
To keep the record straight, I loathed the delusional Marxist and New Left revolutionaries of the sixties and seventies who never really stood a chance, but I both loathe and fear the delusional right wing revolutionaries of our time because, having wrapped themselves in the flag like Sinclair Lewis' American fascists, they are much, much more dangerous.
Far from deploring Trump's rhetorical attacks on the legitimacy of the electoral process because they destabilize the country, Pat Buchanan welcomes them and longs for them to bring down an America he despises with all his heart.
That is the tone in which he writes, now, and that is the sort of language he uses.
Pat Buchanan: Traitor.
Pat Buchanan Defends Donald Trump
Jay Nordlinger is mistaken.
The real conservatives in America don't call themselves that and are in the Democratic Party, and have names like Hillary and Barack.
As for the people who call themselves conservatives, there are only the revolutionary radicals Trump likes and the revolutionary radicals Nordlinger likes.
No comments:
Post a Comment