American Conservative Magazine endorses Ron Paul

Pat Buchanan's magazine "The American Conservative" formally endorsed Ron Paul for President:

On the key issue of foreign policy, the differences between the other Republican contenders can be measured in microdots. All remain enthusiastic supporters of the invasion of Iraq and of maintaining a presence there for years to come. All speak as if it is America’s right and duty to station its armed forces over much of the world. All have embraced neoconservative paranoia about the “threat” posed by Iran, setting the table for another war. All, that is, except Dr. Paul.

He is the one candidate who sees how the realities of world power have shifted since the 1990s, the one who recognizes that the time of unilateral American hegemony is over—and can’t be maintained even if it was in our interest to do so. He alone understands that the ever expanding federal government is a far greater threat to American liberty than some tinpot dictator in the Caucasus. By speaking about the benefits of smaller government and limited executive power, he has introduced a generation of young Americans to a more traditional and true style of conservatism—to the movement and the country’s benefit.

The whole endorsement is here.

The Weekly Buchanan: Subprime Nation

UPDATE - It looks like the Asian Markets are starting to feel the effects of recession fears in the United States - Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index is down 4 percent.

Pat is on fire this week:

Since it began to give credit ratings to nations in 1917, Moody's has rated the United States triple-A. U.S. Treasury bonds have been seen as the most secure investment on earth. When crises erupt, nervous money seeks out the world's great safe harbor, the United States. That reputation is now in peril.

Last week, Moody's warned that if the United States fails to rein in the soaring cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's credit rating will be down-graded within a decade.

Our political parties seem oblivious. Republicans, save Ron Paul, are all promising to expand the U.S. military and maintain all of our worldwide commitments to defend and subsidize scores of nations.

It's not that they are oblivious Pat. It's that their world view is such that preserving and strengthening the status quo can only involve the continual expansion of government. Even among the GOP candidates, except for Paul and Fred (to a much lesser degree), the idea of reducing bureaucratic interventionism is remarkably absent in word (McCain, Huckabee) and deed (Huckabee, Romney, and Rudy).

Pat Buchanan has a new book coming out

Not quite siren-worthy from Drudge, but Pat Buchanan has a new book coming out. Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart will be released on January 8th.

From the Drudge link:

• Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a product of hubris and of ideology, a secular religion of “democratism,” to which Bush was converted in the days following 9/11

• Torn asunder by a culture war, America has now begun to break down along class, ethnic and racial lines.

• The greatest threat to U.S. sovereignty and independence is the scheme of a global elite to erase America’s borders and merge the USA, Mexico and Canada into a North American Union.

The Weekly Buchanan: Democracy vs. Security

Pat opines on the following question:

Which is more critical to the United States in the Islamic world -- that a government be democratic, or that it be a friend and ally in the war against al-Qaida and Islamic extremism?

Our policy of making the world safe for democracy has given us less than optimal results:

Pursuing it, Bush and Rice demanded elections across the Middle East. What did they produce? Victories for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Moqtada al Sadr in Iraq and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.

The Weekly Buchanan: Is World War III on Hold?

According to Buchanan's column this week it is:

The latest indication is a candid interview in the Financial Times with Adm. William "Fox" Fallon, head of Central Command, who would be the Tommy Franks of any naval or air war on Iran.

"The Pentagon is not preparing a pre-emptive attack on Iran in spite of an increase in bellicose rhetoric from Washington, according to senior officers," concluded the FT in the lead of its story.

Dealing with Iran is a "challenge," a strike is not "in the offing," Fallon is quoted. His comments, said the Times, "served as a shot across the bows of hawks who argue for imminent action."

"[G]enerally, the bellicose comments" out of Washington "are not particularly helpful," said our CentCom commander. That is naval gunfire directed right across the bow of the West Wing.

Interesting comments by the top military man for Central Command. But bellicose comments regarding Iran aren't just emanating from the White House, they are coming from most of the top advisers to the GOP Presidential candidates as well. Like this one.

The Weekly Buchanan: An Intrusion of Reality

Pat on Pakistan and Bush making the world safe for democracy:

What is happening in Pakistan exposes, too, the limits of U.S. power and the failure of President Bush -- because of the democratist ideology to which he converted after 9-11 -- to see clearly the real dangers to his country. Our enemy was always al-Qaida. It was never Iraq. And it is not Iran, at whom the GOP candidates are all braying their bellicosity. After 9-11, those who viewed the horror and asked, "Why do they hate us?" were hooted down as unpatriotic. We were told Muslim militants hate us because we are free, democratic and good, and they are evil.

The Weekly Buchanan: Sinking Currency, Sinking Country

Buchanan talking about the economy and our sinking dollar:

The euro, worth 83 cents in the early George W. Bush years, is at $1.45.

The British pound is back up over $2, the highest level since the Carter era. The Canadian dollar, which used to be worth 65 cents, is worth more than the U.S. dollar for the first time in half a century.

Oil is over $90 a barrel. Gold, down to $260 an ounce not so long ago, has hit $800.

Have gold, silver, oil, the euro, the pound and the Canadian dollar all suddenly soared in value in just a few years?

Nope. The dollar has plummeted in value, more so in Bush's term than during any comparable period of U.S. history. Indeed, Bush is presiding over a worldwide abandonment of the American dollar.

The reason gold has hit the historic highs this week is not only in response to the uncertainty of world events, but as a response to the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Fed has pumped into the economy in the past few months. M3, or the money supply, (which the government stopped publishing a few years ago) has been calculated by some private entities to be as high as 14 percent. Is it doom and gloom time? Yes. We are witnessing something historic, we are witnessing the flight away from the dollar as the reserve currency in the world.

Gold and bicycles people, put your money into gold and bicycles.

Can our problems be easily solved? Well the answers are easy, but it will take sacrifice. We need to give up the empire that we have. Take the troops out of South Korea, of Europe, and yes, Iraq. Put that money into the liabilities that we have here at home. Social Security, medicare, can all be paid for if we stop being the policeman of the world. It's tough medicine, but the country will be better off in the long run.

Most Influential Conservatives

The Telegraph has a listing of the top 100 conservatives and has been doling the names out 20 at a time. Today, Nos - 61-80 :

Couple of notables today:

Thomas Sowell - My favorite economist, (yes even above Milton Friedman). Basic Economics and Applied Economics made it through the recent culling of my book collection. I've been reading his books and columns for nearly 20 years.

Pat Buchanan - When I was in college, people would always smear Pat as a racist, blah blah blah. Which made me curious about his ideas, so I started reading his writings and have become a fan over the years.

BONUS: The Weekly Buchanan, video style (admittedly a couple of years old but classic)

The Weekly Buchanan: Conservatism is a Tower of Babel

From his column this week entitled Conservatism is a Tower of Babel:

Sixty years ago, Robert A. Taft was the gold standard. Forty years ago, it was Barry Goldwater, who backed Bob Taft against Ike at the 1952 convention. Twenty years ago, it was Ronald Reagan, who backed Barry in 1964. Reagan remains the paragon – for the consistency of his convictions, the success of his presidency and the character he exhibited to the end of his life. About Reagan the cliché was true: The greatness of the office found out the greatness in the man.

Just as Taft begat Goldwater begat Reagan and now Ron Paul. Giuliani traces his political lineage to McGovern and Rockefeller, and more recently the Bushes. Which, in my opinion, is what the nomination will come down to: Giuliani vs. Paul. Unless any of the other candidates start to gain traction (Huckabee seems to be the latest media anointed flavor of the month but I don't think his fundraising will keep him in the race for much longer).

The five million dollars that Paul raised last quarter will likely be doubled in the fourth quarter. The army of volunteers that have sprouted up spontaneously and the advertising they are doing independent of the campaign is worth millions. Giuliani has brought big money to the table since he announced his candidacy, there is no reason to believe that the money will stop flowing (compassionate conservatism takes a lot of money to work after all). At this point, I wouldn't even say Dr. Paul is an underdog, he is a player in the GOP race who is saying something completely different from Rudy and the other candidates and offers a true alternative in the direction that the party is going to go.

Is 2008 a redux of 1976 or 1980?

BONUS from The Hill:

Kate Rick, Dr. Paul's media coordinator in New Hampshire says this:

“[GOP pollster] Frank Luntz has said on TV that the GOP base has shrunk from 34 percent to 30 percent of the voting population, driven by the war issue,” said Rick. “When your base shrinks it’s extremely damaging to the party. Ron is the onlycandidate who can bring those people back.”

Of course this is the same Frank Luntz that was on Penn and Teller's show "Bullshit!"

Tucker, Buchanan, and Press on Ron Paul

Ron Paul's donor list is eclectic:

Blowback - Cold War Style

Pat Buchanan not mincing words this week:

At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred.

We blew it.

We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our "indispensable-nation" arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles.

Who restarted the Cold War? Bush and the braying hegemonists he brought with him to power.

Great empires and tiny minds go ill together.

Note to Lew Rockwell, you need to update Pat's stock photo.

Pat Buchanan Never Liked the War in Iraq

In fact, he thinks that Bush's policies (foreign and domestic) have crippled us. From his column yesterday:

Interventionism gave us Iraq, the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history. Big Government conservatism wiped out the surplus, fattened the federal bureaucracy and enlarged its share of GDP, and destroyed the Republican reputation as America's bastion of fiscal prudence.

The New Hitler

Pat Buchanan weighs in on Ahmadinejad and his visit to the US this week:

It would be an obscenity, we are told, if Ahmadinejad were allowed to place a wreath at Ground Zero. This is a public relations stunt that should never be permitted.

That the Iranian president has PR in mind is undoubtedly true. Much of what national leaders do is symbolic. But that wreath-laying would have said something else, as well.

It would have said that, to Iran, these Americans were victims who deserve to be honored and mourned and, by extension, the men who killed them were murderers. Bin Laden celebrates 9-11. So do all America-haters. By laying a wreath at Ground Zero, the president of Iran would be saying that in the war between al-Qaida and the United States, he and his country side with the United States.

Which I can't say I disagree with. The rhetoric we've heard from Bush since his "Axis of Evil" speech has been one of provocation. But does Iran represent a direct threat to us? Maybe to our military that is in Iraq he is, but follow Pat's reasoning on what would compel Iran to seek nuclear weapons:

After seeing what America did to its non-nuclear neighbor Iraq, which had done nothing to America, and after hearing Bush call them an axis-of-evil nation and prime candidate for U.S. pre-emptive strikes, a not-unreasonable ayatollah might conclude they need nuclear weapons, or the Americans will be dictating to them forever.

Read the rest here.