Bush’s New ‘Axis of Evil’

buchanan.org...

“What’s interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some ‘isms’ that occasionally pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the ’20s, for example, there was an American-first policy that said, ‘Who cares what happens in Europe?’ … And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians, therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we’ve been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I’m a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. I hope that these ‘isms’ pass.”

You cannot possibly understand this article unless you read it in its entirety at the link provided. It is short and most definitely worth a serious read.

I know many of you will be crowing "but this is by Pat Buchanan" blah blah blah... before you even say that read the article.

Wrote British historian A.J.P. Taylor: “American policy was never more active and never more effective in regard to Europe than in the 1920s. Reparations were settled; stable finances were restored; Europe was pacified, all mainly due to the United States.”

I like to consider myself a supporter of the 'Old Right' of the inter-war era that made up the Republican Party and Conservative Democrats. It was not exactly isolationist but was not interventionist either, rather they decided the best strategy was to help out the best we can without investing large amounts of our money into any foreign nation. This strategy did work and was very successful, how many enemies did we have between 1920 and FDR?

Result: Unemployment, 12 percent when Harding took office, was 3 percent when Calvin Coolidge left. Manufacturing output rose 64 percent in the Roaring Twenties. Between 1923 and 1927, U.S. growth was 7 percent a year. At decade’s end, America produced 42 percent of the world’s goods.

Compare this economic triumph with the fruits of W’s free-trade policy that wiped out 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs, one of every three we had, and put America in hock to China.

Because free-trade has absolutely helped our economy and jobs. Protectionism, implemented by the GOP from Lincoln to Hoover, had done more to expand the American economy and make us a global economic powerhouse than anything else in our nations history. Since Nixon we have systematically dismantled everything Americans proudly put together in this nation, what made us the envy of all the developed world, what provided us with the power to win both World Wars, and Bush, the man who happily helped to tear all of this down, criticizes the policies which made us great. How dare you!

The 1924 Immigration Act, to end the Great Wave of the previous 30 years from Southern and Eastern Europe, did seek to preserve the ethnic character of the country. Yet, after 40 years of that moratorium, the Melting Pot having done its work, America was more united and socially at peace in the Eisenhower-JFK era than she has been before or since.

Somehow restricting trade so that we can integrate our millions of new immigrants into this nation somehow makes us nativist? I think it makes us intelligent, far better than the policies you pursued, keep the borders open and allow every Juan, Jose, and Carlos into America.

Bush ought to sue Phillips Academy for educational malpractice.

For eight years, Bush pursued interventionism, free trade and open borders. Result: two wars that have bled his country and reaped a harvest of hate, the deindustrialization of America and a republic on its way to becoming the new world order’s Tower of Babel.

Political result: A wipeout of the GOP in 2006 and 2008, and Bush going home to Texas with the lowest job approval in presidential history.

Bush ought to sue Phillips Academy for educational malpractice.

How Buchanan tolerated Bush during his WH tenure is a miracle, there must be a permanent palm print on his forehead from having to work with the man.

Our country (and the world) was better off when we had staunch trade barriers. The banks also played a major role in tearing those down. Hard to put that genie back in the bottle, now it's all about globaliztion and free trade and it's destroying America.

I read a really interesting article last week by Pat Buchanan. I was tripping out because I actually agreed with his geo-political assessments.

This guy definitely does some research and reading, he is no idiot.

I may not agree with all of his opinions, and I don't. But I still respect the man for saying what he thinks and being willing to stand up to the status quo and tell it as he sees it.

I don't trust him, but I do listen with an open mind, and he has the benefit of the doubt.

As for “nativism,” the term dates to the mid-19th century and had to do with hostility to Catholics and Irish, not Italians and Jews.

He is partially correct when considering the historical context of the USA and this terminology.

However, the term "nativism" has very broad applications globally, and the meaning can shift in it's actual application from place to place.

Wiki Link on Nativism

This article on wiki has some interesting information and sources listed. Well worth the read.

Thanks for the link btw OP, I enjoyed the discourse.

Buchanan's writing is interesting to say the least. Most view him as right of even the most right-wing conservatives, yet he differs with those so-called conservatives on a lot of policies, mainly those that advocate open borders, globalization, free-trade, the IMF or world-banking, and so on, which "conservatives" (not true conservatives mind you, but the Republican version) are so hell-bent on forcing down our throats.

I actually think he would make a great president, in fact I think his policies would have been good for the UK and Canada as well, he would have put a stopper in some of this one-world NWO corporatism (yeah yeah, another "ism") that's been straining and weakening western powers and turning Asia into an industrial powerhouse.

The worst fallout of Bush's free-trade and globalization policies is that we lost our industrial base and the good paying jobs that went with it. We no longer have the tax base to support the insatiable appetite of the military -industrial complex, which consumes over 700 billion of our tax dollars a year.

We've entered an untenable and unsustainable dilemma - we either reduce our taxes and reduce our military, further eroding our stature as a superpower, OR we reverse the destructive policies of free-trade (which are so heavily embraced by the corporations reaping the profits).

Good post:chimpy broke my political psyche... been a crabby bastid ever since:" They hate us for our freedoms! oh yeah here's the"patriot act" justa a few thousand pages we had on the shelf; take that widja'.."and the spp (nau)(Boosch hiding hands behind back:"what tri-national agreement?")
doesn't Nafta and billybob clinton fit in there somewhere?)and daddy boosch!???

Pat Buchanan Culture Wars Speech 1992

Bush jr. was just following in Sr.'s footsteps.
Anyone remember the "thousand points of light" state of the union address in 1991?
www.infoplease.com...

..........with the Mexican free trade agreement and our Enterprise for the Americas Initiative we can help our partners strengthen their economies and move toward a free trade zone throughout this entire hemisphere.

We really need to find a better way of vetting these people BEFORE they are elected.