In the video below and in his analysis here.
Pat Buchanan, whatever the faults of his Paleoconservatism and no doubt you can find plenty of them, “gets it” in a way that most left-wing people do not. Buchanan understands perfectly well the catastrophe of globalisation and neoliberalism. But he also understands, more or less, the disaster of extreme cultural Postmodernist leftism and its bastard offshoots.
I hate to break it to people on the left, and it may be a terrible truth to face, but he’s essentially right on certain core issues here.
What does America’s mainstream left have to offer white middle class and white working class people? Answer: toxic neoliberalism, mass unemployment, stagnant real wages, extreme political correctness, poisonous identity politics, and hysterical regressive left insanity that demonises white people – especially white heterosexual men – as the most evil people in history.
Are you really surprised that many of them are voting for Trump? And, umm, take a look at Trump’s rhetoric here and here. He wants to turn the Republican party into a “workers’ party”? Really?
The trouble is that Trump – while he certainly rejects core aspects of neoliberalism and cultural leftism – still has certain terrible neoliberal economic ideas (e.g., deregulation), and he is a wildcard.
As I have said many times (as for example here), the left could probably win over considerable numbers of angry people voting for Trump and triumph once again in politics, if only it reformed itself.
It just needs to (1) ditch regressive cultural leftism, (2) have a sensible immigration policy, (3) go big on economic issues like providing full employment and the disaster of neoliberalism, and (4) stop the bizarre, vicious hostility to white people.
I strongly doubt there is really much mass support amongst left-wing voters for regressive left nonsense anyway, certainly given the way many people often just reflexively vote for the left or right because it is a tribal thing. It is the swing voters you have to attract. Maybe Hillary will do that this time, but a victory of more neoliberalism and cultural leftism will produce Republican candidates far worse than Trump in future years.
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well indeed pat buchanan right in somethings and storngly wrong about others.
ReplyDeletebut in that report he been right.
Children are being taught that America was “discovered” by genocidal white racists, who murdered the native peoples of color, enslaved Africans to do the labor they refused to do, then went out and brutalized and colonized indigenous peoples all over the world.
ReplyDeleteAs much as you want to live in denial of it Pat, that's the truth. It's also been argued convincingly that the US War of Independence was fought as a conservative revolution in order to protect the slave trade, as it would appear Britain's ending of slavery was on the horizon (due in no small part to Somerset vs Stewart):
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=832&Itemid=74&jumival=1223
Good discussion of the topic pro & con here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29zgs5/
The Brits in fact, offered freedom and British citizenship to slaves who wanted to defect and come fight for the crown. So at least we know the Southern half of the colonies - previously reluctant - would eventually join the rest in fighting Britain for freedom and for that reason.
As a side not, it's also been proven that the Patriots brutally oppressed the Tories about that same time period. Many Americans fought on the side of the Crown:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalists_fighting_in_the_American_Revolution
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/134163
http://www.toriesfightingfortheking.com/WhoTories.htm
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c3259521/clip-tories-fighting-king-americas-first-civil-war
As far as I'm concerned the fact that everyone still believes the mythos of the good pure hearted American Patriots means the textbooks haven't been altered enough!
There's plenty of good, solid historical works showing the connection between capitalism and slavery:
http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/the-half-has-never-been-told-slavery-and-the-making-of-american-capitalism
https://archive.org/details/capitalismandsla033027mbp
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2_2.html
I just can't get too excited about the decline of White Men. Now if you want to talk about men in general vis-a'-vis de-industrialization, I'm down.
"Kingdoms rise and Kingdoms fall" or so the Good Book tells us. All racial and political domination is destined to eventually give way to something else. The question is will we cry over spilled milk, or will we plan for the future?
Some fair points. Of course it's absurd to deny European imperialism and the brutal aspects of it, as Buchanan does there.
DeleteHowever,
(1) the British empire did more than any other force in history to abolish slavery.
(2) the Arab slave trade in Africans probably had more victims (maybe about 14–15 million) and was more brutal than tarns-Atlantic slave trade in that it involved castration of blacks:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2016/02/paul-bairoch-on-industrial-revolution_20.html
(3) finally, what is missing is a sense of proportion. Western civilisation isn't the most evil in history and has real achievements.
the British empire did more than any other force in history to abolish slavery
DeleteYes, that's actually part of my argument.
E.g., Mongol imperialism, in terms of per capita death toll, was probably most genocidal in history:
Deletehttp://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2013/02/was-20th-century-really-most-violent.html
Mongol imperialism in the Muslim world was also far more destructive than Western influence in the Muslim world since WW1 (although some Iraqi's have argued the US invasion was as destructive as the Mongols), and certainly more destructive than the crusades, as well. Persia becoming a state where the clergy played a significant role in governance, and with a Shi'a majority, can also be traced to the destructive nature of Mongol imperialism. I was taught that the reason Muslims tend to be more forgiving of the Mongols is that many did end up converting to Islam...yet, given many of the most noxious theological trends in Islam can be traced back to the theology of Ibn Taymiyyah, and his justifications for war against Muslim leaders was based on the view that the Mongols weren't true Muslims, even the current Jihadist phenomenon can be put on Mongol imperialism to some degree.
DeleteWhile it's been argued that the Mongol invasions killed off the golden age of Islam, Bernard Lewis and others have noted that the seeds were sowed well before the Asiatic hordes invaded.
"As much as you want to live in denial of it Pat, that's the truth."
DeleteThere is no consensus among historians on what the population of North America was before contact. The majority of deaths are believed to be a result of disease(brought from the old world by Europeans and African slaves), most strongly in areas settled by the Spanish. As for evidence of large-scale planned genocide among the North America colonies, keep dreaming. Even during war and conflicts, it was rarely Europeans versus natives, usually at least one European power with native allies versus a rival tribe. Simple tales of genocidal whites settling the Americas are a distortion. I don't want to make anyone's head explode, but there are even emerging hints of curious things happening in the Americas before Europeans arrived. There used to be a culture called the Dorset is northern Canada. Genetic analysis shows no relation to any other Native American group studied, and by around 1500, all traces of the culture vanished, possibly around the time the Inuit(who were more technologically advanced) arrived.
Also, Baptists's work is neither good, nor original. He used work from economic historians like Fogel, Engerman, Olmstead, Rhode, and others, makes up various numbers, and leaps to absurd conclusions. The book has been highly criticized by many historians both of slavery and economics, but I won't point anyone towards journal articles. You can find free material on blogs like Bradley Hansen's or one by an anonymous blogger Pseudoerasmus. I encourage Kevin Wayne, or anyone else who feels compelled to cite Edward Baptist, to look, it's pretty embarassing. Here's one example: http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-back-of-ed-baptists-envelope.html
The idea that the American Revolution was just an attempt to save slavery in the colonies is another distortion and over-simplification of course. I have to say, when I compare the type of historical work done by neo-conservative type historians, Victor David Hansen and Donald Kagan for example, with the the type of nonsense said about European colonialism, slavery, and related topics by leftist types, I come away believing the leftists are much crazier than the neo-conservatives. That is not a compliment to neo-conservatives.
What does America’s mainstream left have to offer white middle class and white working class people? Answer: toxic neoliberalism, mass unemployment, stagnant real wages, extreme political correctness, poisonous identity politics, and hysterical regressive left insanity that demonises white people – especially white heterosexual men – as the most evil people in history
ReplyDeleteI'm going to disagree slightly here. That is or has been what's infected a lot of Tumblr or Reddit arguments and has been the backdrop of a lot of discussion, but at least you can say Bernie Sanders hasn't focused to much of his time bashing people for being white or male and has stuck pretty much to talking about globalization and deindustrialization, which will help in the long run. Really Sanders, Nader, Chomsky - those guys spend more time talking about real stuff and are highly respected by the youth.
I'm working on a video about Sanders and the problems Feminists & SJW's have caused him. I've already published a 3 minute preview:
https://youtu.be/WhNykTFtLf4
uhm with all of your hate toward israel as well as chomsky i somehow respect both of you and you have interesting points too thank you kevin.
Deleteand i agree that sanders focused way less on identity politics than hilary.
LK, what is the alternative to neoliberism? will you ever wake up to the reality that large scale deficits, inflation, price controls, currency controls, oppressive taxation and the like aren't going to benefit anyone except the crooks?
ReplyDeletethe alternative is to return to the policies of pre neoliberal era.
DeleteAnonymous@May 29, 2016 at 8:20 AM
Deletelol... when are you going to wake up to the reality that libertarian economics or deficit hawkism is B.S.?
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
Hunter S Thompson, who is generally associated with the American left, counted Buchanan as a friend, and considered him a great mind and writer. They may have been snowed in once at a hotel together and had a drunken debate into the early hours of the morning.
DeleteBuchanan has some serious issues, especially concerning his frothing anti-semitism, but he's a pretty brilliant mind when it comes to the American right. The journal he started, The American Conservative, is also a pretty good periodical, and I suspect many leftists would nod their heads in agreement while reading it.
Oops, that last comment wasn't supposed to be to this.
DeleteAnonymous, what issues are you suggesting LK doesn't offer Post-Keynesian alternatives for? Or, is it simply that the alternatives he offers are not accepted by you because they don't jive with your preconceived notions of how economics works?
Yes, American Conservative is remarkably sane on foreign policy issues, and in opposing aspects of neoliberalism.
DeleteFor some further reading on this topic, here's a very recent article by Buchanan in The American Conservative:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/the-death-of-working-class-america/
I very very strongly disagree with your doubt. The pathologies you decry are the essence and appeal of modern leftism. Yeah u don't see this because you still don't see that economies must be market economies, and the role of government is not to plan the economy but to provide the social framework-- including a generous welfare state.
ReplyDeleteIs this even directed at me?
DeleteI am perfectly well aware leaving most things to the private sector (i.e., having a fundamentally market economy) is the best position. However, most successful capiats eocnomies now are a mixed eocnomies: a mix of macroeconomic management and some planning where necessary with market economy.
*Your mistake* is falling for free trade nonsense, when China is hostile neo-mercantilist power run by communists waging economic war against the West. If you don't want to fix this by sensible protectionism and industrial policy, you're in favour of the destruction of Western civilisation just as much as the far left open borders lunatics.
Of course it is LK. You often sound these days like you have a 5 Year Plan for "reshoring" manufacturing. But those jobs are gone and will not return.
DeleteManufacturing can be reshored relatively easily now -- certainly in the larger Western economies and to some extent even in the medium sized ones -- by a vigorous government industrial policy to bring it back with new production using automation and robotics. Use tax breaks, subsidies, energy subsidies, interest free loans, or punitive measures on national corporations outsourcing factories.
DeleteIt's true that many of the manufacturing jobs are gone and won't come back, but new jobs can be created. Especially once manufacturing comes back and trade balance swings back, there's a much bigger space for fiscal stimulus to find real socially and economically useful work for the unemployed and long-term discouraged workers.
As for wanting more planning in certain areas, lol, I am not remotely insulted by that.
Go back and look at some of the 1940s to 1960s conservatives, e.g., de Gaulle:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-golden-age-of-capitalism-in-france.html
The "Alternative Right" is deluding itself in important ways. The European populist right (e.g., UKIP, Danish people's Party, AfD, Sweden Democrats) is not "Alt Right". They are not neofascists nor libertarian nationalists as many people on the "Alt Right" are. E.g., the Sweden Democrats are basically Western European socialists who dislike mass immigration, reject open borders and aspects of cultural leftism. They are basically old-fashioned Swedish socialists from the 1950s.
ReplyDeleteEven the Freedom Party of Austria is basically a right-wing populist party, not far right.