Pat Buchanan: Was World War II Worth it?

Pat Buchanan has recieved alot of flak lately over his new column. Newsay reports:

In the inflammatory world view of Pat Buchanan, the short answer is no. The war that stopped the Nazis' global campaign and the mechanistic extermination of European Jewry was actually not worth the effort.

The commentator yesterday offered equally provocative answers to other questions: Why destroy Hitler? And why venerate FDR and Churchill?

On the radio and Internet, Buchanan framed his positions as amplification of remarks made over the weekend by President George W. Bush that the pact ending the war brought on a Stalinist domination that was "one of the greatest wrongs of history."

But Buchanan's comments on the Don Imus radio show and in an essay posted on the Web site of his organization, The American Cause, went much further. He suggested that because Germans voted Hitler in, they did not need to be liberated, and that Britain and France drew Germany into the wider conflict.

He did not mention Jews or the Holocaust - the most outrageous omission for Yaffa Eliach, a Holocaust expert and survivor. "For me it is very important to present the truth, to show the murder," Eliach said. "The idea was to kill Jews."

Abraham Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, called Buchanan's comments "immoral" and "bordering on Holocaust denial. "But, you know, he has been there before," Foxman said. "Pat Buchanan in the past has challenged whether or not there were crematoria."

Veterans were also insulted.

"That is more or less saying they fought for the wrong reasons and the sacrifice was futile," said Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Jerry Newberry. "Buchanan apparently hasn't given much thought to what the world would have looked like if Hitler and his henchmen would have succeeded."

Buchanan did not return calls yesterday.

Former Mayor Ed Koch offered this blunt rebuttal: "I believe that no decent human being should ever sit down at the same table with Pat Buchanan and I am shocked that otherwise responsible, respectable citizens share platforms with him on Sunday shows." http://tinyurl.com/7m29x

His article is reprinted here: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44210

Was World War II worth it?

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Posted: May 11, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc.

In the Bush vs. Putin debate on World War II, Putin had far the more difficult assignment. Defending Russia's record in the "Great Patriotic War," the Russian president declared, "Our people not only defended their homeland, they liberated 11 European countries."

Those countries are, presumably: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Finland.

To ascertain whether Moscow truly liberated those lands, we might survey the sons and daughters of the generation that survived liberation by a Red Army that pillaged, raped and murdered its way westward across Europe. As at Katyn Forest, that army eradicated the real heroes who fought to retain the national and Christian character of their countries.

To Bush, these nations were not liberated. "As we mark a victory of six decades ago, we are mindful of a paradox," he said:

For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end the oppression. The agreement in Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. ... The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs in history.

Bush told the awful truth about what really triumphed in World War II east of the Elbe. And it was not freedom. It was Stalin, the most odious tyrant of the century. Where Hitler killed his millions, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot and Castro murdered their tens of millions.

Leninism was the Black Death of the 20th Century.

The truths bravely declared by Bush at Riga, Latvia, raise questions that too long remained hidden, buried or ignored.

If Yalta was a betrayal of small nations as immoral as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, why do we venerate Churchill and FDR? At Yalta, this pair secretly ceded those small nations to Stalin, co-signing a cynical "Declaration on Liberated Europe" that was a monstrous lie.

As FDR and Churchill consigned these peoples to a Stalinist hell run by a monster they alternately and affectionately called "Uncle Joe" and "Old Bear," why are they not in the history books alongside Neville Chamberlain, who sold out the Czechs at Munich by handing the Sudetenland over to Germany? At least the Sudeten Germans wanted to be with Germany. No Christian peoples of Europe ever embraced their Soviet captors or Stalinist quislings.

Other questions arise. If Britain endured six years of war and hundreds of thousands of dead in a war she declared to defend Polish freedom, and Polish freedom was lost to communism, how can we say Britain won the war?

If the West went to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe, and Eastern and Central Europe ended up under a tyranny even more odious, as Bush implies, did Western Civilization win the war?

In 1938, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain refused. In 1939, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Poland. Chamberlain agreed. At the end of the war Churchill wanted and got, Czechoslovakia and Poland were in Stalin's empire.

How, then, can men proclaim Churchill "Man of the Century"?

True, U.S. and British troops liberated France, Holland and Belgium from Nazi occupation. But before Britain declared war on Germany, France, Holland and Belgium did not need to be liberated. They were free. They were only invaded and occupied after Britain and France declared war on Germany – on behalf of Poland.

When one considers the losses suffered by Britain and France – hundreds of thousands dead, destitution, bankruptcy, the end of the empires – was World War II worth it, considering that Poland and all the other nations east of the Elbe were lost anyway?

If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in.

If it was to keep Hitler out of Western Europe, why declare war on him and draw him into Western Europe? If it was to keep Hitler out of Central and Eastern Europe, then, inevitably, Stalin would inherit Central and Eastern Europe.

Was that worth fighting a world war – with 50 million dead?

The war Britain and France declared to defend Polish freedom ended up making Poland and all of Eastern and Central Europe safe for Stalinism. And at the festivities in Moscow, Americans and Russians were front and center, smiling – not British and French. Understandably.

Yes, Bush has opened up quite a can of worms.

Well, we can all see why there would be some objections. However, Buchanan makes some good points.

1) The Treaty at Yalta should be damned, as it was rightfully by President Bush. It left 11 countries in Eastern Europe beneath the Iron Curtian. They were freed from Nazi oppression only to be under a newer more evil oppression: Communism.

2) The original objectives of the war were never met in that war. It was Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II that finally finished the original objectives of the war, by playing key roles in freeing Poland and Czechoslovakia from Soviet oppression.

3) If the original objectives were not met, how is the war justified? Undoubtedly by making new objectives: freeing western Europe (which only became under the Nazi bootstrap after war was declared) and saving the European Jews (which were exterminated only after the war started). These are fine objectives but are quite different from the actual objectives of the war to begin with.

A parallel can be made with the Iraqi War. We went in to do one thing, and now we are doing quite another. We went in because of the threat of WMDs (to free Poland and Czechoslovakia) but after this was not accomplished, there was a new justicication of human rights and democratization (stopping the Holocaust and saving western Europe). However, there is one difference: with Iraq, these objectives were secondary but still used for orginal justification. In WWII these were not original objectives as they did not exist yet. Did the original declaration of war percipitate these objectives to form? We will never know. But what we do know is that the original objectives were not met by time of WWII's end. SO was it worth it? It is an interesting question, but it should be looked at objectivley and not blasted from the get-go with sophistries.

Why do the Super Rich advocate Socialism?

If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but in reality a method to confiscate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniac. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.

- Gary Allen, Renowned Historical Researcher

Knights of the Old Republic

This is not about Star Wars.

Government commissions on baseball steroid use, government subsidizing the Tiger Woods Foundation, and even money for “wood utilization research” (6.3 million dollar, to be exact). What would have our founder’s thought of all of this? I’d place my bets, in a newly opened casino to help fund a new stadium (that is, if the proposal goes through), on the thought of, “What happened to the Republic? We’re how much in debt?”

Alas, there are far too few Knights of the Old Republic to make that point abundantly clear to the politicians. Instead of electing politicians that have fiscal responsibility and a respect for the vision crafted in the Constitution, we have government waste and debt in monstrous sizes and the frightful realization that we have become a nation of men, that crafts legislation so that everyone plunders everyone.

We have come to a point in our history when the actions of government has encroached on our affairs to the point that we, more often than not, look to the government to “remedy” some sort of problem. That is to say, we have become a democracy – hell, we even are spending our treasure to spread democracy overseas. We have discarded what the founders diligently worked to protect: a Republic.

What is a Republic? It is a system of government without any dominant factor. Therefore, a “democratic Republic,” as some like to call the United States, is an oxymoron: it has a dominant factor, a democracy. Democracy midwived Hitler’s rise to power, and could do the same again. Not only have we become what Benjamin Franklin warned against, but this democracy has decided that a krytocracy, or “rule by judges,” ought to be able to create new rights out of a supposedly “evolving” Constitution, never pausing to consider why it was written in the first place.

In the Republic, the judiciary was equal to the other branches of government, not, as Jefferson would later call it, “the despotic branch,” which usurped the power of the legislature. This government was further put into check by the respective state governments. Each state could have vastly different policies for its citizens. The citizens, who are closer to the local politics and thus are able to communicate effectively their needs, would be able to create the best policies for their state. The Federal government was a small entity that merely exercised it’s specifically mandated authority. There was no Social Security, no Medicare, no IRS, no War on Drugs, no Patriot Act, no No Child Left Behind. To be sure – states could enact social programs and laws prohibiting drug use and the like if they felt it warranted, but other states did not need adopt these measures.

A Knight of the Old Republic does not give into the fashion of the times and keeps true to the Constitution. He may lobby for any type of government in his home state, including legislation to make baseball stadiums or other collectivist policies the next Knight may despise. However, any Knight should lobby for change on the national level for a return to the principles of liberalism and individualism that this country was founded upon. To do so would mean rejecting both the national parties for leadership, as they both have steered us off course. To do so would take strength and courage to not give into thinking that just because you like an idea that the national government ought to enact it. And while you may be thinking, why should I care?, you should remember the words of Pericles, “Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.” Sooner or later, the Federal government’s policies will affect you in a way you don’t like.

Arbitrary Arbiters

In February, the Supreme Court gave itself the moral authority to declare that laws in over half the states that do not prohibit capital punishment are wrong in allowing minors to be subject to the same law as everyone else. Using various forms for reasoning, from the idea that the Constitution is evolving with our “evolving standard of decency,” that there is a “national consensus” that capital punishment against people who are minors when they commit a heinous act is wrong, and foreign law, the Court has once again usurped the authority of the people in lieu of their own political preferences.

The Constitution was written not as an ever changing document, but one that was static; in order to prevent people from changing its meaning to fit whatever political ends they seek. Why people believe that is “living” is beyond me – I think it has to do with the misguided view that the Court can never do any wrong and its judgments will always increase the individual’s rights and never, ever, decrease them. I see nothing in the theory that the Constitution is “living” to prevent the Court from devolving along with society. I do, however, see plenty in the accurate description that the Constitution is static to prevent governmental abuse of authority.

To get at the heart of the matter one must consider the 8^th Amendments restriction upon the Federal Government (and what the Court has expanded against the states) against “cruel and unusual punishment.” The words on the day they were ratified meant one thing, and they mean that same thing today. All Amendments are exactly the same. As the death penalty was neither cruel nor unusual at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights, it continues to this day as being neither cruel nor unusual. In fact, the Constitution expressly allows capital punishment: what else could it possibly mean when it says that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law?

If it is not unconstitutional to have capital punishment, why is the arbitrary age of 18 the starting point in which a person can be held to that punishment? If someone is competent enough to know right from wrong, they are competent enough to know that conspiring to, and then binding a woman with duct tape and electrical wire before dumping her alive into a river is wrong. Yet the Court held Tuesday that one of the three people who committed this crime – the ringleader and the only one who would have received the death penalty – cannot be executed because it would be “cruel and unusual.” The “kid” was 7 months shy of 18 when he callously murdered another person.

The age of 18 is entirely arbitrary. Why not 16, when people are granted the privilege to drive? Why not 21, when we are “competent” enough to ingest alcohol? Why 18? Apparently it is because, on average, people under 18 are not competent enough to realize the ramifications of their actions. I’m sorry, but show me one 17 year old who is not competent enough to know that murder is wrong.

We are holding some people to a different standard than others. Five justices have declared for all of us that people under 18 are not competent. Five justices have declared that they know better than twelve jurors in every case, even they do not know the individual fact situations. If a jury decides that a minor is a moral being – someone who is reasonable and knows right from wrong – than that person should have a right to be punished just like everyone else. Depriving him of that right declares that he is amoral without any reasoning behind it other than an arbitrary ruling about age. This is a battle that should have been fought in the legislative assemblies where we send our representatives, where we can compromise, not in a Courtroom. If we truly had an “evolving standard of decency” and a “national consensus” regarding this issue, then a Court ruling would be entirely unnecessary. In truth, we do not, and nothing in the Constitution allows for such moral grandstanding by these arbitrary arbiters on the Supreme Court.

Graduated

Well I am no longer an undergrad, and I know hold a B.A. in Biology and a B.A. in Political Science. And since I am still unemployed, I can now devote time to this blog.

George and Woodrow

Consider this speech:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The world must be made safe for democracy. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. This is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary. Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.

Two speeches by two different presidents, melded as one. Who words are whose? I’m sure you can find out by Google fairly easily. But other than that – is there much of an ideological difference? Without knowing that one is a conservative and the other a liberal, could you tell?

President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who formulated liberal foreign policy, has found a new successor in the likes of George W. Bush. Bush has put an end to any illusion that isolationist conservatives have any sway in his foreign policy. He is going to change the world, to make it safe for democracy, and the only way to do that is to make democracy everywhere. It is a bold statement of policy, but not as bold as when Wilson said nearly the same thing to Congress when asking for a declaration of war upon Germany, who as we recall was terrorizing Americans crossing the Atlantic unmercifully.

Wilson put an end to the terror on the high seas, and now Bush seeks to end all terror, all together. It is a lofty goal and I believe the President is right that a prerequisite to such a goal is global freedom. But at what cost? How many billions should we, as Americans, spend to that end? There is folly is spending too much – or too little – on national defense. More than that, what of the soldier’s lives? And on top of that, what of the costs to liberties at home? Wilson acquiesced to the Congress’ sedition acts during the first World War that outlawed all speech against the government; while we have not trodden far down that path to tyranny, we’re getting there: for example, federal officials can access anyone’s financial records if they are “suspicious” and, regardless if they are actually terrorists, and can use those records against someone, in the name of security. Where does it end? Is this what we want? Is this truly the right price to be paying for making the world safe for democracy?

And who says Bush is a conservative? Ha!

Oh yes: Bush is in red, and Wilson is in blue.

Let's Roll Another Joint

On presumably the last year of the Rehnquist Court, an opportunity to limit the federal government has presented itself yet again. While old and feeble, Rehnquist commands the ability to finally, and actually, do what many people have said he did years earlier – undermine and destroy the New Deal legislation. And I couldn’t be happier.

In 1994 the Rehnquist Court reversed course on legislation dealing with the commerce clause, and decided that Congress should have limits upon it. It has been slowly chipping away at it since. But now, opportunity comes a knocking from an unlikely source.

The case of Raich v Ashcroft will end up with one of two things: either the federal government will be viewed as something as unlimited in scope, or that it will be viewed as something as limited. Oh, and Raich can smoke pot if the latter is the case.

The attorney for Raich, Randy Barrett, brilliantly offered the following, in the importance of drawing a distinction of economic activity from the non-economic: “The premise is that it is possible to differentiate economic activity from personal activity. Prostitution is economic activity, and there may be some cross substitution effects between prostitution and sex within marriage, but that does not make sex within marriage economic activity. You look at the nature of the activity to determine whether or not it is economic.”

His argument, of course, has to do with the use of medical marijuana. If someone smokes their own weed and does not sell it, what harm does that do to anyone? Jefferson once said, “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” if a neighbor of his was to worship twenty gods or no god, and here is the same exact thing. A person minding their own business smoking weed that they grew themselves is not doing any harm to anyone. Yet federal agents have raided many people’s homes and destroyed and seized their gardens that contained so few plants it would take quite an imagination to think they would be used later for interstate, let alone intrastate, commerce. Knowing that these people have grown weed for their own enjoyment or for the supposed medical benefits of marijuana, and not for the sale cross state boundaries, for the Supreme Court to side with the Justice Department in upholding the ban on the sale of marijuana along with many other drugs would be absolutely irresponsible. Over the past ten years the Supreme Court has rejected reasoning by the government that “if this happens then maybe this happens and then this thing happens and finally that may effect commerce so it is therefore under the commerce clause” as being so far as a stretch that it begs the question why we even have a Constitution at all. The Court must hold that the Californian law regarding use of medical marijuana is constitutional and that the federal statues regarding such drug use are not.

If it does not rule in this way, it does far worse damage then if it would have been done a decade ago: it limits the cases over the past decade that had limited the Congress’ authority in the commerce clause to strictly their facts, therefore opening a floodgate of more and more federal regulation with such sweeping powers our Founders would be appalled we had not yet had another Revolution to destroy tyranny. But if it rules in favor of California, that will open many federal laws to scrutiny. Does the federal government have the ability to ban the possession of say, eagle feathers, even if they never crossed state lines? Today they do, but in a post Raich world, if the Courts rules in favor of Federalism and of the Constitution, they will not. States obviously would make up the gap but that that is how this country was originally intended to be. I think Rehnquist will want to go out securing the principles of federalism, and this is the case to do it. And conservatives, regardless of what you think of marijuana, I believe are forced to agree with this position.

About the Author

I am a Political Science and Biology double major senior at St John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota. The resident conservative on the paper, many people here don't care for me. But that's okay, at least I can have my "Fuck Communism!" flag up for all to see, next to my Culpepper Militia Flag:



I am a conservative. I am not a neo-conservative. I did not vote for the President, I instead voted for Michael Badnarik, for all the good it did me. I consider myself a libertarian Republican, which many people are, and many more are in the blogs I read.

To be sure, I was proud of that vote. It was my first vote for President, and I voted for a man who shared more of my values than the man who is, currently, parading in Washington. I will say I am glad Bush won over Kerry, but I hope that the GOP will not give in to everything he wants, carrying the party to the left. The party has gone too far left and needs to go right, towards freedom.

Soon I will write about other subjects, but that's about it for now.

First Post

Details to follow.