Let’s build a statue honoring Pat Buchanan



The life of an unheeded prophet rarely ends in comfort and often courts danger. Pat Buchanan endured both with the resolve of a warrior. As the most prominent paleoconservative in American politics, Buchanan stood so far ahead of his time that today’s MAGA agenda looks like a photocopy of his 1992 presidential campaign platform. From the culture war to working-class economics and immigration, Buchanan served as the American Cassandra — right about nearly every major question yet scorned by Republican elites.

Republican pundits and politicians dismissed him as a bigot, a racist, an anti-Semite — even likening him to a Nazi. Many of the loudest voices came from within his own party. But Buchanan never bent. He held the line. Decades later, nearly all his predictions have come true. He kept the torch of paleoconservatism burning when no one else would — and that torch lit the fire of the MAGA movement.

Buchanan took on the thankless task of warning his party and his country about the real dangers ahead, long before anyone in power was ready to listen.

Born in 1938 in Washington, D.C., Buchanan rose to prominence as a newspaper columnist and editor before joining President Richard Nixon’s White House as a speechwriter and political strategist. He later became a fixture on TV with shows like “Crossfire” and “The McLaughlin Group” and did a second tour at the White House as Ronald Reagan’s communications director from 1985 to 1987.

Buchanan could have coasted on that résumé. He didn’t. Instead, he broke with the GOP’s managerial, globalist consensus and challenged it head-on. In 1992, he ran against George H.W. Bush in the Republican primary, furious over the president’s betrayal of his “no new taxes” pledge. But Buchanan’s campaign wasn’t just about tax policy. He warned against endless foreign wars, the abandonment of Christianity, the hollowing out of American industry, and the long-term consequences of mass migration.

In his famous “culture war” speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan didn’t just warn Republicans. He challenged the entire direction of the American ruling class.

“My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are,” he said. “It is about what we believe and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”

After two more failed presidential bids, Buchanan returned to writing and commentary. He published several influential books, including “The Death of the West” and “Suicide of a Superpower,” launched the American Conservative, and penned columns for VDARE. At every turn, he tackled controversial topics — foreign intervention, demographic transformation, and the destruction of the American middle class. While neoconservatives dominated Republican politics, Buchanan stood firm, laying the groundwork for the civil war now raging inside the GOP.

Most voters aren’t driven by ideology. They want a politics that serves their families, communities, and country. Conservatism shouldn’t revolve around abstractions but should exist to preserve a way of life. Despite the “conservative” label, Republican leadership made clear it cared only about cutting taxes and waging endless wars.

Then came Donald Trump, who bulldozed the GOP establishment by campaigning to secure the border, protect American workers, and end the forever wars. Trump won on Buchanan’s platform.

As Millennial and Gen Z conservatives came of age under Trump, many sought intellectual roots for the movement. They found them in the paleoconservatives: Paul Gottfried, Samuel Francis, and, most of all, Pat Buchanan. Clips of Buchanan’s speeches and passages from his books now go viral across social media, revealing a man who diagnosed America’s decline with uncanny foresight. He has become, retroactively, the elder statesman of the New Right — an inspiration to a generation of conservatives eager to challenge the party line and reclaim their country.

Buchanan’s return to prominence hasn’t gone unnoticed by establishment conservatives or the legacy press. Neoconservatives have taken to calling Trump supporters the “Buchanan right” — a clumsy insult aimed at discrediting the movement by association. The Atlantic recently ran a hit piece titled “The Godfather of the Woke Right,” recycling the slur peddled by James Lindsay. The article begrudgingly acknowledged “Suicide of a Superpower” as a formative text for the MAGA right but framed this influence as toxic — an engine of xenophobia and racism.

In a time when the GOP sold out to neoconservative globalism, Buchanan held the line. He took on the thankless task of warning his party and his country about the real dangers ahead — mass migration, national decline, foreign entanglements — long before anyone in power was ready to listen. For his efforts, he was ridiculed, condemned, and cast aside.

That must never happen again. We won’t let it happen again. The term “Buchanan right” shouldn’t be a smear — it should be a badge of honor.

While the left tears down statues of America’s founders, the right should start building. We must erect monuments to the men who stood firm when it mattered most. The first should be Pat Buchanan. We can no longer elect him president — but we can honor him now, while he’s still here to see it. Let’s build the monument he deserves — one that pays tribute to the man who carried the torch through the wilderness and lit the way for the movement that would Make America Great Again.

Twisting the truth: Wikipedia’s ongoing misinformation war



For over a decade, I have argued with Wikipedia curators about the biographical sketch covering my life and work. Each time a surrogate or I correct false or slanderous details, the misinformation reappears within weeks — often with even greater distortions. Friends who have helped me in this thankless effort suggest giving up, believing that no matter how many corrections we make, the falsehoods will always reappear.

Christopher Rufo has assured me that anyone paying attention knows Wikipedia leans left and misrepresents those with views deemed unacceptable. However, after decades of acquiring unfriendly critics, I doubt most readers will dismiss Wikipedia’s misrepresentations in my case.

One position I will never conceal is my contempt for peddlers of what George Orwell called 'smelly little orthodoxies.' One can’t despise such people enough.

I have also observed Wikipedia’s double standard in editing biographical sketches. Friends with technical expertise have spent weeks trying to correct inaccurate statements about me. Each time, they must provide excessive documentation and navigate endless disputes before even minor corrections are approved. No matter how often they succeed, new distortions inevitably replace the old ones.

When left-leaning contributors make unsubstantiated claims about figures they associate with the political “dark side,” those assertions often go unchecked. The most recent version of my Wikipedia entry falsely states that I oppose Israel’s existence. I have never expressed any sentiment remotely resembling that.

While I have criticized AIPAC for unfairly attacking Israel’s critics, I have consistently defended Israel’s right to protect itself. Yet my biographer offers flimsy evidence to suggest otherwise. One supposed indicator is my past friendship with the late Murray Rothbard, who was explicitly anti-Zionist. But why assume I shared all his views, including his stance on Israel?

Another so-called proof is that I once wrote a review essay for the American Conservative about Elmer Berger, a Reform rabbi critical of Israel’s founding as a Jewish state. Although I described Berger’s position as unrealistic, I apparently didn’t denounce him strongly enough to satisfy those eager to paint me as anti-Israel.

Guilt by association

Wikipedia contributors also attempt to discredit me by linking me to white nationalism. They note that I spoke at an American Renaissance conference in the 1990s but fail to mention that my remarks focused solely on my research on American conservatism — without endorsing white nationalism in any form.

The entry also highlights my past acquaintance with Richard Spencer, though that relationship largely predated his public embrace of white nationalism. Even more tenuously, it refers to an attack from the ADF against an organization I once led, claiming it was “friendly” to white racists. However, even the Wikipedia entry admits that our group was never identified as inherently racist.

These misrepresentations follow a familiar pattern. When leftist editors shape a narrative, they demand exhaustive proof to correct errors. Meanwhile, baseless smears against those they oppose remain unchallenged.

The Wikipedia entry omits that I spent years writing for leftist magazines and that members of the conservative establishment once attacked me as a “right-wing Marxist.” Over decades, I have engaged with a wide range of political groups — both right and left — but rarely with establishments. My work does not focus on race, as it is not my field of study. Instead, my scholarship examines European and American political movements.

Despite this, Wikipedia and Tablet's Jacob Siegel claim that I have written extensively on Latin fascism and seek to create a “post-fascist” imitation of it for the present age. Nothing in my research on changing concepts of fascism supports that bizarre conclusion. I have consistently argued that fascism belonged to a past historical era and should be viewed as an archaic, failed political model.

Opposite of reality

One of the weirdest, most glaring errors about my work appears not in Wikipedia’s biography but in its discussion of “cultural Marxism” as a supposed Jewish conspiracy. There, I am falsely listed as a major source of this ugly, pervasive, anti-Semitic accusation — an assertion that conveniently aligns with the misleading portrayal of me in my biographical sketch.

This charge is entirely baseless. Not only have I never held the views Wikipedia attributes to me, but my books explicitly reject them. The reality is the opposite of what my critics claim.

I have argued that critical theory’s success in the United States stems from its compatibility with the country’s evolution into a managerial state engaged in social engineering. I have also repeatedly noted that today’s woke ideology — promoted by the media, educators, and public administrators — is far more radical and far less insightful than anything the Frankfurt School theorists proposed. Compared to modern woke activists and even some so-called conservatives, early Frankfurt School thinkers could be considered homophobic and sexist.

Wikipedia also claims that Telos, originally a defender of critical theory, was a legitimate leftist magazine until I supposedly took control and transformed it into a “far-right” publication. The entry falsely states, “Under Gottfried’s tenure, Telos became far-right in its outlook.” In reality, I never served as the magazine’s editor in chief; Paul Piccone held that role. I was one of many contributors on the editorial board and played only a minor role in the publication’s engagement with European right-wing thought.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Telos began exploring critiques of centralized managerial regimes, including perspectives from “decentralist” thinkers on the right. This shift was not the result of my supposed influence but rather part of a broader intellectual evolution within the publication.

Of course, I have no expectation that Wikipedia will ever portray me fairly, but I hope others won’t judge me based on its fabrications. One position I will never conceal is my contempt for those who defame me and others like them — peddlers of what George Orwell aptly called “smelly little orthodoxies.” One can’t despise such people enough.

No, There Are No True Moderates In The West Bank Or Gaza

The only path forward is for Israel to dismantle Hamas terrorists and let the critics say whatever they want.

‘The American Conservative’ Tried To Warn Us

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, The American Conservative has published an anthology, 'Main Street Conservatism,' that demonstrates the magazine's remarkable prescience during a period where movement conservatives foundered.