Dale asks what I have to say about Buchanan’s hypocritical but predictably statist views on the war, the draft, etc. There was hope for Pat and his friends after the end of the Cold War, and good reason to think that they would put aside their warmongering and join in helping stop leviathan and recover lost liberties. Pat showed his hand already in 1992 when he came out for middle-class welfare. After this, it was clear where he was headed. His habit of mind was impossible to break and there were too many inner-contradictions (as with most of the paleos). He was mildly antiwar when Clinton was running the show, but now that the GOP is in charge, spending like madmen and crushing all dissent at home and abroad, he and his friends are glad to lend their names, with minor qualification, to the whole disgusting, ghastly, bloody project. As Pat’s comments show, the differences between the neos and the paleos have been widly overblown: they merely constitute distinct sectors of the same imperial-statist ideological project (except that the neocons, by comparison, seem to understand a bit more about economics).

The Best of Jeffrey Tucker