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View Full Version : Buchanan @ TAC: Jennifer Rubin’s Infantile Conservatism




COpatriot
02-26-2013, 12:57 AM
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/jennifer-rubins-infantile-conservatism/


Regularly now, the Washington Post, as always concerned with fairness and balance, runs a blog called “Right Turn: Jennifer Rubin’s Take From a Conservative Perspective.”

The blog tells us what the Post regards as conservatism.

On Monday, Rubin declared that America’s “greatest national security threat is Iran.” Do conservatives really believe this?

How is America, with thousands of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, scores of warships in the Med, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, bombers and nuclear subs and land-based missiles able to strike and incinerate Iran within half an hour, threatened by Iran?

Iran has no missile that can reach us, no air force or navy that would survive the first days of war, no nuclear weapons, no bomb-grade uranium from which to build one. All of her nuclear facilities are under constant United Nations surveillance and inspection.

And if this Iran is the “greatest national security threat” faced by the world’s last superpower, why do Iran’s nearest neighbors—Turkey, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan—seem so unafraid of her?

Citing the Associated Press and Times of Israel, Rubin warns us that “Iran has picked 16 new locations for nuclear plants.”

How many nuclear plants does Iran have now? One, Bushehr.

Begun by the Germans under the shah, Bushehr was taken over by the Russians in 1995, but not completed for 16 years, until 2011. In their dreams, the Iranians, their economy sinking under U.S. and U.N. sanctions, are going to throw up 16 nuclear plants.

Twice Rubin describes our situation today as “scary.”

Remarkable. Our uncles and fathers turned the Empire of the Sun and Third Reich into cinders in four years, and this generation is all wee-weed up over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“For all intents and purposes, (Bibi) Netanyahu is now the West’s protector,” says Rubin. How so? Because Obama and Chuck Hagel seem to lack the testosterone “to execute a military strike on Iran.”

Yet according to the Christian Science Monitor, Bibi first warned in 1992 that Iran was on course to get the bomb—in three to five years! And still no bomb.

And Bibi has since been prime minister twice. Why has our Lord Protector not manned up and dealt with Iran himself?

Answer: He wants us to do it—and us to take the consequences.

“With regard to Afghanistan, the president is pulling up stakes prematurely,” says Rubin. As we are now in the 12th year of war in Afghanistan, and about to leave thousands of troops behind when we depart in 2014, what is she talking about?

“In Iraq, the absence of U.S. forces on the ground has ushered in a new round of sectarian violence and opened the door for Iran’s growing violence.”

Where to begin. Shia Iran has influence in Iraq because we invaded Iraq, dethroned Sunni Saddam, disbanded his Sunni-led army that had defeated Iran in an eight-year war and presided over the rise to power of the Iraqi Shia majority that now tilts to Iran.

Today’s Iraq is a direct consequence of our war, our invasion, our occupation. That’s our crowd in Baghdad, cozying up to Iran.

And the cost of that war to strip Iraq of weapons it did not have? Four thousand five hundred American dead, 35,000 wounded, $1 trillion and 100,000 Iraqi dead. Half a million widows and orphans. A centuries-old Christian community ravaged. And, yes, an Iraq tilting to Iran and descending into sectarian, civil and ethnic war. A disaster of epochal proportions.

But that disaster was not the doing of Barack Obama, but of people of the same semi-hysterical mindset as Ms. Rubin.

She writes that for the rest of Obama’s term, we “are going to have to rely on France, Israel, our superb (albeit underfunded) military and plain old luck to prevent national security catastrophes.”

Is she serious?

Is French Prime Minister Francois Hollande really one of the four pillars of U.S national security now? Is Israel our security blanket, or is it maybe the other way around? And if America spends as much on defense as all other nations combined, and is sheltered behind the world’s largest oceans, why should we Americans be as frightened as Rubin appears to be?

Undeniably we face challenges. A debt-deficit crisis that could sink our economy. Al-Qaida in the Maghreb, Africa, Arabia, Iraq and Syria. North Korea’s nukes. A clash between China and Japan that drags us in. An unstable Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

But does Iran, a Shia island in a Sunni sea, a Persian-dominated land where half the population is non-Persian, a country whose major exports, once we get past fossil fuels, are pistachio nuts, carpets and caviar, really pose the greatest national security threat to the world’s greatest nation?

We outlasted the evil empire of Lenin and Stalin that held captive a billion people for 45 years of Cold War, and we are frightened by a rickety theocracy ruled by an old ayatollah?

Rubin’s blog may be the Post‘s idea of conservatism. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t recognize it.

rprprs
02-26-2013, 03:11 AM
I like and respect Pat. But why can't he just once get it completely correct without veering off into his own delusions?

Cowlesy
02-26-2013, 04:05 AM
Boom. Great column by PJB!

Brian Coulter
02-26-2013, 08:28 AM
I like and respect Pat. But why can't he just once get it completely correct without veering off into his own delusions?

What delusions would those be?

The delusion that Ms. Rubin is anything but an Israel firster who has absolutely no interest in the U.S. or its people besides its ability to provide her first allegiance with cannon fodder? I'm sure Pat's under no such delusion, he just expects us to be intelligent enough to read between the lines.

cajuncocoa
02-26-2013, 08:56 AM
great article, thanks for sharing!

acptulsa
02-26-2013, 09:47 AM
Rubin’s blog may be the Post‘s idea of conservatism. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t recognize it.

Infantile Conservatism. I think Pat Buchanan has invented a meme, here. A brilliant one.

Neocon may have become a dirty word. But Infantile Conservatism is so very much more descriptive of the blatant, rampant, downright ridiculous fearmongering and the insistence on blind patriotism without a trace of self-examination or self-reflection. We really ought to turn it into a household phrase.

AuH20
02-26-2013, 10:08 AM
Only someone like PJB could write an article like this smashing the popular memes to dust.

COpatriot
02-26-2013, 10:30 AM
Infantile Conservatism. I think Pat Buchanan has invented a meme, here. A brilliant one.

Neocon may have become a dirty word. But Infantile Conservatism is so very much more descriptive of the blatant, rampant, downright ridiculous fearmongering and the insistence on blind patriotism without a trace of self-examination or self-reflection. We really ought to turn it into a household phrase.
I agree 100%. I think we need to officially adopt "infantile conservative" to replace "neocon" which has been so overused that it has lost its meaning somewhat.

COpatriot
02-26-2013, 10:31 AM
...

acptulsa
02-26-2013, 12:17 PM
Bump for properly defining the infants.

Conservatism used to mean courage, principle and self-reliance. Now, at least as far as the Mainstream Mafia is concerned (and not just the 'liberal media', but Fox too) it means being a big baby. 'Oooh, I have to send my Big Brother the defense department to beat somebody up because I'm skeered they might slap me if I don't!! Oooh I have to have my Big Brother run everything because I'm scared my stocks will go down if I don't (never mind the more I have Big Brother bail them out the more those stocks do go down).'

Time to tell the truth about it.

cajuncocoa
02-26-2013, 12:25 PM
http://s8.postimage.org/bqjv08ws5/Iran.jpg

FSP-Rebel
02-26-2013, 12:46 PM
http://s8.postimage.org/bqjv08ws5/Iran.jpg
lmao

The title had me thinking erectile dysfunction for some reason. Great article and we should definitely run with the IC terminology in our arsenal.

anaconda
02-26-2013, 02:08 PM
veering off into his own delusions?

What are his own delusions in this piece?

anaconda
02-26-2013, 02:10 PM
Buchanan simply rocks.

Buchanan for Secretary of State beginning January 2017.

(just one thing however: how does 100,000 dead Iraqis equate to 500,000 widows and orphans? Each dead Iraqi would have to have been a male and married with three children for the math to out work on this)

anaconda
02-26-2013, 02:22 PM
Infantile Conservatism. I think Pat Buchanan has invented a meme, here. A brilliant one.


Krauthammer, Kristol, McCain, and Lindsey can be the next recipients of this soon-to-be viral term.

anaconda
02-26-2013, 02:27 PM
Time to tell the truth about it.

But of course the truth is that the neocons aren't actually "afraid." They are simply trying to sell a meme to the public so that they can steal resources from abroad and destabilize the nation states into a global collective. At some point the "truth telling" needs to incorporate this into a normalized national dialog. Perhaps the domino after that needs to be the Council On Foreign Relations. These are some big fish to fry.

acptulsa
02-26-2013, 05:42 PM
No, the necons aren't afraid. They know better. This is the neocons:


http://s8.postimage.org/bqjv08ws5/Iran.jpg

That said, the neocons are doing everything they can think of to ensure that we're afraid. They want us scared, they have always wanted us scared, and considering how completely they sold their souls to the Military Industrial Complex, it isn't at all hard to determine why they're such fearmongers.

Cowlesy
02-26-2013, 05:45 PM
The funny thing is, he's not being appointed to Secretary of State, but Secretary of Defense. The second thing is, the media has portrayed him as this rabid isolationist, when he's probably about the same as a Robert Gates who the DC Elite loved.

acptulsa
02-26-2013, 07:44 PM
Rubin’s blog may be the Post‘s idea of conservatism. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t recognize it.

The rank and file Democrats of this nation get very little right. But you have to give them credit for one thing. The most frightening creature on the face of the Earth is a Beltway Neocon Republican. And none is more frightening than Cheney.

Infantile Conservatism. Cozying up to the biggest bully and letting him beat you because he can beat up the other bullies, so you're protected from them. Huh?

That's like saying if I'm going to be hit by a motor vehicle, I don't want to do it half way. Bring on the Mack Truck.

Cozy up with General Electric because you're afraid of Iran. Sucker!!

Patrick Henry
02-26-2013, 08:07 PM
I don't always agree with Buchanan, but no doubt this country would be in much better shape had he won. I voted for him. I love how he calmly and succinctly smashes the "popular memes to dust" like AuH20 said. Nobody does it quite like Pat.

rprprs
02-26-2013, 08:51 PM
What delusions would those be?

The delusion that Ms. Rubin is anything but an Israel firster who has absolutely no interest in the U.S. or its people besides its ability to provide her first allegiance with cannon fodder? I'm sure Pat's under no such delusion, he just expects us to be intelligent enough to read between the lines.

Of course not!
As I said, I have respect for Pat and his criticism of Rubin in this piece is spot on. I am in complete agreement and take no issue with it at all.

I, also, believe that I am among those intelligent enough to "read between the lines", but don't believe that one really needs to do that here in order to comprehend Pat's argument or Rubin's failure. In fact, I believe that it is when one does "read between the lines" that problems arise in this and other articles penned by Buchanan. Even on these boards Pat has often been criticized for his perceived "nationalism", "ethnocentrism", etc. Admittedly, those don't appear here, but I was simply trying to express my dismay that he often "spoils" otherwise brilliant articles by going just a step too far in one direction or another.

That said, perhaps I should have chosen the word 'illusions', rather than 'delusions' (Though that's a fine line, indeed.)

Let's just jump to his conclusion here as an example:

Rubin’s blog may be the Post‘s idea of conservatism. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t recognize it.
What do you suppose the average reader or establishment 'conservative' hears when they read between those lines?
Maybe I'm being too 'picky', but to me that reads like a contrast between the false/"infantile" conservatism of Rubin and the "TRUE?" conservatism of Reagan.

Would you (or Ron Paul) have made that comparison? And doesn't that conclusion detract from an otherwise splendid article?

I in no way meant to bash Buchanan. I just can't help but wish he would sometimes stop while he's ahead.

acptulsa
02-26-2013, 09:33 PM
I in no way meant to bash Buchanan. I just can't help but wish he would sometimes stop while he's ahead.


We outlasted the evil empire of Lenin and Stalin that held captive a billion people for 45 years of Cold War, and we are frightened by a rickety theocracy ruled by an old ayatollah?

Well, that is much more the meat of the matter than the ending he did use. It is not, however, as strong an ending as the wrap up he did use. When you get paid to write, sometimes style does trump content. It would be nice if we could all combine brilliant content and brilliant style every single time. But, unfortunately, it don't quite work that way.

And regardless of whether I would invoke Reagan, or Ron Paul would invoke Reagan, or even whether Reagan was properly conservative or not, Reagan knew how to use conservatism to make the sale. And he didn't make the sale by painting conservatives as, or by trying to make conservatives into, big assed scaredey-cat babies.

heavenlyboy34
02-26-2013, 10:01 PM
We outlasted the evil empire of Lenin and Stalin that held captive a billion people for 45 years of Cold War
The old СССР was never stable enough to last anyway. And the Soviets defeated the Nazis in their own backyard. I can assure you that fighting that war was no help to the Soviets at all. This, like all Buchanan pieces I've read, is hit and miss. Not enough hits to make it worth anything other than casual reading when bored.

BAllen
02-27-2013, 12:24 AM
PB would have made a fine President.

acptulsa
02-27-2013, 06:08 PM
What, infantile conservatism is too many syllables to be a meme?

Boogeyman conservatism? Scaredy cat conservatism? Cowering wimp conservatism? How about just wimpatism? Or coweratism?

There must be a more descriptive term for 'neocon' that can actually catch on.