IT'S PAT

The radicalization of Middle America (Pat Buchanan, May 28, 2003, World Net Daily)

"A well-heeled audience booed the Dixie Chicks plenty during country music's biggest night of the year Wednesday ? proof that patriotism continues to run deep through America."

So writes Jennifer Harper, embedded correspondent of the culture wars for the Washington Times, about the reception given the famous girl group every time their name came up at the Country Music Awards in Las Vegas. [...]

There are other signs that America's patience with what it sees as anti-Americanism, from Hollywood and the Big Media, is running out.

Legendary liberal talk-show host Phil Donahue was booed and hooted at the commencement at North Carolina State. The New York Times' Chris Hedges was shouted down and had the microphone plug pulled on his anti-war tirade to the graduates and their families at the Rockford College commencement in Illinois.

Two decades ago, singer Anita Bryant lost her contract as the voice of Florida orange juice for leading an anti-"gay"-rights campaign in Miami. Liberals said the former Miss Oklahoma had it coming. But now that actor Danny Glover has been cashiered as the public voice of MCI, after signing an ad supporting Fidel Castro, the left is no longer laughing. It is wailing and whining about "a new McCarthyism."

After Gen. Tommy Franks' Centcom put out its deck of cards of Iraqi war criminals, Newsmax.com decided to created its own deck of cards: "The United Nations of Weasels." Featured are Jacques Chirac as ace of spades, Martin Sheen as the ace of hearts, and Dan Rather, Barbra Streisand and Peter Arnett. The deck is one of the hottest sellers on the Internet.

There are other signs Americans are no longer willing to hide their loathing of the left. That egg on the face of editor Howell Raines of the mighty New York Times, after having been bamboozled and snookered by affirmative-action poster boy Jayson Blair, has most of America laughing.

When feminist Martha Burk declared she would break the all-male tradition at Augusta National Golf Club by leading a boycott of sponsors of the Master's tournament, and the New York Times took it up as the civil-rights cause du jour, Middle America rallied behind Augusta president "Hootie" Johnson. Hootie dissed Martha, ignored her boycott and protests, and carried off the Masters in style.

When a Republican governor took down the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's state capitol and a Democratic governor cut a midnight deal to strip a replica of the battle flag from the Georgia state flag, both pols saw their careers terminated by voters. Children in the South now defy school edicts that forbid them from carrying or wearing replicas of the battle flag. In Pennsylvania, a schoolteacher has risked dismissal rather than take off the Christian cross she was wearing.

In Montgomery, Ala., a 5,600-pound granite stone, with the Ten Commandments chiseled on it, sits still in the rotunda of the state judicial building in defiance of court orders. The chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, who put it there, refuses to remove it.

There is a spirit of rebellion in Middle America, sustained by voices on talk radio, talk TV and the Internet, where the cultural hegemony of the American elite simply does not extend.

Pat Buchanan has taken a lot of unfair heat for his 1992 Convention Speech...:

The central organizing principle of this republic is freedom. And from the ancient forests of Oregon, to the Inland Empire of California, America's great middle class has got to start standing up to the environmental extremists who put insects, rats and birds ahead of families, workers and jobs.

One year ago, my friends, I could not have dreamt I would be here. I was then still just one of many panelists on what President Bush calls "those crazy Sunday talk shows."

But I disagreed with the president; and so we challenged the president in the Republican primaries and fought as best we could. From February to June, he won 33 primaries. I can't recall exactly how many we won.

But tonight I want to talk to the 3 million Americans who voted for me. I will never forget you, nor the great honor you have done me. But I do believe, deep in my heart, that the right place for us to be now--in this presidential campaign--is right beside George Bush. The party is our home; this party is where we belong. And don't let anyone tell you any different.

Yes, we disagreed with President Bush, but we stand with him for freedom to choice religious schools, and we stand with him against the amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women.

We stand with President Bush for right-to-life, and for voluntary prayer in the public schools, and against putting American women in combat. And we stand with President Bush in favor of the right of small towns and communities to control the raw sewage of pornography that pollutes our popular culture.

We stand with President Bush in favor of federal judges who interpret the law as written, and against Supreme Court justices who think they have a mandate to rewrite our Constitution.

My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him.

...but this summons to "culture war" was the high point of the Bush re-election campaign and offered the only hope Mr. Bush had for winning (overnight polling during the convention had Mr. Bush faring best against Bill Clinton after Mr. Buchanan spoke). This is a well-earned "told ya' so". Posted by Orrin Judd at May 28, 2003 4:46 PM