Author: Patrick J. Buchanan

When the Dodge Charger of 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr., plunged into that crowd of protesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Fields put Charlottesville on the map of modernity alongside Ferguson. Before Fields ran down the protesters, and then backed up, running down more, what was happening seemed but a bloody brawl between extremists on both sides of the issue of whether Robert E. Lee’s statue should be removed from Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park. With Heyer’s death, the brawl was elevated to a moral issue. And President Donald Trump’s initial failure to denounce the neo-Nazi and Klan … Continue reading →

The post Our History appeared first on LewRockwell.

“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight,” Samuel Johnson observed, “it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” And the prospect of a future where Kim Jong Un can put a nuclear weapon on a U.S. city is going to cause this nation to reassess the risks and rewards of the American Imperium. First, some history. “Why should Americans be first to die in any second Korean war?” this writer asked in 1999 in “A Republic, Not an Empire.” “With twice the population of the North and twenty times its economic power, South Korea … is capable of … Continue reading →

The post The American Empire appeared first on LewRockwell.

In crafting the platform in Cleveland on which Donald Trump would run, America Firsters inflicted a major defeat on the War Party. The platform committee rejected a plank to pull us deeper into Ukraine, by successfully opposing new U.S. arms transfers to Kiev. Improved relations with Russia were what candidate Trump had promised, and what Americans would vote for in November. Yet, this week, The Wall Street Journal reports: “The U.S. Pentagon and State Department have devised plans to supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other weaponry and are seeking White House approval … as Kiev battles Russia-backed separatists … … Continue reading →

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Saturday, Kim Jong Un tested an ICBM of sufficient range to hit the U.S. mainland. He is now working on its accuracy, and a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop that missile that can survive re-entry. Unless we believe Kim is a suicidal madman, his goal seems clear. He wants what every nuclear power wants — the ability to strike his enemy’s homeland with horrific impact, in order to deter that enemy. Kim wants his regime recognized and respected, and the U.S., which carpet-bombed the North from 1950-1953, out of Korea. Where does this leave us? Says Cliff Kupchan … Continue reading →

The post Endless Wars appeared first on LewRockwell.

Given the bravery he showed in stepping out front as the first senator to endorse Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions deserves better from his boss than the Twitter-trashing he has lately received. The attorney general has not only been loyal to Trump and his agenda, he has the respect and affection of ex-colleagues in Congress and, more broadly, of populists and conservatives nationally. Trump’s tweets about Sessions are only demoralizing his base. Yet the president is not wrong to be exasperated and enraged. Time to buy old US gold coins A yearlong FBI investigation into Russian hacking has failed to produce … Continue reading →

The post Is Trump Through? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Iran must be free. The dictatorship must be destroyed. Containment is appeasement and appeasement is surrender.” Thus does our Churchill, Newt Gingrich, dismiss, in dealing with Iran, the policy of containment crafted by George Kennan and pursued by nine U.S. presidents to bloodless victory in the Cold War. Why is containment surrender? “Because freedom is threatened everywhere so long as this dictatorship stays in power,” says Gingrich. But how is our freedom threatened by a regime with 3 percent of our GDP that has been around since Jimmy Carter was president? Time to buy old US gold coins Fortunately, Gingrich … Continue reading →

The post The Empire Is Hungry for Corpses appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Is Russia an enemy of the United States?” NBC’s Kasie Hunt demanded of Ted Cruz. Replied the runner-up for the GOP nomination, “Russia is a significant adversary. Putin is a KGB thug.” To Hillary Clinton running mate Tim Kaine, the revelation that Donald Trump Jr., entertained an offer from the Russians for dirt on Clinton could be considered “treason.” Treason is giving aid and comfort to an enemy in a time of war. Are we really at war with Russia? Is Russia really our enemy? “Why Russia is a Hostile Power” is the title of today’s editorial in The Washington … Continue reading →

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At the G-20 in Hamburg, it is said, President Trump was isolated, without support from the other G-20 members, especially on climate change and trade. Perhaps so. But the crucial question is not whether Trump is alone, but whether he is right. Has Trump read the crisis of the West correctly? Are his warnings valid? Is not the Obama-Merkel vision of a New World Order a utopian fantasy? At the monument to the patriots of the Warsaw Uprising, Trump cited Poland as exemplar of how a great people behaves in a true national crisis. Calling the Polish people “the soul … Continue reading →

The post Could He Possibly Be Right? appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Donald Trump flew off for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin — with instructions from our foreign policy elite that he get into the Russian president’s face over his hacking in the election of 2016. Hopefully, Trump will ignore these people. For their record of failure is among the reasons Americans elected him to the office. What president, seeking to repair damaged relations with a rival superpower, would begin by reading from an indictment? President Eisenhower did not begin his summit with Nikita Khrushchev by berating him for crushing the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956 — a more grievous … Continue reading →

The post Don’t Be a Neocon Puppet appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks of “one people.” The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins, “We the people…” And who were these “people”? In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as “one united people … descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs…” If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one nation and … Continue reading →

The post Is America Still a Nation? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“The North Korean regime is causing tremendous problems and is something that has to be dealt with, and probably dealt with rapidly.” So President Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden this week. But how this is to be done “rapidly” is not so easy to see. North Korea has just returned to us Otto Warmbier, a student sentenced to 15 years hard labor for stealing a propaganda poster. Otto came home comatose, and died within days. Trump’s conundrum: How to keep such a regime from acquiring an ICBM with a nuclear warhead, which Kim Jong Un is determined to … Continue reading →

The post What To Do About Korea appeared first on LewRockwell.

If Gov. Bruce Rauner and his legislature in Springfield do not put a budget together by Friday, the Land of Lincoln will be the first state in the Union to see its debt plunge into junk-bond status. Illinois has $14.5 billion in overdue bills, $130 billion in unfunded pension obligations and no budget. “We can’t manage our money,” says Rauner. “We’re like a banana republic.” Speaking of banana republics, Puerto Rico, which owes $74 billion to creditors who hold its tax-exempt bonds, and $40 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, has already entered bankruptcy proceedings. The island’s imaginative 38-year-old governor, Ricardo … Continue reading →

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In the first round of the special election for the House seat in Georgia’s Sixth District, 30-year-old Jon Ossoff swept 48 percent. He more than doubled the vote of his closest GOP rival, Karen Handel. A Peach State pickup for the Democrats and a huge humiliation for President Trump seemed at hand. But in Tuesday’s final round, Ossoff, after the most costly House race in history, got 48 percent again, and lost. If Democratic donors are grabbing pitchforks, who can blame them? And what was Karen Handel’s cutting issue? Buy Gold at Discounted Prices Ossoff lived two miles outside the … Continue reading →

The post The Passing of the Pelosi Era appeared first on LewRockwell.

James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, who aspired to end his life as a mass murderer of Republican Congressmen, was a Donald Trump hater and a Bernie Sanders backer. Like many before him, Hodgkinson was a malevolent man of the hating and hard left. His planned atrocity failed because two Capitol Hill cops were at that Alexandria baseball field, providing security for House Whip Steve Scalise. Had those cops not been there, a massacre would have ensued with many more dead than the gunman. Recall. There were no armed citizens at that Tucson grocery in 2011, when six were murdered … Continue reading →

The post A Long History of Leftist Hatred appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump may be chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, but his administration is shot through with disloyalists plotting to bring him down. We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration. Thus far, it is a nonviolent struggle, though street clashes between pro- and anti-Trump forces are increasingly marked by fistfights and brawls. Police are having difficulty keeping people apart. A few have been arrested carrying concealed weapons. That the objective of this city is to bring Trump down via a deep … Continue reading →

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