Buchanan Loves Him Some Hitler Putin

I wasn't going to publish this, but with Putin pushing hard for World War III, I think it's a good time. A lot of the problems with our current fringe can be traced back to the 1990s. In the 1990s, conservatism was understandably upset at Bush the Elder. Unfortunately, the group that would become our fringe abandoned the values of Ronald Reagan and instead adopted the values and rhetoric of Pat Buchanan. And let me tell you, Pat Buchanan is the last person anyone should be listening to, as demonstrated with his recent fellating of Putin.

I’m not kidding when I say that modern conservatives abandoned Reagan and instead followed Buchanan. They worship Reagan in the abstract and wrap themselves in his cloak, but they align themselves with the pessimistic anti-American Buchanan over the optimistic pro-American Reagan. On issue after issue, they follow Pat's rotten views, which are the polar opposite of Reagan's -- if you look at the talk radio playbook today you will find that their standard quotes and knee jerk opinions come almost verbatim from Buchanan’s apocalyptic “culture wars” speeches, most of which are the exact opposite of what Reagan stood for. To give an example, earlier this month, Pat claimed that the GOP lost middle America by embracing free trade (Reagan was staunchly pro-trade) and by importing “30 to 40 million” legal and illegal immigrants (Reagan was pro-immigration) who he calls “people of color” (Reagan never judged people by race).

Becoming the party of Buchanan was a huge mistake because it led the right away from being the pro-American party of prosperity, a thriving party which grew every day under Reagan, and sent it down the path to becoming this brooding anti-immigrant party who see America as a hopeless, failing state beset by enemies behind every rock. It's no coincidence that conservatism has been losing support ever since it started this journey. Moreover, this led them away from conservative ideas like embracing the power of freedom and has instead engendered a leftist belief in the power of strongmen who promise stability. This can be seen with Pat Buchanan's recent embrace of Putin.

Earlier this month, Pat penned an editorial love letter to his new crush, Vladimir Putin. In this bizarre editorial, he assures us that God is on Putin’s side. Why? Because he sees Russia as “the Christian country” fighting against “a decadent West,” and he sees Putin as the defender of the faith basically. Of Putin, Pat says:

“Putin is plugging into some of the modern world's most powerful currents. Not only in his defiance of what much of the world sees as America's arrogant drive for global hegemony ... He is also tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.”

Of course, his belief in a “worldwide revulsion” ignores the fact that the vast majority of people on this planet embrace every part of our culture, from our foods to our films to our consumer goods to our values. In fact, this has been a common complaint of fundamentalist Islam, failed dictators needing scapegoats, and our own left and right fringe for decades. His belief that social revolution is coming is ignorant fantasy; it is a view one reaches when one has no friends except other ideologues and there is ZERO evidence for it in the culture outside of tiny extremist blogs. His view of America as arrogantly driving for global hegemony is the same thing he used to attack liberals for saying as disloyal and traitorous.

As for Putin, Putin is the head thug of a neutered empire that is now a regional power. It has become the tallest among dwarves and pretends that makes it an NBA center. Pat doesn’t realize that because he's stuck in the cold war. And what makes Pat worship Putin is that Putin is running Pat’s kind of theocracy. Specifically, Pat mentions how Putin “imposed a ban on homosexual propaganda, a ban on abortion advertising, a ban on abortions after 12 weeks and a ban on sacrilegious insults to religious believers.” That’s how Pat defines good Christianity. Do you think Jesus would agree?

Of course, what Pat overlooks is huge. To see Putin as a hero, you need to forget that Putin is invading his neighbors and interfering in their internal affairs. Forget that he's supplying nuclear hardware to Islamic Iran. Forget that he's selling high end military hardware to China and Syria. Forget that he's trying to create an alliance with countries like Cuba and Venezuela to harass us. Forget that he's terrorized his people. That free speech, property rights and rule of law don't exist in Russia. That he locks up people with money if they don't support him, that he shuts down television stations that oppose him, that he locks up rock bands for criticizing him. That his favorite "business" practices are extortion and blackmail. Forget that Mr. Christian uses sex to advertise his candidacy, that’s he’s harassing Christian groups he doesn’t like, or that all the stuff Pat loves is just for show. Forget that Putin presides over a shithole of a country that has stepped backwards in every conceivable way under his reign of error. Yeah, forget all that because he hates them gays and that makes him Pat’s hero.

That’s messed up. But it fits with the rest of Pat's views. In fact, at least three times (1977, the 1980s and 2009) Pat has publicly praised Hitler (he wrote that Americans are “introduced to Hitler only as a caricature” but that Hitler “was also an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him.”) and blamed the allies for forcing Hitler to go to war and said Word War II wasn't "worth it." He has declared America finished because of “people of color,” and he has flirted with every third rate dictator to come along for a decade now in the hopes of finding his own Fuhrer to impose a set of beliefs which the public ain't buying.

That is what motivates Buchanan. Buchanan hates that the American public refuses to embrace his vision of a racially and religiously pure America. And everything he says and does spews from that kernel of savage disappointment. But that isn't conservatism, and Putin is not someone conservatives should ever embrace. Think about that the next time some talk radio host praises Putin for being a reel 'merikan.