STRANGE TIMES

You cannot avoid being allied with right wingers. It is just a matter of who and when. The people we describe as pseudo-left are in alliance with Pat Buchanan, The Cato Institute and The Independent Institute in opposing the US liberation of Iraq. On that matter we side with Bush and the neo-cons. We have written a lot on the question both here and at our parent site. We see it as a switch in US foreign policy from supporting “stability” in the region to supporting democracy and “draining the swamp” in which all sorts of creepy things fester.

Many pseudos in the US would side with Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter on trade protection. We would ally with Cato and support free trade. Both we and the pseudos would side with The Cato and The Independent Institutes on a range of civil liberties issues and on ending the embargo on Cuba.

But we must ‘fess up. We are doing more than our share of fraternizing and endorsing.

Continue reading ‘Allying with the Right’

This weekend people may be interested in taking a look at the debate stimulated by Pat Buchanan’s new book: Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World .

In this book Buchanan, who is an arch paleoconservative and strongly opposed to the Iraq war , claims that  both world war2 and the holocaust can be blamed on Churchill. Hitler should have been left alone, Britain should have minded its own business. Lovely stuff!

Buchanan’s response to Hitchens’ attack on his book has been reprinted in full at anti-war.com .

“”Anti-war.com” does not see itself as in any sense a “left-wing” site – in fact, if you read its description of itself, you will see that it takes a firmly libertarian position. However it’s a species of libertarianism that is sharply at odds with the dynamist position taken by people such as Virginia Postrel. Buchanan and anti-war.com are examples of the classic “old fashioned” conservative right – terrified of modernity.

Anti-war.com calls for a united front of all “anti-imperialists” from “left” to right:

“This site is devoted to the cause of non-interventionism and is read by libertarians, pacifists, leftists, “greens”, and independents alike , as well as many on the Right who agree with our opposition to imperialism…… Today, we are seeking to challenge the traditional politics of “Left” and “Right……..Antiwar.com has become the Internet newspaper of record for a growing international movement, the central locus of opposition to a new imperialism that masks its ambitions in the rhetoric of “human rights,” “humanitarianism,” “freedom from terror,” and “global democracy.”

Strange times indeed.