Pat Buchanan: The birth of nationalism, populism

Donald Trump is the current leader of populism, or nationalism, or whatever you want to call it. Populism has come around from time to time in our history, but the current incarnation of it is fear that the country as founded is at stake, and something has to be done to stop it.  But the current incarnation did not start with Trump, it started back in the early 1990s with Pat Buchanan.

Pat Buchanan was born on November 2, 1938, to a Catholic family. His dad worked at an accounting firm, and his mother was a nurse and homemaker. He had six brothers and two sisters. He attended Georgetown and earned a Bachelor's Degree in American Studies. He was drafted in 1960, but was exempted from military service due to arthritis. He received a Master's Degree in Journalism and was hired at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat at the age of 23.

In 1964 he was promoted to assistant editor and supported Barry Goldwater for President. He later wrote of Goldwater's defeat: ""The conservative movement has always advanced from its defeats... I can't think of a single conservative who was sorry about the Goldwater campaign."

He was an adviser and speech writer for Richard Nixon. He coined the term "silent majority" to refer to those Americans who do not express their political views openly. He first used it in a memo to the president. Nixon later used the phrase in a speech he wrote himself and gave in 1969. Some believe this speech encouraged the silent majority to stop being quiet and support Nixon, thereby encouraging many democrats to vote for Nixon.

Buchanan had isolationist views that Nixon did not approve of. Buchanan was a conservative, but the type of conservative he was is called paleoconservative. Here is a rundown of what this is:

Paleoconservative: This is one of the two main branches of the conservatism. They are pro-capitalist conservatives who believe the role of government is to act as isolationists, whereby putting America first and not involving itself in foreign wars unless to defend America. They like to preserve American Culture. They believe that American borders need to be protected to protect America from foreign invasion and to prevent foreigners from entering the Union illegally. They do not agree it is America's responsibility to fund foreign social programs and it is not the role of government to put capitalism aside to pay for a welfare state (as neoconservatives do). They believe the American government should focus on an American identity, traditional values, civil society, and federalism. Unlike neoconservatives, they oppose social entitlement programs. They were critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration.

Now, that sounds a lot like Donald Trump's views. But Buchanan was anti-establishment long before Trump. The idea that members of Washington are controlled by special interests rather than the people was an idea proposed by Buchanan. Part of his agenda when he ran for President in 1992 was in opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, because he believed this would benefit special interests and American Corporate Interests over the people.

Buchanan was opposed to American Corporate Interests aligning with political interests. Most politicians enter politics, and then find that the way to get elected, and re-elected, is to align with corporate interests. This is how they fund their campaigns. And when they get elected, they have to pay back those corporations who supported them.

Trump believes that the main reason the republican party supports amnesty for illegal aliens is because they are essentially in bed with corporations, and these corporations would benefit from amnesty. So they fund republican campaigns on the premise that, when elected, those politicians will support amnesty. Yet Trump notes that not only is this bad for politics, it's bad for America.

The fear is that illegal aliens make no promise to assimilate into American culture, and so this may act to break up the culture that was formed when this country was founded. So he wants to build a wall and send home illegal immigrants to preserve and protect culture, but also to end corruption in Washington.

This is what is meant when people refer to republican establishment. They are referring to republicans who are controlled by corporate interests. They do not do what is best for the country, or for their respective states, they do what corporations want in order to get re-elected, or in order to serve their own interests.

This would explain a lot. It would explain why George W. Bush supported Ted Kennedy's No-Child-Left-Behind-Act, rather than getting rid of the Department of Education, which Trump proposes to do. It would explain why Bush never vetoed any liberal spending bill.

So Buchanan, like Trump, believed politicians are in bed with corporations.  That NAFTa was what corporations wanted, not what the people wanted. And Buchanan was ultimately proven right, as many American industries have moved factories overseas where they don't have to pay high wages and benefits packages required by agreements with Worker's Unions. It's also one of the reasons for the high unemployment rate.

Now, you might be saying that the unemployment rate right now is only 5.5%.  However, there are currently 96 million people who are working age and have quit looking for work, and so they aren't even accounted for in the 5.5% unemployment number. So, in reality, we actually have a higher unemployment number than during the Great Depression. We are in a depression, we just don't have soup lines -- we have food stamp lines, and welfare lines. People who are not working are living cozily in their homes, talking on their iphones and watching their smart TVs and eating pot roasts and Campbell's Soup.

Ending Free Trade Agreements and raising Tariffs is something Trump is supportive of in order to bring jobs back to America.

A perfect example of an establishment republican is John Kasich. He started his political career when the Republicans and Conservatives won the House during the 1994 mid-term elections. This was supposed to be a continuation of what Reagan started in the 1980s. This was supposed to be 

Some people think the anti-establishment movement began with the Tea Party in 2010 that was in opposition to Obamacare. This is true to some extent, but the true grandfather of the modern nationalist movement, the populist movement, is Patrick Buchanan.

It actually has roots earlier than that. It started in the 1960s when the breakdown of American culture started. It began with the creation of the Department of Education. This was created because, while American education was good, liberals believed they could make it better. So they gave eight people in Washington the power to reshape education.

Prior to the 1960s parents were in charge of what their kids were taught. They wanted their kids to learn about the founding of our country and conservative/ libertarian principles, and American Exceptionalism. They wanted people to learn about Christian values and about God. They wanted their kids to live under the same culture that they did.

But, in order to advance the liberal agenda, those eight members in Washington decided it was better to unify schools, to make them all the same. So now, rather than each school teaching what local parents wanted, they started teaching that global warming was real, that the world was over populated, The idea here is if you stop teaching conservative/ Christian values, people will naturally default to liberalism. And this is exactly what has happened.

You see, this is what corporate interests want. This is not what the people want. Some people rose up against this in the 1960s, and they were laughed at as radicals. Buchanan gave them a voice in 1992 when he ran for president, and now this movement is coming to a culmination through Donald Trump. Still, we must give credit where credit is due: the father of the modern incarnation of the nationalist-populist movement is the one, the only, Pat Buchanan.