Advisor and assistant to Richard Nixon, White House Director
of Communications for Ronald Reagan, Patrick J. Buchanan is
now the presidential candidate of the Reform Party. Buchanan
isn't a libertarian, no doubt around that. But despite this, many
libertarians find him of interest. He's an "old style
conservative", very close to them on many issues: gun-control,
foreign policy, sometimes immigration. Although his economic
leftism is hard to share, many think it may be important to
accept an alliance on these issues. We have talked with him
about this.
Q: Mr. Buchanan, you have talked about foreign policy for a
long time. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore seem to give it less
importance than you. Why?
A: Foreign policy, they tell us, is not an issue in this election
year. By that they mean it is off the table, a matter already
decided upon and settled by those who know what is best for
America. So they, and their media auxiliaries, redirect our
attention away from foreign policy to such burning national
issues as the dating policy at Bob Jones University.
What is best for America and the world, they tell us, is that the
United States should remain a superpower sheriff, the Wyatt
Earp of the West, possessed of the sole right to deputize
posses, or go it alone if necessary, to discipline evil-doers,
wherever our "values" are threatened. I submit that this foreign
policy poses a great and growing danger to the peace and
security of the United States. What are the consequencies of
such a foreign policy?
Look at the balance sheet of Bill Clinton's unconstitutional war.
NATO, a defensive alliance, launched an offensive war against
a nation that threatened no member of that alliance, dissipating
the moral authority with which NATO had emerged from the
Cold War. Serbia is smashed. Montenegro and Macedonia are
destabilized. Kosovo was purged first of Albanians, then of
Serbs. And lies in ruins. U.S. relations with China and Russia
have been damaged. For what? So we and NATO could police
in perpetuity a Balkan province that has not the remotest
connection to U.S. vital interests. Such are the fruits of neo-
imperialism.
Q: Sorry, Mr. Buchanan, are you really saying
"unconstitutional war"? Why?
A: One cannot read that passage without recalling to mind the
phrase, "the arrogance of power." Now, Milosevic is a tyrant
and a war criminal. But does America have the right to
"pulverize" a nation that never attacked the United States? Did
the Founding Fathers dedicate their lives, fortunes and sacred
honor to the cause of liberty, so that the republic they would
create could emulate the empire they overthrew? Is it
America's destiny to be the policemen of the world?
In his Farewell Address, our greatest president implored us to
stay out of Europe's endless quarrels: "Why quit our own to
stand upon foreign ground?" Washington asked. "Why ...
entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European
Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour, or Caprice?" And what
are your proposals? I mean: what's the right way for America?
America today faces a choice of destinies. We can be the
peacemaker of the world-or its policeman who goes about night-
sticking troublemakers until we, too, find ourselves in some
bloody brawl we cannot handle. Let us use this transitory
moment of American power and preeminence to encourage
and assist old friends and allies to stand on their own feet and
provide and pay for their own defense.
Let me state my present intent: If elected, I will have all U.S.
troops out of the Balkan quagmire by year's end, and all
American troops home from Europe by the end of my first
term. Forty years ago, President Eisenhower pleaded with JFK
to bring all U.S. troops home from Europe. Certainly, sixty
years after the end of World War II, and fifteen years after the
Berlin Wall fell, would not be too soon to get all U.S. troops out
of Europe and let Europeans provide and pay the cost of their
own defense. If not now, when?
And let us quickly adopt a measure of humility about how
much we know about what is best for other peoples and
cultures. In the words of the great scholar Russell Kirk: "There
exists no single best form of government for the happiness of
all mankind. The most suitable form of government depends on
the historic experience, the customs, the beliefs, the state of
culture ... and all these things vary from land to land and age to
age."
Q: Mr. Buchanan, you cannot deny that tyrants do exist. Don't
you think the US - the most powerful nation in the world -
should help oppressed people and countries to emancipate
themselves?
Once, we knew how to deal with tyrants, even tyrants armed
with nuclear weapons. Deterrence and containment worked
against the evil empires of Stalin and Mao. They can work
against the lesser tyrannies of a new century.
As we end this American Century and this decade of national
preeminence, we remain a people divided over our role in the
world. It is a time for what Catholics call a "retreat," not a
withdrawal into isolationism, but a day of introspection. Why is
America, its economic and military power unrivaled, its popular
culture dominant in the world, so resented by so many. Is it
envy? Is it because we are an enlightened nation and they are
benighted? Or have we, too, succumbed to the hubris of
hegemony?
I count myself a patriot. But if all this Beltway braying about
our being the "world's indispensable nation" and "only
superpower" grates on my ears, how must it grate upon
Europeans, Russians, and those peoples subject to U.S.
sanctions, because they have failed by our lights to live up to
our standards?
The great foreign policy question before this generation is the
one that has bedeviled us since our birth as a nation. Are we to
be a city on a Hill, a light unto the nations, Henry Clay's "lamp
burning on the Western shore"? Or have we been handed a
divine commission to "go abroad in search of monsters to
destroy" and impose our values and system on a benighted
world? Are we a republic or an empire?
Once again, it is time to choose.
Q: Do you think America should withdraw from any
International Organization?
A: American sovereignty is being eroded. In 1994, for the first
time, the U.S. joined a global institution, the World Trade
Organization, where America has no veto power and the one-
nation, one-vote rule applies. Where are we headed? Look at
the nations of Europe that are today surrendering control of
their money, their immigration policy, their environmental
policy, even defense policy - to a giant socialist superstate
called the EU.
For America to continue down this road of global
interdependence is a betrayal of our history and our heritage of
liberty. What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world,
and suffer the loss of his own country?
Q: Don't you think there is already something defending these
ideas, and it is the Republican Party? They are for a limited
government, low taxes, non-interventionism, aren't they?
A: The Republican Party calls itself the party of limited
government and low taxes. But after four years of George Bush
and five years of a Republican Congress, can anyone name a
single regulation that has been repealed, a single agency that
has been abolished, a single tax that has been cut? Even that
miserable little National Endowment for the Arts gamely
soldiers on. What we are witnessing in national politics is the
triumph of an old globalist named Carroll Quigley.
Years ago when Bill Clinton and I passed through Georgetown,
there was a renowned teacher who wrote a book called
Tragedy and Hope. In it Dr. Quigley wrote: The argument that
the two parties should represent opposed ideals and
politics...of the Right and...the Left, is a foolish idea...the two
parties should be almost identical, so that the American
people can 'throw the rascals out' without leading to any
profound or extensive shifts in policy..." "It should be possible,"
wrote Quigley, "to replace one party with the other party which
will pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic
policies."
Quigley's dream is America's nightmare. Our two Beltway
parties have become two wings of the same bird of prey, two
arms of one national establishment that means to rule in
perpetuity. Our two- party system is a fraud, a sham, a
delusion. On foreign policy, trade, immigration, Big
Government, we have one-party government, one party press;
and conservatives are being played for suckers. I
left a Republican Party I served 35 years, because I believe my
country deserves a real choice, not a choice between a second
Bush Administration and a second Clinton Administration.
We
ought to have a broader range of candidates than either the son
of a U.S. Senator from St. Alban's and Harvard, or the son of a
President from Andover and Yale. The elites have two
candidates; Middle America has none. We mean to change
that. Let me outline for you a Freedom Agenda, a Populist
Agenda, a Conservative Agenda, a Reform Agenda that, if I am
nominated, we will offer you and the American people.
Today, on foreign policy, trade policy, immigration policy, Big
Government and Beltway power, the two major parties have
become inseparable twins. In handing out permanent NATO
war guarantees for all of Eastern Europe, Bill Clinton trampled
all over the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson-with the
backing of the Republican Party. In appeasing China with
permanent MFN, Bill Clinton today has the backing of the
Republican Party.
In his unconstitutional war on Serbia, Mr.
Clinton had the backing of the foreign policy elite of the
Republican Party. Bush and McCain were unhappy we didn't
send in 200,000 American troops. That is not conservatism;
that is globalism - and we reject it in the name of Washington,
Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Ronald Reagan, and all the
other great patriot-presidents who put America First-ahead of
anybody's New World Order.
Q: What about the American constitutional system and
federalism?
A: We will not just prattle about the principle of federalism; we
will make constitutionalism our compass. As control of welfare
was returned to the states, we will return to parents, teachers
and local school districts the decisions about the primary and
secondary education of their children. We need a President
who not only speaks up for parental choice, but who will shut
down the U.S. Department of Education. George Bush won't; I
will.
Goals 2000, School-to-Work, busing, the expulsion of God
and the Ten Commandments from our schools, the
indoctrination of children in the tenets of evolution and secular
humanism: none of these were demanded by parents. All were
imposed by federal bureaucrats, judges or the NEA, the dismal
triangle that has made a hellish mess of American education.
All three need to be expelled from the classrooms of America
like the disruptive delinquents they are.
Q: Let's talk about immigration. Is it a problem?
A: During the 45 years leading up to the Immigration Act of
1965, 10 million immigrants came to the United States, and by
and large assimilated successfully into American culture. They
fought with us in four wars, built our factories, enriched our
culture, and helped make the United States the mightiest
industrial empire on earth.
But the onset of mass immigration in the 1960s overwhelmed
the great American melting pot. Cultural institutions already
under assault by liberals who despise our heritage were unable
to assimilate the 30 million immigrants who flooded into the
U.S. over the past three decades. Exploding crime statistics,
swamped social services, and the rise of ethnic militancy tell
the sad story.
This year, 1.3 million more immigrants will pour into the U.S.-
400,000 of them illegal aliens. If America is to survive as "one
nation," we must take an immigration "time out" to mend the
melting pot.
Several - perhaps most - liberals would probably say that you
Americans have the duty to help those who are less lucky than
you. Don't you feel any kind of responsibility for citizens of
Third World? What should be America's behaviour towards
those children, women and men who'd like to become
Americans?
None of us are true universalists: we feel responsibility for
others because we share with them common bonds - common
history and a common fate. When these are gone, this country
will be a far harsher place.
That is why I am proposing immigration reform to make it
possible to fully assimilate the 30 million immigrants who have
arrived in the last thirty years. As President, I will ask
Congress to reduce new entry visas to 300,000 a year, which
is enough to admit immediate family members of new citizens,
with plenty of room for many thousands with the special talents
or skills our society needs.
If after several years, it becomes
plain that the United States needs more immigrants because
of labor shortages, it should implement a point system similar
to that of Canada and Australia, and allocate visas on a scale
which takes into account education, knowledge of English, job
skills, age, and relatives in the United States.
I will also make the control of illegal immigration a national
priority. Recent reports of thousands of illegals streaming
across the border into Arizona, and the sinister and cruel
methods used to smuggle people by ship into the United
States, demand that we regain control of our borders. For a
country that cannot control its borders isn't fully sovereign;
indeed, it is not even a country anymore.
Q: During every electoral campaign, one of the major issues is
the right to keep and bear arms. What do you think about this?
A: The Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to
own, possess, and use personal firearms, and as President I
will ensure that this right is not compromised.
The gun-control lobby has long peddled the myth that gun
ownership causes crime. But as we saw in Littleton, Colorado,
where 19 gun and anti-explosive laws were violated in the
massacre at Columbine High, additional legislation is not the
answer. The urban barbarism that has turned our streets into
battlegrounds and our classrooms into killing fields will not be
stopped by an assault on the Second Amendment right of
American gunowners to keep and bear arms.
Convicted felons should forfeit their right to own firearms, but
sportsmen, hunters, and law-abiding Americans should be
allowed to use guns for pleasure or personal or family safety.
Private ownership of guns gives the citizens of this free republic
the means to protect life, liberty and property and I will fully
and faithfully protect that right.
Q: Everyone in America knows you are a pro-life candidate.
One more time: your ideas are the same as Bush's. Why
should American citizens support you rather than him?
A: Mr. Bush has not given any commitments that he would
appoint pro-life Supreme Court nominees. He hasn't even
committed himself to support the pro-life plank in the platform-
that's Ronald Reagan's plank-that I supported.
If I'm in this race as the Reform Party candidate, the most pro-
life candidate in the presidential race will be Pat Buchanan. I
will fight this battle as I've fought it my whole life. If you take a
look at the candidates I opposed in '92 and '96, Bush and Dole,
can anyone name a single pro-life statement they've made
since they've lost and left office? This is a cause that goes
deep to my heart, and I'm going to maintain that. There's a
chance things might not turn out well, but I pray they'll turn out
the best.
Q: Let's finally talk about your ideas on free trade.
A: As you may have heard in my last campaign, I am called by
many names. "Protectionist" is one of the nicer ones; but it is
inexact. I am an economic nationalist. To me, the country
comes before the economy; and the economy exists for the
people. I believe in free markets, but I do not worship them. In
the proper hierarchy of things, it is the market that must be
harnessed to work for man - and not the other way around.
As for the Global Economy, like the unicorn, it is a mythical
beast that exists only in the imagination. In the real world,
there are only national economies - Japan's that has lost its
animal spirits, South Korea's that is deep in recession, China's
which is headed for trouble, Brazil's which is falling, Indonesia's
and Russia's which are in collapse.
Q: What do you mean by "economic nationalism"?
A: What is Economic Nationalism? Is it some right-wing or
radical idea? By no means. Economic nationalism was the
idea and cause that brought Washington, Hamilton and
Madison to Philadelphia. These men dreamed of creating here
in America the greatest free market on earth, by elimination all
internal barriers to trade among the 13 states, and taxing
imports to finance the turnpikes and canals of the new nation
and end America's dependence on Europe. It was called the
American System.
The ideology of free trade is the alien import, an invention of
European academics and scribblers, not one of whom ever
built a great nation, and all of whom were repudiated by
America's greatest statesmen, including all four presidents on
Mount Rushmore.
Q: Sorry but I don't understand. These are good times for
America, perhaps the best times in last century. Don't you
think there's a link between America's economic welfare and
free trade?
A: Though these are good times in America, our growth today
is anemic, compared to what it was in the Protectionist Era,
and the Roaring Twenties, when growth rates hit seven
percent. Free trade does not explain our prosperity; free trade
explains the economic insecurity that is the worm in the apple
of our prosperity.
The great free-market economist Milton Friedman, is credited
with the line, "there is no free lunch." Let me amend
Friedman's Law with Buchanan's Corollary: Free trade is no
free lunch. And it is time its costs were calculated.
Back in 1848, another economist wrote that if free trade were
ever adopted, societies would be torn apart. His name was Karl
Marx, and he wrote: "...the Free Trade system works
destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries
antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost
point ? the Free trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In
this revolutionary sense alone ... I am in favor of Free Trade."
Marx was right. Here, then, is the first cost of open-borders
free trade. It exacerbates the divisions between capital and
labor. It separates societies into contending classes, and
deepens the division between rich and poor. Under free trade,
economic and social elites, whose jobs and incomes are not
adversely impacted by imports or immigration, do well. For
them, these have been the best of times. Since 1990, the
stock market has tripled in value; corporate profits have
doubled since 1992; there has been a population explosion
among millionaires. America's richest one percent controlled
21 percent of the national wealth in 1949; in 1997 it was 40
percent. Top CEO salaries were 44 times the average wage of
their workers in 1965; by 1996 they were 212 times an average
worker's pay.
Q: So you say free trade isn't good for America?
A: If you want to see the consequences of free trade ideology,
go to Detroit. In the 1950s this was the forge and furnace of the
Arsenal of Democracy, with 2 million of the most productive
people on earth. Compare Detroit then to Detroit now. Free
trade is not free.
What is the wealth of nations? Is it stocks, bonds, derivatives -
the pieces of paper traded on Wall Street that can be gone
with in the wind? No, the true wealth of a nation lies in its
factories, farms, fisheries, and mines, in the genius and
capacities of its people. Industrial power is at the heart of
economic power, and economic power is at the heart of
strategic power. America won two world wars and the Cold
War because our industrial power and technology proved
beyond the ability of our enemies to match.
Q: Do you really think Americans will share your ideas on
economic nationalism?
A: The day is not too distant when economic nationalism will
triumph. Several events will hasten that day. The first is the
tidal wave of imports from Asia about to hit these shores.
When all those manufactured goods pour in, taking down
industries and killing jobs, there will arise a clamor from
industry and labor for protection. If that cry goes unheeded,
those who turn a stone face to the American workers will be
turned out of power.
There is another reason the free trade era is coming to a close.
One day soon, Americans will wake up and discover that other
nations do not believe in free trade, and do not practice our
particular faith. China and Japan each run $60 billion in annual
trade surpluses at America's expense, but each cordons off its
own market to U.S. goods.
Q: Last question. I think I have understood your point of view,
and try to summarize. On foreign policy, immigration,
economics, you believe Americans have to put America at the
center of their thoughts, right?
A: Yeah... America First. America First, and not only first, but
second and third as well.
Carlo Stagnaro's email address is cstagnaro@libero.it.
