To the Editor:

My colleagues and I at National Review have the greatest regard for Norman Podhoretz and COMMENTARY. They have had a profound and beneficial impact on the American conservative movement. And I generally find myself in warm agreement with Mr. Podhoretz personally.

So I am naturally sorry to find myself on the opposite side of the barricades to Mr. Podhoretz. But having read his essay, “Buchanan and the Conservative Crackup” [May], with some care, I can only conclude that the reports of my crackup have been greatly exaggerated.

Mr. Podhoretz argues that I persuaded William F. Buckley, Jr. personally and National Review corporatively to endorse Patrick J. Buchanan in New Hampshire, despite having pronounced Buchanan to be an anti-Semite only a month previously, in pursuit of the “fantasy” of a conservative presidential candidate against President Bush, and with nothing to show for it in the end but a divided conservative movement tempted toward extremism. Quite a bill of particulars.

I am tempted not to rebut Mr. Podhoretz’s description of me as the Iago of conservatism, first persuading Buckley to endorse Buchanan and then, for consistency’s sake, cajoling him into withdrawing his earlier charge of anti-Semitism. It is an extremely flattering theory but one, alas, built upon shaky foundations.

First, despite Mr. Podhoretz’s insistence upon it, Buckley had never alleged that Buchanan was anti-Semitic. The charge was the lesser one that “what he said and did during the period [of the Gulf crisis] amounted to anti-Semitism. . . .” Again, pace Mr. Podhoretz, Buckley had communicated his own private guess that Buchanan was not anti-Semitic in that part of the sentence represented by dots in Mr. Podhoretz’s quotation: “. . . whatever it was that drove him to say and do it: most probably, an iconoclastic temperament.” This judgment is entirely in harmony with National Review’s editorial statement that “although Mr. Buchanan is not anti-Semitic, he behaved mischievously in alleging that support for the Gulf War was confined to Israel and its amen corner among neoconservatives and foolishly in failing to apologize for this when challenged”; with what I and others at the magazine have written under our own bylines; and with the advice given by the editors of National Review to its readers as the primary campaign wore on.

We all agreed to give a tactical endorsement of Pat Buchanan in the New Hampshire, “Super Tuesday,” and Michigan primaries. We all qualified even that endorsement with strong statements of disagreement with him over trade and foreign policy. We all called upon him to apologize for those remarks that had given rise to allegations of anti-Semitism. And we all said very plainly, as Mr. Podhoretz concedes, that we would not have given an endorsement of Buchanan “if we had believed him to be anti-Semitic.” Since no diplomatic skill is required to secure agreement among like-minded people, it was not necessary for me to play Iago on this occasion. (I make no promises for the future.)

I realize that the distinction on which we relied in endorsing Buchanan—namely, the distinction between having written and said anti-Semitic things and being an anti-Semite—is not one that Mr. Podhoretz accepts. And, of course, if the writing and saying continue long enough, the distinction does indeed become unreal. But it is a distinction that is essential if we are not to drive men and women of good will out of public life for isolated mischief, overdone polemic, or even simple misjudgment. And it is a distinction that is widely accepted among participants in this debate. One of the most distinguished signatories to the letter objecting to National Review’s endorsement of Buchanan told me personally that he had signed it not because he believed Buchanan to be anti-Semitic, but as a warning that he mind his forensic manners.

That said, what were our positive reasons for endorsing Buchanan? For Mr. Podhoretz’s account of the calculations underlying the endorsement is not wholly accurate. Our first best hope was not, of course, that a Buchanan candidacy would drive Bush from the field, but that it would draw him to the Right. And with the sacking of John Frohnmayer of the National Endowment for the Arts and Bush’s apology for breaking his tax pledge, that is exactly what happened.

Mr. Podhoretz dismisses these concessions as “paltry.” It is not clear why. Frohnmayer’s defenestration and his replacement by the sensible Anne-Imelda Radice were symbolic resistance to a campaign of symbolic outrages. In office Radice is showing some courage in resisting grants to artists whose operating principle seems to be “I shock, therefore I am.” And Bush’s apology effectively reinstated his “no new taxes” pledge.

Apparently the reason Mr. Podhoretz distrusts such concessions is his belief that Bush, once safely reelected, will take his revenge on conservatives by reneging on them. By the test of experience, he has half a point, if not more. But the lesson of experience is not all on one side. Though eventually abrogated, the first tax pledge did at least buy time since it took Bush a full two years to wiggle out of it. And given the embarrassment that a second abrogation would entail, we might well get three years of lower taxes out of the apology that the Buchanan candidacy wrung from the President. Not enough, I grant you, but better than giving the President a free hand.

As for the notion that a Buchanan candidacy might draw other conservatives into the race by inflicting damage on Bush and revealing his electoral vulnerability, that was never a major reason behind our endorsement. For myself, I thought it possible but unlikely. In view of Buchanan’s early success and Perot’s emergence, however, was such a consideration really the outright “fantasy” that Mr. Podhoretz claims? If so, that was only because potential conservative leaders failed to read the runes of Bush’s unpopularity as accurately as did National Review.

No one can predict very easily how the political situation will look on November 3, let alone in January 1996 when the next primary season begins. But I believe that the prospects for harmonious relations among conservatives, and for a stronger conservative influence on politics as a whole, will be the better because National Review resisted the temptation to demonize Buchanan and drive him from respectable politics.

Certainly Buchanan invited criticism. And he received plenty from us. But to describe him as a fascist or an anti-Semite, in my view, went beyond the bounds of fairness or accuracy.

And such hyperbole risked driving not only Buchanan but also a substantial number of his supporters out of respectable conservatism and into either vengeful factionalism on the Republican Right or, worse, onto the farther shores of third-party extremism. In both cases, they would have been released from the restraints on rhetoric, policy, and activism that political respectability imposes; in the second, they would have formed a large pool of “wasted” votes, thus helping to put and keep liberal Democrats in power. I do not think that Mr. Podhoretz would welcome either eventuality.

If, on the other hand, we “maintain the unity and integrity of the conservative movement . . . and transform Buchanan from this year’s Wallace into one of several respectable conservative leaders for 1996” (if I may quote myself from last March), then conservatism will remain a potent political force. Of course, there will still be battles over its direction in the post-Reagan, post-Communist world. But in those battles I expect to be on the same side of the barricades as Mr. Podhoretz.

John O’Sullivan
National Review
New York City

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To the Editor:

I believe that Norman Podhoretz fails to address several issues which, to me and a lot of American voters, are quite important not only with regard to the election of 1992, but with regard to the future of America (and America’s relationship with Israel).

First, an argument could be made that Patrick J. Buchanan did everyone a service by knocking the nascent David Duke movement out of the running. By seizing on the four issues considered important by “bedrock America” (quotas, taxes, abortion, and gun control), Buchanan preempted Duke and gave voters a much more palatable choice, whether because they actually believed Buchanan had a chance to win the nomination, or because they wanted to send a message to Bush to get back on to the Reaganite reservation.

Second, concerning Israel, I am not here to defend Buchanan, but is he really more hostile than James Baker or George Bush? What I have noticed is that while . . . Bill Clinton has taken a position that could be characterized as “pro-Israel,” support for the Jewish state has not been strong in the current Democratic-controlled Congress. In fact, if we look at the last few elections, the Republican platforms always had a plank supporting Israel while the Democratic planks, as I recall, seemed to emphasize the “right of all peoples to self-determination” and other statements which suggest more support for the PLO than concern for the security of Israel. . . .

On the issue of paleoconservatives and neoconservatives, it has been my observation that so-called “conservatives” such as William J. Bennett are just recycled liberals; I saw a letter from Bennett defending a ban on “assault rifles” as being some sort of check on drug dealers, as if drug dealers buy their firearms legally. It is just this sort of fuzzy thinking that will keep Bennett and his type of social liberal out of the White House. I do not believe that Buchanan will make it to the presidency, but I do believe he has filled a very worthwhile function in the 1992 race for the White House.

Dennis E. Berger
North Miami Beach, Florida

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To the Editor:

In “Buchanan and the Conservative Crackup” Norman Podhoretz concludes, incorrectly, that the slogan “America First” has anti-Semitic connotations and that Patrick J. Buchanan represents flagitious conservatism. The truth, however, is quite different.

Call the America First Committee naive or an exercise in futility, but to suggest, as Mr. Podhoretz does, because of one infamous speech made by Charles Lindbergh, that the movement was made up of hatemongers is historically inaccurate. The movement was made up of progressives and Taft Republicans. Charles Beard and Norman Thomas were the rule, not the exception, unless William Benton, Oswald G. Villard, John L. Lewis, and Chester Bowles were secretly Coughlinites. Furthermore, if the America First movement was a sinister group, why weren’t Gerald Ford and John F. Kennedy, both of whom were members in 1941, vilified by the press and their opponents when they ran for President for having once belonged to such an organization? While the America First Committee was jejune in many ways, it . . . was only advocating the very same concept that FDR and Wendell Willkie campaigned on in 1940, namely, that Hitler’s war wasn’t America’s business—yet.

Secondly, Buchanan’s America First is hardly “isolationism.” He has been leading the charge for helping countries gain independence (such as Croatia), and condemning President Bush for maintaining the status quo. Buchanan has never once suggested that this country should retreat from its responsibilities in the world. Exhibit A in this regard is the speech he gave last April to the Daughters of the American Revolution, in which he said,

We will never turn our backs on the world. Because we Americans come from every continent, we want to travel the world. Because we are the greatest trading nation in history, we want peaceful commerce with all nations, and we want contact and communication, both cultural and diplomatic, with all the people of the planet.

Those who still believe Buchanan is advocating Fortress America need to take a cold shower.

Additionally, Buchanan’s position on trade needs some ventilation. . . . It strikes me as odd that Buchanan-bashers fail to note that he has called for eliminating institutions which hobble free trade, such as the Export-Import Bank and the Commodity Credit Corporation. Likewise, it is ironic that those who criticize Buchanan on trade do so by clinging to Reagan’s mantle—a mantle which has been defaced by more protectionist legislation than any other, unfortunately, in the last twenty years.

The fact of the matter is, Pat Buchanan is a mainstream conservative. When Irving Kristol first started saying America needs to start looking out for itself and defending the national interest, nobody in COMMENTARY denounced him as a Neanderthal isolationist. When congressional conservatives . . . criticized our immigration policy and demanded a curb on illegal immigration, the editors of COMMENTARY did not denounce them as “nativists.” And when President Reagan was enacting voluntary export restraints on Japanese cars, no conservative was barring him from the conservative movement or accusing him of pandering to the “darker strains of American conservatism.” Why, then, Mr. Podhoretz, does Pat Buchanan deserve this special treatment, the kind of treatment that was not extended to other conservatives when they enunciated or enacted the very theories Buchanan campaigned on?

Andrew J. Murphy
Memphis, Tennessee

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To the Editor:

In 1941 I was a fifteen-year old boy from an Irish-Catholic background living in New York City. I was just becoming interested in politics and remember the America First movement well because the families of two of my good friends were active in that cause.

I have no recollection of the anti-Semitic overtones in America First described in Norman Podhoretz’s article. The America First people I remember were not pro-German but anti-British, whatever the cost. They hated Britain for the measures it had taken to prevent Irish independence, especially the use of those police irregulars known as the “Black and Tans.”

I suppose you could make a case that anyone who was anti-British enough in 1941 to support a program that benefited Germany was in effect anti-Semitic, but we did not think of it that way.

John N. Buckley
Sioux City, Iowa

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To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz has given us a salutary statement of the facts about Patrick J. Buchanan. He also recognizes that Buchanan’s supporters on the whole did not share his more reprehensible views and supported him largely because the choice between two liberal candidates was unpalatable. Moreover, it is doubtful whether an (inconceivable) Buchanan presidency would be more hostile to Israel than Bush and Baker have already shown themselves to be—and will no doubt increasingly be, once past the hurdle of reelection. . . .

E. Badian
Cambridge, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

While I agree with nearly all of Norman Podhoretz’s assessment in “Buchanan and the Conservative Crackup,” I want to share a different perspective.

Two things. One, Patrick J. Buchanan did not make a “decision to throw his lot in with one of the darker strains of American conservatism.” As Irving Kristol has pointed out, these people are not what we have been accustomed to think of as conservatives; they are radical reactionaries. Two, I think that what Mr. Podhoretz calls “the fight now beginning for the soul of the conservative movement” is already over. The media, Left and Right (and National Review in particular), describe Buchanan and friends as conservative. So the word, as many of us have been accustomed to using it for the past 25 years or so (after we had to give up “liberal”), is now wholly corrupt, and we are no longer conservatives, neo- or otherwise. I am not quite sure what we are, but I know that we need a new vocabulary to distinguish us from those who now possess the word.

If the fight is indeed over, as I think it is, then it strikes me that there is an opportunity here for us now-former conservatives to define ourselves as what Midge Decter has said we are, and what I believe we are, namely, the Center. If liberals are the radical Left and conservatives are now the radical Right, then yes, precisely, we are the Center, the mainstream, the American realists who have nearly always been the Center. It may well be time to claim that ground, rejecting both the radical Right and the radical Left as we go about it, and realizing that just now the radical Right, the conservatives, need the most attention because as a public service we should make sure that they remain utterly disreputable.

I have talked to many people who are bemoaning “the schism,” “the split,” whatever, but I really find it quite difficult to be depressed about it because we who are no longer conservatives wound up with all the brains. Of course Buchanan is bad news, but Mr. Podhoretz is quite correct in saying he has not much more real support than David Duke; and the crazies will be ever with us, so we simply need to be vigilant about them, as we have always been. Mr. Podhoretz is also correct that what is now the conservative movement will be “dragged back into a marginal sectarian status with very little appeal to anyone outside its own fever swamps.” That’s fine, let Buchanan lead the charge into . . . oblivion. But that is not necessarily a disaster—it may be a success, because, as Mr. Podhoretz notes, the American people seem to have rejected Buchanan as one of the crazies.

The real disaster would be our not dissociating ourselves very forcefully from the Buchanan-style conservatives and claiming the Center. (We should not get into a long fight over who gets to own a word, the way we did years ago over the word “liberal.” That battle is already over and we will only marginalize ourselves instead of the crazies if we waste energy rehearsing it.) We are somewhat unaccustomed to the kind of activity that is necessary because we have defended ourselves for so long, functioning as a counterweight to the Left. But the Left is truly bankrupt (and the Center knows it), and what is now called the conservative Right is equally bankrupt. I believe that leaves us in charge. So it’s time for offense, not defense, and now may be the time, I think, to claim the Center.

Elizabeth B. Lurie
W.H. Brady Foundation
Maggie Valley, North Carolina

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To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz includes a fairly accurate analysis of the foolishness with which many otherwise rational American conservatives responded to the candidacy of Patrick J. Buchanan. That they, in essence, abandoned principle because of their distaste for the policies of the Bush administration hardly justified backing a candidate who was running to seize and fundamentally reshape the movement of which they are a part.

Buchanan has been a conservative hero to millions for years because of his gleeful willingness publicly to take on the political enemies of conservatism, but he has never really been a part of what has come over the years to be known as the conservative “movement.” In fact, his recent writings and his campaign rhetoric represent a conscious repudiation of the movement itself and the political conservatism of William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan, as well as of the policies of the Bush administration.

Buchanan proudly calls himself a “conservative of the heart,” but the modern conservative movement is a “conservatism of the head,” carefully nurtured over the years by the likes of Buckley, the late Frank Meyer, and a score of economists and philosophers dedicated to free economics, the primacy of the individual, and a limited state at home, coupled with a willingness to side with those yearning for these same things abroad. It is this conservatism that Buchanan rejects in favor of isolationism, protectionism, and a curious sort of nativism that has been rejected by mainstream conservatives for decades.

Buchanan is really what a friend of his once described as a “street-corner conservative,” one who never developed beyond the values and prejudices of his old Washington, D.C. neighborhood. He has always known what he doesn’t like and has spent most of his time seeking scapegoats for the problems of modern America. He is bright and quick, but his reading and thinking have been more to gather information with which to attack his enemies than to develop a sensible philosophy of his own. As a result, he has simply adopted old, tired, and wrong-headed ideas that few thinking conservatives would support on their merits.

That they did so implicitly by backing a candidacy which gave currency to those ideas reflects badly on their own judgment. The leaders of a political movement based on ideas and principles rather than a simple desire for power have, it seems to me, an obligation to demand that those they support remain true to those ideas and principles. This is something that many conservatives who ought to know better forgot in their desire to find a way to punish a President they don’t like.

To hear some of them justify their action by claiming either that Buchanan does not really believe what he says, or that his views on core economic, social, and foreign-policy issues are beside the point, would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Your readers may be interested to know that on the merits, at least, the average conservative activist has shown somewhat better judgment than the average conservative leader. At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., nearly 1,000 attendees were asked to state a preference between Bush and Buchanan and to say whether they agreed with Buchanan’s foreign, immigration, and trade policies. Buchanan beat Bush narrowly (after all, these people are as upset by Bush as their leaders), but his policies were rejected across the board, with more than 60 percent rejecting his views on foreign policy and trade.

This is good news for those of us who hope and believe that when Buchanan is forced to defend his own positions without the luxury of playing off George Bush, he will encounter far tougher sledding.

David A. Keene
Chairman, American Conservative Union
Washington, D.C.

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To the Editor:

Some time ago, Patrick J. Buchanan cast doubt on one aspect . . . of the Holocaust by claiming in an article that one could not kill people with the exhaust from diesel engines, which was used in the gas chambers at Treblinka. He later claimed in a television interview with David Frost that what he had really meant was that diesel exhaust would not poison you, but it did displace the oxygen.

Buchanan was being dishonest, of course, since his whole point had been that diesel exhaust was not lethal, not that he disputed the exact mechanism of death. But he was also incorrect. According to an article in the Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety, diesel exhaust contains carbon monoxide. A graph accompanying the article shows that as the monoxide rises, the oxygen falls.

These data were hard to find and I pass them on to your readers so that their opinions, unlike Buchanan’s, may be factually based. . . .

David C. Stolinsky
Los Angeles, California

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To the Editor:

. . . Having grown up close to politics in the American Southwest, where the suburban and/or Babbitt form of anti-Semitism was well-established—one might say, indigenous—I know that this mindless prejudice survives at both the redneck and the blueblood (Gore Vidal) ends of the American social spectrum and in some quarters of the American media, sometimes disguised as fulminations against the “excesses” of Israel. Being familiar with Patrick J. Buchanan’s coarse and mediocre journalism, and having seen something of his Le Pen-like style on television, I felt no surprise at his tactical use during that spoiling campaign of what Hannah Arendt once called an outrage to common sense.

It seems an extraordinary luxury—an American luxury—to be able to argue about this phenomenon in terms of abstract principle, applying a pro-and-con exegetic technique to journalistic texts and electoral speeches. The casuistry of some who defend Buchanan and his friends in this exchange is not very reassuring from the standpoint of an American in Europe; it appears to suggest that for Americans at home anti-Semitism is, despite recent history and current events across the Atlantic, a matter which can safely be fogged by the subtleties of intellectual debate. It evokes the official and popular failure of Americans to take seriously what was happening in 1930’s Europe—and, more grimly, the refusal of many who were informed of it to care very actively. . . . I remember only too well that it was a Japanese attack—not Hitler—which finally provoked Americans to action.

Herb Greer
Manchester, England

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To the Editor:

Long before the end of the cold war and the departure of Ronald Reagan, Patrick J. Buchanan gave notice to the conservative movement that his thinking was different from that of all patriotic Americans who were concerned about the danger that the terrorist states of the Middle East, both Islamic and secular, represent to the entire civilized world. . . .

When Iran passed its death sentence upon Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, Buchanan wrote two columns in the New York Post (February 18, 1989 and April 21, 1990) which roundly condemned Rushdie for incurring the Islamic world’s wrath. While I no longer have the 1989 column, the 1990 one equates people who would defend Rushdie with flag burners, creators of obscene art, and even child pornographers! Buchanan claimed that all of these evil people were joined in an unholy alliance to “divide their common enemy, the believers in a transcendental God.”. . .

Yet ever since Arab terrorists massacred Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, the world should have been on notice that it is in mortal danger from the terrorist kingdoms of the Middle East. These days, Islamic fundamentalism is steamrolling across Africa and casting its eye upon the newly-freed republics of Soviet Central Asia. The world is in mortal danger that the children of Khomeini could step into the power vacuum created by the Soviet Union’s demise. . . .

As Mr. Podhoretz pointed out, people voting for Buchanan mainly did so as a protest. They did not understand the horrible mistake they were making.

Wallington M. Simpson, Jr.
Pomona, New York

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To the Editor:

May I add a postscript to Norman Podhoretz’s “Open Letter to William F. Buckley, Jr.” [“What Is Anti-Semitism?,” February] and his follow-up on Patrick J. Buchanan?

One cannot read any of Buckley’s prolific writings . . . without finding an eloquent turn of phrase, or a metaphor or symbol that captivates one’s attention. In truth, a wordsmith. Hence, one wonders whether he is being an apologist in describing as only “clumsy forensic manners” Buchanan’s vicious comment, prior to the allied attack on Iraq, that “only two groups, the Israel Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States, are beating the drums for war in the Middle East.” Should this comment not, in fact, have rightfully been classified as unadulterated anti-Semitism? To conclude that such and similar remarks by Buchanan on national television are “less than genocidal offenses” may be acceptable to those unaware that words have consequences, but not to someone like Buckley who, in an editorial in National Review of July 4, 1986, recorded the historical truth that arose from the ashes of the Holocaust, namely, that “no society, however civilized its pedigree, can complacently be trusted to desist from the most ferocious human activity: genocide.”

Again, why would anyone—let alone Buckley—ever expect the likes of a Joseph Sobran or a Buchanan, neither of whom apparently is governed by “right reason,” to acknowledge “rationally and charitably” that their prejudicial utterances and mischievous use of hyperbole could—actually do—incite violent and anti-Semitic reactions? For “prejudice,” as Buckley, once again at his best with words, is moved to conclude, “can metastasize—and has done so, to be sure, by mutation—into Auschwitz.” So, when infamous words can turn—have turned—into guns, gas, and ovens, they become a clear and present danger. And wise men, often spinning in the gyre of their words, must ever be conscious of their own language, particularly when they set out as “warriors,” to challenge that very danger.

Finally, there is a danger of a different sort. . . . In the concluding fifth section of his essay, Buckley, discussing briefly the claim that “all the pillars of conservatism are Christian,” reiterates the widely held notion that “Christian thought is Judeo-Christian in origin.” Yet whatever the many other sources of Christian thought, one thing is certain: Judaism is not central to it, and ought not to be hyphenated with it.

Though a seeming “buzz word” in the Christian missionary creed, the term “Judeo-Christian” is not a theological axiom. And its frequent use, especially since World War II, might be—one can only speculate—a subtle attempt to remove, or at least evade, the guilt of those many Christians who not only participated in but also witnessed, in Cynthia Ozick’s words—“the looting, the shooting, the herding, the forced marches, the gassing, the torching of synagogues, the cynicism, the mendacity, the shamelessness, the truncheon, the bloodthirstiness, the fanaticism, the opportunism, the dehumanization, the death factories, the obliteration of civilization, the annihilation of a people”—and, with the exception of the righteous few, did nothing. So whatever Judaism’s contribution to Christianity may appear to some to be, vast, unbridgeable theological and practical differences separate the two, which, if properly understood, might help eliminate the term “Judeo-Christian” from its intolerable usage.

For, as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik expressed it some 28 years ago in his spirited essay, “Confrontation,” Judaism is a separate

faith community; the logos, the word, in which the multifarious religious experience is expressed does not lend itself to standardization or universalization. The word of faith reflects the intimate, the private, the paradoxically inexpressible cravings of the individual for, and his linking up with, his Maker. It reflects the numinous character and strangeness of the act of faith of a particular community which is totally incomprehensible to the man of a different faith community. Hence, it is important that the religious or theological logos should not be employed as the medium of communication between two faith communities whose modes of expression are as unique as their apocalyptic experiences.

Where communication should and does exist, however, is, Rabbi Soloveitchik posits, in the realm of the purely “secular order” of things. In that “secular order,” two “faith communities” must each take the initiative in formulating and, ultimately, recommending plans for the betterment of society in its pressing quest for survival. What one must nevertheless always bear in mind, notwithstanding that secular bonding, is that the “great encounter between God and man is a wholly personal and private affair incomprehensible to the outsider” and cannot, therefore, be subsumed in some tantalizing hyphenated phrase—“Judeo-Christian”—that is both theologically and historically without meaning. . . .

Maurice Wohlgelernter
New York City

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Norman Podhoretz writes:

In this extraordinary roller-coaster of a political year, much, if not quite everything, has changed since last spring, when I wrote “Buchanan and the Conservative Crackup.” At that time, Buchanan was still a salient presence on the scene and his standing among conservatives—though not, as I took pains to emphasize in the article, among Republican voters in general—was still alarmingly high. But then, with a string of very poor showings in the remaining Republican primaries, Buchanan gradually sank from view. In the meantime, H. Ross Perot had appeared, as it were out of nowhere, and proceeded to carry off most of Buchanan’s supporters before fading off again into the sunset. Under these circumstances, it becomes a little difficult to recapture the emotions generated by the early Buchanan fevers on the Right.

Nevertheless, the main issue I raised—whether Buchanan was likely to become the leader of the conservative movement—is still with us. I know conservative activists who continue to think that his chances are excellent. Thanks to his campaign this year, they say, he is the front-runner for conservative leadership, with greater access to money and mailing lists than any of his rivals. I am not so sure. No doubt Buchanan will remain the darling of the paleos and other troglodytic yearners for the dark ages of American conservatism who have either blinded themselves to his anti-Semitism or are not excessively bothered by it. But now that he has failed to demonstrate much talent for attracting voters, he will probably lose most of the conservatives who supported him only for tactical reasons or as a protest against Bush.

Of these, the most important were John O’Sullivan, William F. Buckley, Jr., and their colleagues at National Review. In his letter, Mr. O’Sullivan gives a slightly different account from mine of how they came to endorse Buchanan in the early primaries. Having no wish to prolong the quarrel between us, I will simply say that I am sticking with my analysis. Indeed, some of the points on which Mr. O’Sullivan takes issue with me came out of conversations with him. Evidently he has forgotten saying certain things to me that I still remember.

On the question of anti-Semitism, Mr. O’Sullivan reiterates the tortured rationale under which Buckley withdrew his original charge against Buchanan. This is an argument I have by now read or heard at least four times, and it gets less convincing with each restatement.

Like Mr. O’Sullivan, Dennis E. Berger claims that Buchanan’s candidacy produced good results, specifically in knocking David Duke out of the race. But I suspect that Duke only did as well as he did in the Louisiana gubernatorial campaign because of non-transportable local conditions, and that he would have flopped just as badly in the presidential race if Buchanan had never entered.

As for Israel, I agree with Mr. Berger (and E. Badian) that George Bush and James Baker have been hostile, but yes, Buchanan really has been worse, especially if we look at his attitude in the context of the offensive things he has said about American Jews and his flirtation with Holocaust revisionism. I also agree with Mr. Berger that many Democrats are friendlier to the PLO than to Israel, but in all fairness one must acknowledge that neither Bill Clinton nor Al Gore has been among them. On the contrary, both have made strongly pro-Israel statements. Of course, so did Bush in 1988, and so does Dan Quayle still.

A word about William J. Bennett. It is true that Bennett wants to ban assault weapons (so do I), but far from being a “social liberal,” Bennett is perhaps the most courageous and articulate spokesman in this country for the conservative position on the whole range of social issues.

Dennis E. Murphy and John N. Buckley defend the America First movement against my charge that it contained anti-Semitic overtones. But I did not base this charge (which I believe most historians would accept) only on one speech by Charles Lindbergh; nor can it be refuted by the fact—a fact I myself stressed—that the movement included a number of left-wing and liberal isolationists. There was also (as John Buckley himself acknowledges) the general position of that movement in the context of the time, as well as the prominence within it of an outright anti-Semite like Father Coughlin.

Having denied that the old America First movement was what it was, Mr. Murphy not surprisingly goes on to deny that Pat Buchanan is what he is. Like Mr. Berger, who cannot distinguish between William J. Bennett and a liberal, Mr. Murphy cannot tell the difference between Irving Kristol’s views on foreign policy and those of Pat Buchanan. In any case, if Buchanan is not an isolationist, a protectionist, and a nativist, and if he is indeed “a mainstream conservative,” he has certainly fooled a lot of people, including a lot of genuinely mainstream conservatives.

I want to thank Elizabeth B. Lurie, Herb Greer, Wallington M. Simpson, Jr., and David C. Stolinsky for their thoughtful comments. Mrs. Lurie’s letter, in particular, raises an extremely important issue that needs to be pondered and—depending on how the presidential election comes out this year—possibly acted upon.

Finally, as a postcript to Maurice Wohlgelernter’s postcript, I wish to put on record my strong disagreement with him on the relation between Judaism and Christianity. Obviously there is an “unbridgeable theological” gap between the two religions; otherwise, they would be one and not two. But it is quite simply wrong to contend that “Judaism is not central” to Christianity, since without Judaism there would be no Christianity. It is also wrong, and deeply unjust, to suppose that the term “Judeo-Christian” represents an attempt by Christians to evade guilt over the Holocaust. If anything, as anyone who has participated in interfaith discussions can testify, the exact opposite is the case.