Lawrence Auster wrote: “Now, a writer is clearly on shaky ground when he tries to blame a position he disagrees with — a position, moreover, that happens to be embraced by a majority of the country”

The popularity that a position receives has no bearing on its rightness. Following that logic, we _shouldn’t_ go to war with Iraq because the majority of Europeans and Middle Easterners oppose us doing so.

I’ve seen estimates that place the cost of this war in the neighborhood of $50 billion, which naturally comes straight out of our pockets. Does Auster honestly believe that taxpayers don’t have a legitimate cause for opposing a war that might end up taking tens of thousands of young lives, just to put another dictator in power (albeit, one approved by the globalists)?

Also, why hasn’t Hussein handed over his chemical weapons to terrorists _already_? He’s had about 10 years to do so — in other words, _plenty_ of time. The answer, of course, is that they pose a threat to Israel, a country I’m not covenanted to defend.

And how on earth could you go about establishing a democracy in a country composed of warring factions of Shiites, Kurds and Sunni?

In short, typical FrontPage Auster-piece, i.e., nothing whatsoever to do with immigration or cultural decay.

Auster: If you want to oust Hussein so bad, then you put on a uniform and fight.

FYI, there’s still a few more days to catch the American Conservative’s charter subscription offer:
https://www.pub-serv.com/sf/AT/paid_subscribe.asp

I hope The American Conservative will exceed Mr. Auster’s expectations. I believe it will. Certainly the Buchanan/McConnell view about the wisdom of American interventionism and support for Israel will get a hearing. Still, if I understand them correctly, that is not what TAC really is about. It is about restoring a voice for an older American conservatism, one that the old National Review used to reflect. National Review today no longer does, and the Weekly Standard never has.

I would have thought a man with the healthy respect for tradition and its importance that Mr. Auster plainly has would welcome TAC. I am looking forward to reading TAC, and I hope it will find favor with Mr. Auster and those whose concerns for our fading traditions bring them to View from the Right. HRS

(Confession of bias: I write for it. H)

To Mr. Sutherland: Of course there’s a need for a traditionalist conservative magazine. In fact, I urged Buchanan to start such a magazine after the 1996 presidential campaign; I said that for him to return to that low-grade program “Crossfire” after having been a serious presidential candidate would make him seem not serious, it would undercut everything he had achieved. He replied: “I have to make a living.” I also wrote an article for the Rothbard Rockwell report in 1996 outlining a platform for a new Buchananite political party. (The piece was accepted then killed by Rockwell without explanation.)

I would welcome a magazine that discusses in a serious, thoughtful, moral way the great issues facing our country, including the revival of traditionalism, including foreign policy and globalism and empire. However, in the article by Scott McConnell that I mentioned, McConnell said the “reason for existence” of this new magazine was to attack “the War Party.” In other words, the magazine, according to its editor and founder, is primarily a vehicle for more paleocon ranting against neocons. We can do better than that and we must do better than that.

And let me also say this on the subject of Israel. I will never be an ally of people who support or rationalize or excuse the devilish deeds of those who are seeking to exterminate Jews. Sadly, Buchanan did precisely that in his column that I discussed in my “Open Letter to Patrick Buchanan” at FrontPageMag last April. He has never replied to my criticisms nor retracted any of his statements, even though many long-time supporters and defenders of his (who were as disenchanted and disappointed with him as I was) urged him to do so. He is still free to do so.

To the extent that the War Party represents what is wrong with mainstream conservatism — i.e., globalisation, interventionism, multiculturalism, corporatism, open borders and mass immigration, etc. — then I think a magazine devoted to attacking it and providing an American alternative is sorely needed. Of course, TAC will be about much more than that. But the first step on the road to restoration is to destroy the dominant neocon wing of the conservative movement and loosen its stranglehold on the debate. But perhaps that’s too ambitous an objective for those of more, shall we say, delicate sensibilities?

I’d like to believe that the new magazine will help with a restoration but I don’t think it is likely. It seems to me that most of American conservatism is corrupted by wistfulness about earlier stages of liberalism and angst about its bloody passage into later but inevitably different stages. In my view any real preservation and restoration has to be at least in part postmodern, not in a “hi I’m Jacques Derrida and I realize that emancipatory modernism self-destructs but I still can’t let it go” way but in a way that reflects real repentence — from liberalism and modernism generally — and subsequent redemption.

Redemption is certainly possible for the West, but it will not come without repentance for its liberal sins. For Christendom to be born again it must first repent, and — although I could be wrong about this — I can’t picture Buchanan as Jeremiah.

Matt: Granted, Pat Buchanan is not Jeremiah, but I’m not sure he needs to be. For one thing, who will be repenting for what sins? We can’t even raise the real issues unless more paleo beliefs are admitted to the table.

If we assume that Buchanan’s contribution will be net dillutive of liberalism then I suppose it may be helpful. I am of two minds on the matter: liberalism is and always has been parasitic and self-destructive, so it may be that just getting the Hell out of the way is (in the long term) the best strategy: Aikido rather than Karate. Let go of it and it falls. My fear is that nostalgic American conservatism, as a form of unrepentant liberalism — if I may be so bold as to contrast it with what I will describe as postmodern traditionalist repentance — is more a part of the problem than a part of the solution. Buchanan is not likely to repent, sackcloth and ashes and all, from his basic loyalties to politically enforced freedom and equal rights. He will not, I predict, recognize them as the fundamental problem any more than George Will or any other conservative with a following: I think he will do the usual thing and continue to claim that freedom and equal rights are legitimate primary political values but have been misapplied by liberals, and he will not recognize within himself an earlier form of the same sort of beast. But maybe I will be surprised.

As for who specifically needs to repent from liberalism, I think we — meaning America as such at the least — all do. I don’t think looking at it as a radically individual repentence is necessarily helpful or sufficient. I am still cleaning the classical liberal mud out of my own cleats and I rather expect Buchanan to spread more of it around. By giving modern liberals a foil to denounce he will insure that more radically repentant ex-classical-liberal traditionalists will continue to be unplugged from all respectable public bandwidth (except in the comment boxes of VFR, of course).

Also, I am not sure that any sort of positive illiberal beliefs can be brought to the table until after some significant, public, reasonably widespread repentance from liberalism occurs. When Fox News starts asking in all seriousness whether politics for the purpose of individual freedom and equal rights, rather than for the preservation and advancement of a particular people and way of life, was ever a particularly good idea (we report and you decide) then it might be possible to admit some positive illiberal beliefs into respectable discussion. I don’t think it can happen before such a repentance. But Buchanan’s new project promises to be interesting, if not as significant as some seem to be hoping.

Well, let’s give Buchanan’s magazine a chance. We do need SOME kind of Traditionalist magazine.

David: not to worry. I have no intention of forming a movement to silence Buchanan if he refuses to repent in a way that would satisfy me. I will no doubt read the mag sometimes, and will no doubt have the same mixed reaction that I almost always have to almost everything. It is a personal flaw. But it isn’t as if little-ole-me has any influence over any of this anyway.