Nov 26^th

Pat Buchanan has a column today and he takes a very predictable view of the recent carnage in Paris. He wants to put it all in perspective by which he means the death toll isn’t all that bad and the terror created is disproportionate to the bloodshed.

To this end he reminds us of the average loss of life by the French Army over the four years of the First World War. He cites the death toll of 130 from the Isil attack and he reminds us that France lost an average of 850 soldiers a day for the 51 months of that war. “But that was another country than todays.” It was indeed and France executed 918 soldiers for cowardice, a fact Buchanan fails to mention. He goes on to give the daily death toll in our Civil War. The comparison with the slaughter in Paris is silly. These wars had well-armed combatants on both sides. The ISIL attack in Paris had unarmed civilians ambushed by a few heavily armed assailants. Where was the ambushing of Parisian civilians by the Germans in either World War?

Then he presents this gem: “Russia lost twice as many people on that airliner blown up over Sinai as died in France. But Russia and Vladimir Putin do not appear to be terrorized.” First: If they were terrorized no one would know about it because Putin has completes control of the Russian media; Second: The terrorist incident happened 3 thousand kilometers from Russia, not on the streets of Moscow.

In spite of his curious addiction to odd comparison Buchanan makes a valid point: ISIL’s campaign has successfully terrorized the West and that is exactly what they wanted to do. We have even seen a rise in the jingoism we hear from Trump who is finally called a fascist by several prominent Republicans including Max Boot, Steve Deace, both right wing radio hosts, and Jeb Bush. More ISIL attacks, particularly if they are in this country, will push Trump and others on the far right to embrace a still more exclusionary political position. Buchanan would love that!

It wouldn’t be a Buchanan column if he didn’t take the opportunity to denigrate the absence of religious enthusiasm on the part of someone. He claims that, “The strength of ISIS, of the Islamist militants, of those willing to die to drive the “Crusaders” out of their lands,...lies in the emptiness in the soul of Western Man. They have repudiated their cradle faith Christianity…embraced La Dolce Vita, materialism and hedonism…turned their back on patriotism to celebrate diversity and globalism.” Oh, come now! Does he really want to bash materialism as well as diversity? How would this country’s economy survive without hucksters persuading one and all to buy, buy, buy! Buchanan will lose his chops as a Nixon conservative if he keeps this up.