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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by Gordon Francis Corbett
A Commentary On 18 November 1998, when Patrick Joseph Buchanan spoke to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, he may have blown his cover. The Council on Foreign Relations comprises very powerful people, many of whom work to subordinate our country to a one-world government. For years, Buchanan has written and spoken at length of the damage to our sovereignty, and of why we must never surrender it. The style of his speech to the Chicago C.F.R. would appeal far more to, say, Star Trek's "Dr. McCoy," than it would gratify its "Mr. Spock," if one may lend those fictional characters an intimate knowledge of our economic history. "Mr. Spock" and "Dr. McCoy" are nearly polar opposites. Except when practicing medicine, "Dr. McCoy" almost never makes himself think; therefore, his impulsive benevolence lets him solve few non-medical problems. He illustrates the perils of illogical thinking. The half-human, half-Vulcan "Mr. Spock" almost always makes himself think; therefore, his habitually rigorous logic lets him solve many problems. He illustrates the benefits of logical thinking. So, when he sees that Buchanan's speech exudes an impulsive patriotism, my "Mr. Spock" first would analyze the speech. Second, he would consider its audience. Then, he would juxtapose them and murmur: "Fascinating." Although once he advocated free trade, today Mr. Buchanan speaks for economic protection. He wants the government to "protect" domestic industry with tariffs that give American producers an advantage. He adduces for that stratagem some historical facts, but he draws some inferences that are false. And, he omits facts that could lead to other conclusions. Our decline in real wages he ascribes to free trade, instead of costly taxes and rules. Our decline in production he ascribes to free trade, instead of letting unions set wages and giving companies tax breaks for moving abroad. And, our economic growth in the last century he ascribes to protective tariffs, instead of relative economic freedom. Worst of all, he neglects to mention that when Northern mill-owners had Congress pass tariffs against British cloth, they sparked our War Between the States. After delineating these and other flaws in Mr. Buchanan's historical and economic etiology, my "Mr. Spock" would analyze his audience. Supposedly, none could have despised Buchanan more. They profit greatly from the games G. Edward Griffin described in his masterwork, "The Creature from Jekyll Island." Ostensibly, before his conversion to protectionism and since, Buchanan has fought to frustrate their ambitions. Before, he advocated free trade, among free peoples, living in free nations. Since, supposedly to protect the economic strength enabling our prosperity and fuelling our defense, he has pushed high tariffs. Buchanan attacks the diplomacy that created the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, known informally as NAFTA and GATT. Although Buchanan contends that these treaties brought free trade, the truth is that free trade has no rules. That is why it is free. Instead, NAFTA, GATT, and their enabling legislation subject our economy to United Nations regulations and give special benefits to selected companies. These agreements cost many American jobs. Rightly, Buchanan points out that while workers were being fired, well-connected businessmen were getting rich. Some of those businessmen were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. More importantly, so were some of the Federal officials who helped create NAFTA and GATT, and so were some of the Representatives and Senators who passed them. This picture would make my "Mr. Spock" ask two questions. The first is why Buchanan would address people who have hurt so many American workers. The second is why the Council on Foreign Relations would hear someone whose writings and speeches have attacked their one-world, back-room, "New World Order," elitism. I hypothesize that Mr. Buchanan spoke to this group because he has agreed to help them. If he should ever win the presidency, metaphorically, I expect an attempt to mount our Constitution in a trophy room in the C.F.R.'s headquarters. In short, I expect him to work for the goals toward which every president after Calvin Coolidge has striven. I believe that he has wanted to do that ever since he sat at the feet of Richard Nixon in 1968. And, like his mentor, he would have to do it dishonestly. To work dishonestly, Buchanan would have to be dishonest; and, if he is dishonest, his dishonesty must have produced evidence. I have two pieces. First, Buchanan worked as a speech-writer. A speech-writer's humor, facts, and rhetoric describe his speech's subject; but indirectly, they portray the employer who reads it. This is fraudulent. When an actor speaks his lines, his words reflect the craft of their scenarist. His audience knows that, and therefore, they realize that they cannot judge his character from his portrayal of a fictional person. They know that Mel Gibson is nothing like Hamlet. When someone using a ghost-written speech speaks his lines, his words reflect the craft of their "ghost." His audience does not know that, and as they listen, unconsciously, they measure his knowledge; they evaluate his eloquence; they assess his character. They do not know that they are assaying an image. Theodore Sorensen wrote almost all of John Kennedy's books and speeches. He also wrote Lyndon Johnson's first "State of the Union" address. When Johnson read it, he sounded like Kennedy because the same man had written for both. An honest person writes his own speeches. He describes his subject with humor, with facts, and with rhetoric he chooses. In the process, he creates an implicit portrait of himself. He chooses lines, colors, and style. What he shows depends on his skills, on his personality, and on what he wants to reveal. An implicit self-portrait can be honest without being candid. One may honestly hire a researcher. John Birch Society author Gary Allen hired researcher Sam Wells and told him what subjects he wanted to explore. Wells found appropriate sources and extracted pertinent data. Allen paid Wells and wove his facts into the articles he wrote for "American Opinion." Shortly before his death, Gary Allen formally acknowledged Sam Wells as his researcher. That is honesty. Second, Buchanan wrote speeches for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. In 1972, Representative John G. Schmitz ran for president with the American Party. He spoke to a John Birch Society seminar at the Hollywood Palladium. I attended the meeting and bought the album. Schmitz said that President Richard Nixon had quietly pushed a bill that would have paid poor mothers' nursery costs. Conservative activists discovered it and raised Cain. When the heat rose too high, Nixon withdrew his support, and, said Schmitz, he had "Pat Buchanan," a name I had never heard before, "write a pretty good conservative speech" to denounce it. That vignette reveals. Before I discovered libertarianism, I was a Goldwater Republican. We Goldwater people did not associate with the Rockefeller folks, because, like Democrats, they were liberals. If Buchanan had been a conservative, he would not have thought of working for Nixon, because Nixon was a Rockefeller Republican. (Goldwater himself did support Nixon, but that only shows how much Goldwater would abjure his ostensible principles.) Buchanan worked for President Nixon and for President Reagan. As California's governor, Ronald Reagan had worked little to restore liberties lost under his liberal predecessors, but few seemed to notice. How did Ronald Wilson Reagan become California's governor? Reagan was an excellent actor who found himself needing a new career, and who found it with General Electric. To build their workers' morale, General Electric's management asked him to visit their plants and to talk to their workers about Hollywood. Often, the workers asked him about the Hollywood Reds. He told them what he had seen and done, but to give better answers, he began studying Communism. To answer questions about other political subjects, he began studying current events. Gradually, from a mosaic of magazine and newspaper clippings, he assembled his own speeches. As General Electric's corporate brass were conservative, so Reagan's speeches were conservative; and, as he learned more facts, he learned to use them more effectively. His speeches gradually became "Encroaching Governmental Controls," otherwise known as "The Speech." Liberals hated the part that eviscerated the Tennessee Valley Authority. He cut that section from a shorter version he gave for Barry Goldwater in 1964, which he called, "A Time for Choosing." That speech elicited many badly needed votes and donations. Republicans began asking him to run for Governor of California against Edmund G. (Pat) Brown. In 1966, he ran and won. In his inaugural address, he said that he was going to "squeeze, and cut, and trim" to reduce California's tax burden. So, naturally, he backed an enormous tax increase. That set a pattern: Ronald Reagan kept few campaign promises. Moreover, he withheld aid from causes that could have expected help from a generic "Governor Conservative": private property owners' rights, gun owners' rights, state governments' freedom from Federal encroachment, and local governments' freedom from joining "regional" governments. Instead, he kept giving those marvellous speeches. He talked about student unrest, the Black Panthers, and other subjects that caught the public eye; but, when he encountered hard issues involving freedom, he did not act like a philosophic brother of Ayn Rand, or even of Howard Phillips. So, what attracted Buchanan to Reagan? Worst of all, Buchanan kept serving these men after their betrayals: President Nixon's de facto recognition of Red China and his imposition of wage and price controls; and, President Reagan's studied refusal meaningfully to punish the Soviet Union after they murdered KAL 007. If you suppose that Buchanan has always been a conservative, the foregoing picture makes no sense. It resembles Adolf Eichmann's chanting Jewish prayers, Bill Clinton's joining The John Birch Society, or Dennis Rodman's forsaking women's dresses. Now, imagine that Buchanan has always been a Rockefeller Republican who uses conservative ideas for liberal goals. Imagine that he was offered, and has accepted, introductions to people whose money and influence could put him in the White House. Imagine these things, and his appearance before Chicago's Council on Foreign Relations suddenly makes sense. Because Buchanan's remarks before the Chicago C.F.R. clash with that organization's general philosophy, my "Mr. Spock" might ask whether my inferences lack evidence. He would note that I give far more weight to the Chicago C.F.R.'s having invited Buchanan to speak, than I do to what he said. My "Mr. Spock" could suggest that a Buchanan genuinely patriotic, but economically misguided, may simply have flouted his audience. That would mean ascribing to Buchanan the bluntness that, uh, "graces" yours truly. He is too shrewd and too ambitious for that. So was Richard Nixon, who frequently camouflaged secret deals with public words. Why would Buchanan go to such trouble? Why would he not telephone some Chicago C.F.R. members, visit them, and make his deals? Why would he appear publicly to deliver a speech that neither speaker nor audience believed? For these questions, I have no answers; nor can I say why Richard Nixon wrote his now-infamous article recommending that we recognize Red China in the October 1967 issue of the C.F.R. journal, "Foreign Affairs." Writing that article was risky. If we conservatives [as I was then] had known about that article, we would have thought that Richard Nixon was just like Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, or Nelson Rockefeller. Many fewer people would have given far fewer dollars. Patrick Joseph Buchanan's speech closes the circle that began with Richard Milhous Nixon's article. It should alert everyone who loves liberty. We must listen for verbal inconsistencies. We must watch for discrepancies between his words and his actions. We must never trust him. If I have read him aright, he believes that an old joke is true. "Sincerity is everything," said George Burns. "If you can fake that, you have got it made."
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