Pat Buchanan Defends Donald Trump

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Jay Nordlinger and I don’t agree on much, but I’ve never held that against him. However, with 17 days left until we go to the polls, I do hold against him the five minutes of my life that I lost from reading Pat Buchanan’s latest column. But you know what? If I have to suffer, so do you. Ladies and gentlemen, here is Buchanan’s latest defense of Donald Trump:

What explains the hysteria of the establishment? In a word, fear.

….By suggesting he might not accept the results of a “rigged election” Trump is committing an unpardonable sin. But this new cult, this devotion to a new holy trinity of diversity, democracy and equality, is of recent vintage and has shallow roots. For none of the three — diversity, equality, democracy — is to be found in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers or the Pledge of Allegiance.

….Some of us recall another time, when Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote in “Points of Rebellion”: “We must realize that today’s Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.” Baby-boomer radicals loved it, raising their fists in defiance of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. But now that it is the populist-nationalist right that is moving beyond the niceties of liberal democracy to save the America they love, elitist enthusiasm for “revolution” seems more constrained.

Nordlinger comments:

Around the world, there are many, many places that lack the “niceties of liberal democracy.” You don’t want to live there. You would quickly discover that the niceties are more like necessities — a rule of law necessary to live a good, decent, and free life.

Is this just garden-variety Buchanan? It’s been years since I’ve read or listened to him. He’s always been a bit of a lunatic, but it seems like he’s gotten even crazier in his old age.

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