Sunday, December 3, 2017

Good ole boys

From my earliest recollection until my early teen years fireworks were sold in Georgia. I'm not sure when they were outlawed but I recall it happening. As long as they were legal my sister June and I played with them often but especially around July fourth and New Year's. I remember them being sold in McLarry's at "the curve" in Flemington. After they were outlawed in Ga. huge Fireworks stores sprang up just across the Savannah river in South Carolina. Consequently we have always had fireworks. Our older brother Homer and our Daddy taught us to have a healthy respect for potential danger is we failed to be careful with them. I don't remember us ever making any bad decisions with them.

We played with the lower powered firecrackers, sparklers, roman candles and occasionally the larger  more powerful red firecrackers. There was also something called a whistler or chaser but we never dealt with those.  In later years the was the "Cherry Bombs" which were about the size of a quarter and round with a large fuse about an inch and a half long. We never had any mishaps around our home but we always heard reports of people being burned or injured or accidental fires of structures or yards and woods.

I am not exactly sure what year the following story took place but I imagine it was around 1960 give or take a couple of years either way. At the time Hinesville was still a very small community where everybody knew everyone and there was very little crime.  R.V. Bobby Sikes was sheriff so I know it was after he had succeeded his father  Sheriff Paul Sikes who had died in 1959 I believe. I believe the Sheriff's department then consisted of Sheriff Sikes and Deputies David Carter, DeWitt Branch, Myles Groover and Adrian Long. Perhaps there were more but I don't recall.

The Hinesville Police department was even smaller. There was Mr Dave Mobley who served as Chief and his son Royce worked in the office as radio operator etc. Mr Vivian Hodges was the first patrolman I think. Later Jimmy Downs became a Patrolman. There were only two traffic lights and they were both located on Main St. One was on the north side of the Court St between the Courthouse and the Texaco station across from the Miller house' The other light was on the intersection of South St (Now MLK St) and Main. The Saunders company was across the street from the Courthouse and a street separated it from the McCall house Miller house. Going north on Main just past the Miller house was a vacant lot on the corner of Memorial Drive and Main. Across Memorial was the Methodist Church. Facing Memorial drive on the east side of Main was the police station. The police station was a simple small frame structure barley eight by eight. There was a doorway in the center of the front facing Memorial and a window on each side as well as in front. Hinesville was a sleepy little place with very little action after supper time. We always had at least one pool Hall and one or two cafes.

It was not uncommon as the night grew later to see the policeman seated in the station just about asleep. Well that is exactly what happened one night as three rascals were out cruising the streets.  All three of these fellows have been lifelong friends and I too consider them to be lifelong friends. I hope none of them will take offence at my little story.

This story took place sometime around 1967 give or take a little while. I am retelling a tale that I've heard several times from two of the culprits and I may not get it exactly right but I'll tell it as I recall it.

Friday, November 17, 2017

It is OK to be Black/It is OK to be white

It is OK to be Black/It is OK to be white
Last comment by timeontarget 15 hours, 29 minutes ago.

Take Me To Post Comment Form I'm not sure how many of our bloggers are white or how many are black. I know that we are not all the same color.

It appears to me that we have had a number of blogs posted which are nothing more than efforts at race baiting. This is not good for our community nor is it good for our country.

When the United States of America became a country two hundred and forty plus years ago there were no black people at all in this country.

Funkentelecky commented on Thursday, Nov 16, 2017 at 20:00 PM
The first black slaves arrived at Jamestown Virginia in 1619. 157 years before the country was founded in 1776.

There were white people from Europe who had come over to forge a new life in a new land which had previously been the homeland of the red man or Indians. Some of the Indian nations were more civilized than others but basically they were all civilized. They had learned how to coexist on the same continent although there were occasionally conflicts that erupted into wars among various tribes. The Indians were robbed of their homeland, rounded up like livestock and relocated to barren lands westward toward the Pacific. Many died or were slaughtered by the white man who had arrived aboard sailing ships from Europe.

At first these newcomers lived under the rule of the English Crown. They struggled and prospered on the new land but were taxed by the crown and soon they revolted declaring war on the crown. Independence was won in July of 1776 I believe. Some forty plus years later England once again invaded the upstart new nation In the war of 1812, but again the Americans defeated the crown and the rest is history.

At some point black people from Africa were captured by other black people and herded to the western African shore and sold to White traders who in turn took them to other lands to be sold just like livestock.

The USA was not the only nation to allow slaves to be brought to their country.

Many Americans came here as indentured servants which had signed contracts to work for their freedom in various occupations, but mostly in agriculture I believe. Ultimately some black indentured servants were also brought to this new land and ultimately earned their freedom.

The very first black slaves brought to America were bought and brought here by other black people.

It was black people who instituted the ownership of other black people into America.

Ultimately these United States took varying different degrees of acceptance of slavery or not to accept it in their states.

I don't think the practice was very successful in northern states because of such harsh climate conditions. However the black folks survived very well in the south where there was less freezing and cold conditions.

This country was founded on the principal that free enterprise is the foundation of our survival. There is a line in the Jaycee Creed which reads:
"ECONOMIC JUSTICE CAN BEST BE WON BY FREE MEN THROUGH FREE ENTERPRISE".

As this young country grew and became prosperous it and it's people astounded the world With their victory in the war of 1812. Later came the American Civil War which was really caused by a struggle of States rights versus Federal Imperialism but many folks believe that the primary issue was slavery.

I did not live in those days and I don't really know what caused that war. History books tell us that many families were divided on the issue and there were cases of Father fighting son and brother fighting brother. Again I don't know for sure about these things.

After slavery was abolished the rule of segregation was imposed on the races. I grew up in a time of segregation and my next door neighbors in my childhood were black. I am white and I grew up in a majority black community in Liberty County.

In the late sixties integration was implemented and it took a long time for it to become accepted especially in the South.

However in 2008 a black man was elected to the highest office in the land and he could have ended racism for once and for all but instead he proclaimed that now the white man can ride on the back of the bus.

Today we have a great President who is attempting to right the course of some thirty plus years of the elite folks in the DC swamp who have made countless bad choices in their governing of us on the Federal level.

I hope all fellow bloggers on this Courier blog site will offer commentary regarding our racial divide because in my opinion it is greater today than it was in the fifties.

If we fail to unite both black and white and remain divided as we are we will ultimately fail to survive.

I am not the best student of history and if I have made errors in any issue of this blog please point it out and I will make the necessary corrections.


Pat Watkins, web editor
 

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Bradwell Institute My memories

     I've been told that the first graduation held in this building was the BI class of 1925.

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Although it took me thirteen years to get my diploma I only attended school for twelve years. After my eleventh  year I stayed out for one year. The BI class of 61 started school in school year 49/50. I graduated in May of 1962 and the graduation ceremony was in the (then fairly new) Gymnasium/stage on Washington Ave. Washington Ave became Memorial drive later when the original Memorial drive was relocated to align with Washington Ave. at the traffic circle where the two streets met Main St.
    That nice  early summer evening I walked out of the building with my Diploma only about a hundred feet from where I had entered a different red brick building in September of 1949. I cried coming out just as I had cried going in.  Coming out of the gym and passing thru the lobby I had to force myself to walk past the very stern one Faye Darsey. I desperately wanted to pause and give her a hug and kiss but I was choking back tears and I could only go outside and walk off alone so as to regain my composure. I found myself walking around the corner of the gym after glancing toward the old white building which stood next door just west of the gym.
    "The Old White Building" had been the original Bradwell Institute school when it was relocated to Washington Avenue probably in the early thirties. It had the design of a typical school building. It consisted of two wings located in parallel and adjoined across the front which gave it a u shape. The middle portion was a wonderful auditorium the likes of which has never been recreated in Liberty County. You entered the auditorium from the west wing hallway and you entered backstage from the east wing hallway. That auditorium was in my opinion one of and possible the very best piece of architecture in Liberty Co. It was a very poor decision to take it down. There was a row of seats in the middle of perhaps ten or twelve and a row on either side of about five or six. The isles on either side descended down a floor-way built at a gradual downward slop so that the stage was the same level as the hallways. The front seats were almost two feet lower than the floor of the building. there were three steps up onto each end of the stage which stood probably twenty some inches above the floor in the immediate front of the stage. The front view, which faced down the end of Bradwell St. going toward Court St., was one wide white concrete wall with decorative entrances opening onto small alcoves or porchs with windows all across the front. The metal roof was adjoined to each wing in a hip like style. Atop the center of the building was a bell shaped metal roof over an octagonal shaped structure about eight feet wide and deep and  it served to ventilate the attic with louvers on all sides. Tall window sashes adorned all of the exterior walls.
    That early summer night in May of 1962 as I eased into the shadow beneath the Live oak, which stood near the sidewalk in front of the median between the "White Building" and the Gymnasium/Auditorium, had been the drive where the two strips of concrete had been put in place for the school buses to park in the afternoons when I was in the first grade.  Earlier in my very young years a short distance west on Washington Ave. there had been a stile crossing the field-fence which had surrounded the "White Building" until 1953 when the No Fence law had been enacted in Georgia. Until then Georgia had been a free range state in which livestock such as cattle and hogs

Friday, August 18, 2017

Another Sign from above.

I have written about signs from above in the past and proudly I received yet another one yesterday evening August 17, 2017.

I discovered back in April of this year that my blood pressure was very high and since then I have (with my Doctor's help) been struggling to get it back under control. I discovered that I myself quite possibly caused it by taking an over the counter supplement which had interfered with my medicine.  There were days when it would be ok and then mysteriously suddenly go back up. To tell the truth I became increasingly worried and actually that likely contributed to my difficulty. I with Leslie's help tried to improve my diet as well as my habits. Still it would be alright for a few days and the it would just seem to change for whatever reasons. It seems that just when I felt I could relax then boom out of nowhere it would change. After my Doctor suggested that we could change my prescription to morning and evening instead of simply evening. We also added the daily taking of a diuretic (water pill) and that appeared to help. My goal was to get back to only one pill per day and secretly I dreamed of getting back to normal without any pharmaceutical as I don't like to put any more of that than necessary into my system. I believe that a healthy diet during my youth and early adulthood has been mot beneficial and for the most part I've managed to remain fairly healthy in spite of some poor decisions over the course of my journey across fool's hill otherwise known pathways of life.      

Truths of History

Truths Of History added 2 new photos.
It is a fact of humanity that people need a place to go and grieve their loved ones who pass on. Even if a loved one is cremated, the ashes are lovingly preserved somewhere easily accessible or scattered in a specific place that can be returned to. As human beings, we need a place to go grieve, which is why we go to cemeteries where our loved ones are buried and place flowers or mementos for special occasions and do so regularly.
The truth is the people in the South were the same way. The vast majority of Confederate soldiers did not die at home. They died on a battlefield, in a hellish prison camp or in a hospital far from home. Sometimes the bodies were retrieved but that was not the case most of the time. That is the reason the South is salted with Confederate monuments. Our people needed a place to grieve. How can outsiders come to our home and demand gravestones to our fathers be removed? How?
Those monuments have stood for 100+ years. How dare you? How dare you?
Confederate monuments are NOT monuments to white supremacy and you know it. Confederate monuments were not erected to intimidate anyone, and you know it. They were erected for the grieving family members to have a place to grieve and they put them where everyone in the town could have access to them, and see them on a regular basis so as not to forget. We, in the South, do NOT forget.
What you may not know is how the monuments were paid for, erected and dedicated. The majority of the men in the South, did not survive the war and the women, daughters, mothers, wives, sisters, grandmothers and nieces raised the money out of their poverty. Their abject poverty. There are ads in Confederate Veteran magazine that are heart-breaking as it lists the donations from bereaved orphans, wives, and family members of dimes, nickles or quarters. These bereaved persons did without sugar for their tea or butter for their bread in order to raise money to pay for the monuments, which serve as gravestones for their loved ones.
The truth is, the monuments you are removing in our South are gravestones for the ones who did not get to come home. And God will judge you for it. He will. And if you think it does not matter and it was so long ago, consider the Judgement Day. Things will be judged there that "happened in the past". The past does matter.
Stop desecrating our gravestones to our dead fathers in our South.
If you don't like what you see in our South, you are free to go back where you came from. That's the truth.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Auto Racing.

Stock car racing was born in the south and it has always been of interest to me as my Father liked it also. Daddy took me to the first race I ever attended at the Oglethorpe Speedway in Savannah. He also took me to see the speedboat races held at Sunbury, Ga. on the gorgeous Liberty County coast.  I guess it was instilled into me as we attended those events a number of times in Daddy's 1946 and then 1951 Ford automobiles. Probably why I've always liked the Ford race cars.

My older brother was a fan also and he took me to the first race I ever attended at the Daytona International Speedway in Florida. That was in February 1961 for the Daytona 500 on the new paved two and a half mile track. That was the first of many events I would attend both at Daytona and other not too distant destinations such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Darlington. For many years I have recorded the races.

What I love most about the events is that they are always preceded by a wonderful prerace show which includes a command over the loudspeakers from the announcer of the broadcast that "Now Ladies and Gentleman please all stand and remove your hats for the performance of the National Anthem" which is often accompanied at the end by a flyover of aircraft as the Anthem reaches the "Though The Rockets Red Glare" part. Often there will be a contingency of some branch of our military as the flag is proudly displayed.

Before the Anthem is performed the cameras will span the stands as well as the pit row where drivers stand with their wives and children in reverence as a minister delivers a prayer for those in attendance as well as members of race teams.

Finally the Command comes over the PA for the drivers to start their engines. Only those who have attended a live race can really understand the adrenaline rush as the sound of forty 700 plus horsepower engines roar to life. Then the cars slowly file onto the track following a pace care for a couple of laps before the pace car leaves the track and the flagman waves the green flag to signal the start of the race. Then depending on the type track they are racing on the cars soon may reach speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour if that weeks event is on some of the longer oval courses. Some tracks are only a half mile in length and that is an entirely different event involving much banging and scrubbing at speeds of about a hundred miles per hour. There is also some road courses where there are both left turns as well as right turns. Drivers have to be multi talented and the temperature inside the cockpit is often a hundred and forty degrees. Drivers wear fire-suits which are equipped with cooling devices but drivers often collapse  at the end of an event as they exit the car and remove their neck restraints and helmets.

Only those who have attended an event and felt the sensation of the roar of the engines and the smell and taste of the exhaust and burning rubber permeates the air. Then there is also the sight of fans many of which are beautiful ladies and the men  who occupy the seats in the stands.

All in all it is quite a contrast to what I hear and read about the millionaire NFL players who proudly knell sometimes with raised fists as the Anthem is performed.

Following is a great story which I have copied which gives a far greater insight into my favorite sport.
Please enjoy.



Life, (near) death and racing: Ernie Irvan’s tragedy and triumph at Michigan

 
By Matt Crossman NASCAR.com  

Ernie Irvan keeps all the trophies from his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career in a display case. He and his family are moving this weekend from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Ocala, Florida, and he recently packed the trophies to prepare for the movers’ arrival.
He won the Daytona 500, the night race at Bristol and both road courses. He won at Talladega, the longest track in the sport, and at Martinsville, the shortest. He won 15 Cup races in all, and as he grabbed each trophy, memories of the circumstances behind each win came back.
“When I was packing them all up, I saw the one at Sears Point. You think of what happened at Sears Point. You see one at Watkins Glen, and think about what happened at Watkins Glen,” Irvan says. “Whenever you’re sitting there, you always reminisce.”
When he picked up the Michigan trophy — his 15th and final win, 20 years ago this summer — the memories were particularly powerful. And not just because it was the last Cup race he ever won, but because of brutal crashes before and after that win and the life-saving maneuvers of a doctor who arrived at his car. Without that doctor and helicopter on site, he says, he would have died at the track and never gotten that final win.
“All the things put together, it was just kind of a miracle,” he says.

THREE WEEKS GONE

The mid-1990s were a brutally difficult time for NASCAR. On April 1, 1993, defending champion Alan Kulwicki died in a plane crash. On July 13, 1993, Davey Allison died in a helicopter crash. In February 1994, Neil Bonnett and Rodney Orr died in separate practices for the Daytona 500.
When Ernie Irvan joined Robert Yates Racing in late 1993 to replace Allison, he had long been considered a fiercely competitive and extremely talented driver. When he won his third race in the Yates car in the 10th race of the 1994 season, he appeared poised to take the next step and win a championship.
“It was just instant success, instant speed,” says Doug Yates, RYR’s chief engine builder and son of owner Robert Yates. “It was a perfect driver for our No. 28 Texaco Havoline Ford. We couldn’t ask for anybody better to succeed Davey Allison.”


With a new team, Ernie Irvan looked like a title contender in 1994 until his wreck at Michigan. | RacingOne

Through the first 20 races of 1994, Irvan had three wins and 13 top fives. He had been first or second in points every week of the season. It looked like he and Dale Earnhardt would have a season-long battle for the championship. Superstardom awaited.
The Friday of the August Michigan race, Irvan, Doug Yates and their wives played Monopoly in Robert Yates’ motorhome parked inside Michigan International Speedway. Throughout the game, Irvan made side deals. He accumulated first great wealth, then a bunch of hotels. Soon he stacked bills high in front of him and everybody else was out of money. He beat them all.
But he has a confession to make: “I was cheating really bad.”
Doug Yates laughs when he hears this … and confirms the outcome, if not the cheating. But he wouldn’t be surprised. Whatever Irvan did – cards, Monopoly, racing, pickup basketball — he did whatever he had to do to win.
That game of Monopoly is Irvan’s last memory for three weeks.
During practice the next morning, Irvan’s Ford Thunderbird cut a tire and slammed into the wall. He was bleeding badly and says now he would have died right there in the car if Dr. John Maino, who had been stationed nearby, hadn’t arrived so quickly. Irvan was in danger of drowning in his own blood, so Maino performed an emergency tracheotomy inside the car — he cut a slit in Irvan’s throat and inserted a tube to allow him to breathe. Irvan says he would have died without that. He was on a helicopter just 23 minutes later and flown to a hospital in Ann Arbor.
Irvan suffered a traumatic brain injury, skull fracture and chest injuries. Doctors gave him a 10 percent chance to live. “When something serious happens, an eeriness comes over the garage. It becomes very quiet. This was one of those situations,” says Dale Jarrett, who drove for Joe Gibbs Racing at the time. “As we got more information, about just how serious an accident it was, our attention turned to hoping that Ernie was going to be OK. Many of us have been through blown tires, this was one of the severe cases of what can happen.”

‘WASN’T A PRETTY DEAL’

Marc Reno had been friends with Irvan for years. They had raced together and lived next door to each other when they were trying to launch their racing careers. Reno was working at the time for an XFINITY Series team and by coincidence, his hauler had been parked next to Irvan’s in the XFINITY garage that weekend.
After a dispute about tires that weekend at Michigan, Reno’s team opted to leave instead of race. Reno had just gotten home to Florida when he heard about the wreck. He immediately flew back to Michigan. “I was in on a good part of the doctors’ meetings and stuff when they told him he had a 10 or 15 percent chance of living — if he made it 48 hours,” Reno says. “It wasn’t a pretty deal.”
Reno says he flew back and forth to Michigan 10 times to be by Irvan’s side. It was unsettling to see his friend lying in the hospital bed. On one visit, he counted 21 tubes running into Irvan.


George Tiedemann photo

Irvan remembers waking up 20 days after the wreck wondering where he was. The TV was on, and he says he saw someone else — it turned out to be Kenny Wallace — driving his No. 28 car. He couldn’t talk, so he used hand gestures to ask questions. His wife, Kim, explained to him what had happened.
Irvan’s rehab was long and extensive. But he returned to the race car in late 1995, competing in three races for Robert Yates Racing and finishing sixth, 40th and seventh. Jarrett had replaced him; when Irvan came back, RYR expanded to a two-car team.
In 1996, Irvan won at Loudon in his 19th race back and again at Richmond a few months later. “It was just miraculous, really, that he could even be back driving a race car after everything he had been through,” says Jarrett, who won the 1999 championship for RYR and is now a NASCAR analyst on NBC. “He had such a near-death experience, and here he was performing at a high-level once again.”
The wreck left Irvan with lingering vision issues, so he raced with a patch over one eye. “He was as good or better as anybody with one eye,” Doug Yates says. “This guy is the most talented and toughest guy I’ve been around. It was truly amazing.”

‘WILL TO LIVE, COMPETE’

As the 1997 season approached, Larry McReynolds had left as Irvan’s crew chief and RYR was looking for a replacement. Reno went to the Robert Yates Racing office in Charlotte for an interview for the position. When he got back out to his car after the interview, he discovered somebody had broken into it and stolen all of his family’s Christmas presents, which had been in the trunk. But he got the job.
As the season started, the cars Reno built and Irvan drove were fast, but they both say they let a few wins get away. “I remember in 1997 thinking, ‘God, he is fast,’ ” says Kyle Petty, who drove for a team he owned that season and is now a NASCAR analyst on NBC . “He was back as a contender.”
At Michigan for the June race, Irvan and Reno must have had high expectations. Though Irvan had never won there, he had finished in the top five the two previous races. Throughout practice, Reno experimented with the car’s setup. “We started putting bigger rear springs on the car, getting the back of the car up in the air. And it would go faster and faster and faster,” he says. “Every time we would go up 50 pounds, it would just go faster.”
Irvan started 20th on June 15, 1997. He took the lead for the first time on Lap 163 (of 200) and led for 12 laps. He resumed the top spot on Lap 180. He started to cry with 10 laps to go.
“There were some tears shed in the pits as well,” says Doug Yates. “Any time you’re leading the race at the end, your stomach is in knots. The anticipation is building. Take all that and multiply it by 10, 100 or 1,000 because of everything that went on. It was a pretty special moment. It was a great day.”
As he took the white flag, Irvan thought about his wreck from three years before. He looked at the wall that nearly killed him as he zoomed past it. “I’m thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got to get through the corner, because that was the corner I crashed in,’ ” he says. “But everything went smooth.”
After he pulled to a stop in Victory Lane, his wife, Kim, leaned in to kiss him. “The first thing I thought of is, ‘I finally conquered this place. It didn’t get me, I got them,’ ” he says.
He climbed out of the car and was greeted by pit road reporter Mike Joy, then of CBS. Irvan seemed to have his emotions in check — he talked about sponsors and bad luck so far that year and getting a win in Ford Motor Company’s backyard. Joy asked Kim Irvan a question on live TV about the win being big for the family, and she was so speechless by what had just happened that she barely squeaked out an answer.
Joy, who now does play by play for FOX’s NASCAR coverage, compares Irvan’s win to Kevin Harvick’s win for Richard Childress Racing three weeks after Dale Earnhardt died and Jeff Gordon’s win in the first race at the Brickyard and last career win at Martinsville.
“It felt RIGHT,” Joy says via email. “Fitting, redemption, validation, relief, all yes. Historic? Moreso now than then.”

Friday, June 16, 2017

The Marine Hymn

I had no idea!  Were the authors of U.S. History books lying liberals going all the way to when we were in high school, or was I just not paying attention?  
                                  
 

The Marine Hymn ''To the shores of Tripoli".......  Interesting concise history lesson and a good reminder.    A bit long but very good reading! 

A 232 Year History of our fight against Islam & why it is no longer taught in our public schools...

When Thomas Jefferson saw there was no negotiating with Muslims, he formed what is now the Marines (sea going soldiers). These Marines were attached to U. S. Merchant vessels. When the Muslims attacked U.S. merchant vessels they were repulsed by armed soldiers, but there is more.

The Marines followed the Muslims back to their villages and killed every man, woman, and child in the village.

It didn't take long for the Muslims to leave U.S. Merchant vessels alone.

English and French merchant vessels started running up our flag when entering the Mediterranean to secure safe travel.

Why the Marine Hymn contains the verse, "To the Shores of Tripoli ".

This is very interesting and a must read piece of our history. It points out where we may be heading.

Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago the United States had declared war on Islam, and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!

At the height of the 18th century, Muslim pirates (the "Barbary Pirates") were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of the North Atlantic .

They attacked every ship in sight, and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric treatment and wrote heart-breaking letters home, begging their governments and families to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.

These extortionists of the high seas represented the North African Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco , and Algiers - collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast - and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American Republic .

Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection of Great Britain. When the U.S. declared its independence and entered into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France.

However, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets.

Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy. Beginning in 1784, 17 years before he would become president, Thomas Jefferson became America's Minister to France. That same year, the U.S. Congress sought to appease its Muslim adversaries by following in the footsteps of European nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States rather than engaging them in war.

In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships, and the Dye of Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom of $60,000. It was a plain and simple case of extortion, and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any further payments.

Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of allied nations who together could force the Islamic states into peace. A disinterested Congress decided to pay the ransom.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli's ambassador to Great Britain to ask by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved American citizens, and why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

The two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that  it was written in their Quran that all nations who would not acknowledge their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise."

Despite this stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim nations, as well as the objections of many notable American leaders, including George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only further embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen years, the u\American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages.

The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to over 20 percent of the United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Jefferson was disgusted. Shortly after his being sworn in as the third President of the United States in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli sent him a note demanding the immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for every year forthcoming.

That changed everything.

Jefferson let the Pasha know, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with his demand. The Pasha responded by cutting down the flagpole at the American consulate and declared war on the United States.

Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers immediately followed suit.

Jefferson, until now, had been against America raising a naval force for anything beyond coastal defense, but, having watched his nation be cowed by Islamic thuggery for long enough, decided that it was finally time to meet force with force.

He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean and taught the Muslim nations of the Barbary Coast a lesson he hoped they would never forget. Congress authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli and to "cause to be done all other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war would justify".

When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American cowardice and acquiescence, saw the newly independent United States had both the will and the right to strike back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance to Tripoli.

The war with Tripoli lasted for four more years, and raged up again in 1815. The bravery of the U.S. Marine Corps in these wars led to the line "to  the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Hymn, and they would forever be known as "leathernecks" for the leather collars of their uniforms, designed to prevent their heads from being cut off by the Muslim scimitars when boarding enemy ships.

Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified doing in the name of their prophet and their god, disturbed Jefferson quite deeply.

America had a tradition of religious tolerance. In fact Jefferson, himself, had co-authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion the world had ever seen.

A religion based on supremacy, whose holy book not only condoned but mandated violence against unbelievers, was unacceptable to him.

His greatest fear was that someday this brand of Islam would return and pose an even greater threat to the United States.

This should concern every American. That Muslims have brought about women-only classes and swimming times in America at taxpayer-funded universities and public pools; that Christians, Jews, and Hindus have been banned from serving on juries where Muslim defendants are being judged; Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers have been banned from workplaces because they offend Islamist sensibilities; ice cream has been discontinued at certain Burger King locations because the picture on the wrapper looks similar to the Arabic script for Allah; public schools are pulling pork from their menus; on and on and on and on..

It's death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to it, and most Americans have no idea that this battle is being waged every day  across America. By not fighting back, by allowing groups to obfuscate what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to our culture, the United States is cutting its own throat with a politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists' agenda.

Sadly, it appears that today America's leaders would rather be politically correct than victorious!

IF YOU DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST, YOU ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.
 

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

HERE IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF THE DEEP STATE TAKES DOWN PRESIDENT TRUMP & IT’S NOT PRETTY … FOR THEM

HERE Is WHAT WILL HAPPEN If The DEEP STATE TAKES DOWN PRESIDENT TRUMP & It’s NOT PRETTY … FOR THEM
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson
ELDER PATRIOT – Corrupt politicians ignore Jefferson’s directive to their own detriment. It’s no longer political, it’s personal.
Americans have had their eyes opened by the ascension of Donald Trump and no amount of leftwing money can put the Freedom Movement genie back in the bottle.
Conservative Senator Ted Cruz made that observation after reviewing the results of the 2016 elections and the expectations of the voters.
Cruz, who had the most high profile personality clash with Donald Trump during the Republican primary process nevertheless embraced Trump’s America First agenda and said, “If we’re given the White House and both houses of Congress and we don’t deliver, I think there will be pitchforks and torches in the streets. And I think quite rightly.”
Candidate Trump promised many things – border control, lower taxes, fairer trade relations, a balanced budget, healthcare that puts the people first not the government, safer communities, and – to the extent possible – an end to foreign wars. What, among those promises, should any Republican, nay any American, have a problem with?
After four months without a single legislative achievement, Congressional and Senatorial Republicans – notably John McCain, Paul Ryan and Lindsey Graham – have joined the Democrats in investigating President Trump absent a single shred of evidence that an underlying crime has been committed.
So, what gives?
Well, there was one additional promise that Trump made on his way to the White House that has some Republicans joining with Democrats and quaking in their boots, Trump’s promise to “Drain the Swamp.”
As we reported yesterday, “An F.B.I. agent with ‘intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Clinton case’ told us that they uncovered evidence of such massive corruption that the agents involved realized that damned near the entire government could be brought down.”
The criminal co-conspirators in both parties realized almost immediately that the new sheriff wasn’t interested in joining them in the swamp so they launched, what can only be characterized as, a coup attempt.
Democrats are well schooled in such things probably because of their close alliance with Marxist regimes that can only gain power by seizing it through bloody civil wars. It should be noted that the Democratic Party has already done this once before.
One Hundred and Fifty-Seven years ago the Democrats waged a war against the First Republican President Abraham Lincoln for giving Blacks their freedom. That war came at a high price, as many as 700,000 Americans died fighting for what they believe in. To put that in perspective, these casualties exceed the nation’s loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution through Vietnam.
Today, Americans are still prepared to fight and die to protect their children’s God-given freedoms. Despite what you are reading and hearing in the mainstream media, they aren’t the leftwing-funded rioters, the pussy hat-wearing feminists, or the cuck bois that cant handle a micro aggression. No, the Americans that back Donald Trump are well armed.
Donald Trump’s presidency will move forward politically lest the sixty million patriots who voted for him, that are comprised of the large majority of military voters, police, and NRA members, move it forward by force.
These patriots are armed, trained, prepared, and have proven their discipline. They have grown disgusted by the corruption in Washington and will do whatever is necessary to make sure Trump’s Freedom Agenda moves forward and under the direction of Donald Trump himself.
No amount of fake news based on unsubstantiated charges by unnamed sources is going to change that. The battle lines have been drawn and no amount of finger pointing is going to convince these patriots to let anyone overturn the election results.
So why are establishment politicians courting a bloodbath on the streets of America that will also threaten them personally when they could be part of Making America Great Again? It’s because they have been caught red-handed and up to their eyeballs in a worldwide criminal conspiracy that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with defrauding the American taxpayers.
And, now that they’ve been caught robbing the world’s largest bank – the U.S. treasury – they have chosen to go out in a blaze of glory rather than try to defend the indefensible at trial.
Washington’s criminal elites have chosen to go to war to unseat our duly elected president. It’s time to make our voices heard before this turns very ugly. Buckle your chin strap, America is counting on you.
EDITORS NOTE: THIS IS NOT A CALL TO ARMS BUT RATHER AN ANALYSIS OF WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE DEEP STATES OVERTURNS A DUELY ELECTED PRESIDENT.
HERE IS A LIST OF EVERY SINGLE TIME OBAMA COMMITTED AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE THAT DEMS & MEDIA COVERED UP
“Impeach!” It’s been more than eight years since Democrats uttered that word – long enough for anyone to wonder if it was still in their vocabulary, considering the deafening silence through the dozens of serious scandals during President Obama’s administration – but now that President Trump is the man in the White House, it’s back with a vengeance.
Democrats everywhere are wildly slinging the “I” word, hoping to nail Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors after the New York Times claimed a memo written by former FBI Director James Comey said the president urged him to end the federal investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Some members of Congress are getting in on the action. They include Reps. Maxine Water, D-Calif., and Al Green, D-Texas. Even a Republican, Rep. Justin Amash, claimed Wednesday there are grounds to impeach President Trump. House Oversign Committee Chair Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, asked for the alleged Comey memo and other documents. Chaffetz tweeted that he is prepared to subpoena the information. And Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., invoked “Watergate.”
Now the Democratic Party is reportedly poll testing impeachment as a 2018 election issue. More than 1 million people signed a petition calling on Congress to impeach Trump.
Wasting no time Wednesday, the mainstream media sprang into action, enthusiastically echoing the left’s impeachment calls. MSNBC launched a Watergate ad implying Trump is America’s new Richard Nixon.
“Watergate. We know its name because there were reporters who never stopped asking questions,” says MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who hinted that Trump is next on the impeachment chopping block. “Now, who knows where the questions will take us. But I know this: I’m not going to stop asking them.”
Meanwhile, some overzealous members of the left plastered fliers around Washington, D.C., demanding all White House staffers resign Wednesday.
The posters read: “If you work for this White House you are complicit in hate-mongering, lies, corrupt taking of Americans’ tax money via self-dealing and emoluments, and quite possibly federal crimes and treason. Also, any wars will be on your soul. … Resign now.”
But constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, who voted for President Obama, warned “impeachment” enthusiasts not to get ahead of themselves with President Trump. Why?
At this time, there’s no evidence Trump actually committed a crime.
“The criminal code demands more than what Comey reportedly describes in his memo,” Turley wrote in a May 17 opinion piece posted at the Hill. Turley explained:
For the first time, the Comey memo pushes the litany of controversies surrounding Trump into the scope of the United States criminal code.
However, if this is food for obstruction of justice, it is still an awfully thin soup. Some commentators seem to be alleging criminal conduct in office or calling for impeachment before Trump completed the words of his inaugural oath of office. Not surprising, within minutes of the New York Times report, the response was a chorus of breathless “gotcha” announcements. But this memo is neither the Pentagon Papers nor the Watergate tapes. Indeed, it raises as many questions for Comey as it does Trump in terms of the alleged underlying conduct.
A good place to start would be with the federal law, specifically 18 U.S.C. 1503. The criminal code demands more than what Comey reportedly describes in his memo. There are dozens of different variations of obstruction charges ranging from threatening witnesses to influencing jurors. None would fit this case. That leaves the omnibus provision on attempts to interfere with the “due administration of justice.”
However, that still leaves the need to show that the effort was to influence “corruptly” when Trump could say that he did little but express concern for a longtime associate. The term “corruptly” is actually defined differently under the various obstruction provisions, but it often involves a showing that someone acted “with the intent to secure an unlawful benefit for oneself or another.” Encouraging leniency or advocating for an associate is improper but not necessarily seeking an unlawful benefit for him.
. Obama’s Iran nuke deal
Obama knew about Hillary’s private email server
Obama IRS targets conservatives
Obama’s DOJ spies on AP reporters
Obamacare & Obama’s false promises
Illegal-alien amnesty by executive order
Benghazi-gate
Operation Fast & Furious
5 Taliban leaders for Bergdahl
Extortion 17
‘Recess ‘ appointments – when Senate was in session
Appointment of ‘czars’ without Senate approval
Suing Arizona for enforcing federal law
Refusal to defend Defense of Marriage Act
Illegally conducting war against Libya
NSA: Spying on Americans
Muslim Brotherhood ties
Miriam Carey
Birth certificate
Executive orders
Solyndra and the lost $535 million
Egypt
Cap & Trade: When in doubt, bypass Congress
Refusal to prosecute New Black Panthers
Obama’s U.S. citizen ‘hit list’

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Susan's Facebook Farewell

No more face book for this old war horse. I have had all the anger, hate and cruelty that is allowed into my life. If people have the right to shout and rant and rave because they did not get what they wanted, I have the right to keep it outside my door. I love my friends on face book and you are the ones that have brightened my days and will be missed. My PawPaw taught me that if something is really wrong, work with all your might to fix it. Standing in the corner and screaming that you feelings are hurt and that makes you unhappy does not fix anything. Making ugly wise cracks and hateful, hurtful remarks about someone or something you know nothing about does not fix anything. My politics and belief system are mine, your politics and belief system are yours. I am always amazed that you think screaming in my face will change that. Ok, I am off my soap box. As my beautiful, intelligent oldest son would say, "Wishing you peace, love and dope. Mostly dope". Signing off

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Steve Job's Last Words

Gloria Brown and Ann Ramsey shared Nigel Duncan Smith's post.
Nigel Duncan Smith The last words of Steve Jobs -
I have come to the pinnacle of success in business.
In the eyes of others, my life has been the symbol of success.
However, apart from work, I have little joy. Finally, my wealth is simply a fact to which I am accustomed.
At this time, lying on the hospital bed and remembering all my life, I realize that all the accolades and riches of which I was once so proud, have become insignificant with my imminent death.
In the dark, when I look at green lights, of the equipment for artificial respiration and feel the buzz of their mechanical sounds, I can feel the breath of my approaching death looming over me.
Only now do I understand that once you accumulate enough money for the rest of your life, you have to pursue objectives that are not related to wealth.
It should be something more important:
For example, stories of love, art, dreams of my childhood.
No, stop pursuing wealth, it can only make a person into a twisted being, just like me.
God has made us one way, we can feel the love in the heart of each of us, and not illusions built by fame or money, like I made in my life, I cannot take them with me.
I can only take with me the memories that were strengthened by love.
This is the true wealth that will follow you; will accompany you, he will give strength and light to go ahead.
Love can travel thousands of miles and so life has no limits. Move to where you want to go. Strive to reach the goals you want to achieve. Everything is in your heart and in your hands.
What is the world's most expensive bed? The hospital bed.
You, if you have money, you can hire someone to drive your car, but you cannot hire someone to take your illness that is killing you.
Material things lost can be found. But one thing you can never find when you lose: life.
Whatever stage of life where we are right now, at the end we will have to face the day when the curtain falls.
Please treasure your family love, love for your spouse, love for your friends...
Treat everyone well and stay friendly with your neighbours.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Pat Buchanan

‘The Ideas Made It, But I Didn’t’

Pat Buchanan won after all. But now he thinks it might be too late for the nation he was trying to save.

May/June 2017

His first date with his future wife was spent in a New Hampshire motel room drinking Wild Turkey into the wee hours with Hunter S. Thompson. He stood several feet away from Martin Luther King Jr. during the “I Have a Dream” speech. He went to China with Richard M. Nixon and walked away from Watergate unscathed. He survived Iran-Contra, too, and sat alongside Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavík Summit. He invaded America’s living rooms and pioneered the rhetorical combat that would power the cable news age. He defied the establishment by challenging a sitting president of his own party. He captured the fear and frustration of the right by proclaiming a great “culture war” was at hand. And his third-party candidacy in 2000 almost certainly handed George W. Bush the presidency, thanks to thousands of Palm Beach, Florida, residents mistakenly voting for him on the “butterfly ballot” when they meant to back Al Gore.
If not for his outsize ambition, Pat Buchanan might be the closest thing the American right has to a real-life Forrest Gump, that patriot from ordinary stock whose life journey positioned him to witness, influence and narrate the pivotal moments that shaped our modern world and changed the course of this country’s history. He has known myriad roles—neighborhood brawler, college expellee, journalist, White House adviser, political commentator, presidential candidate three times over, author, provocateur—and his existence traces the arc of what feels to some Americans like a nation’s ascent and decline. He was 3 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and 6 when Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now 78, with thick, black glasses and a thinning face, Buchanan looks back with nostalgia at a life and career that, for all its significance, was at risk of being forgotten—until Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States.
A quarter-century before Trump descended into the atrium of his Manhattan skyscraper to launch his unlikely bid for the White House, Buchanan, until then a columnist, political operative and TV commentator, stepped onto a stage in Concord, New Hampshire, to declare his own candidacy 10 weeks ahead of the state’s presidential primary. Associating the “globalist” President George H. W. Bush with “bureaucrats in Brussels” pursuing a “European superstate” that trampled on national identity, Buchanan warned his rowdy audience, “We must not trade in our sovereignty for a cushioned seat at the head table of anybody’s new world order!” His radically different prescription, which would underpin three consecutive runs for the presidency: a “new nationalism” that would focus on “forgotten Americans” left behind by bad trade deals, open-border immigration policies and foreign adventurism. His voice booming, Buchanan demanded: “Should the United States be required to carry indefinitely the full burden of defending rich and prosperous allies who take America’s generosity for granted as they invade our markets?”
This rhetoric—deployed again during his losing bid for the 1996 GOP nomination, and once more when he ran on the Reform Party ticket in 2000—not only provided a template for Trump’s campaign, but laid the foundation for its eventual success. Dismissed as a fringe character for rejecting Republican orthodoxy on trade and immigration and interventionism, Buchanan effectively weakened the party’s defenses, allowing a more forceful messenger with better timing to finish the insurrection he started back in 1991. All the ideas that seemed original to Trump’s campaign could, in fact, be attributed to Buchanan—from depicting the political class as bumbling stooges to singling out a rising superpower as an economic menace (though back then it was Japan, not China) to rallying the citizenry to “take back” a country whose destiny they no longer dictated. “Pitchfork Pat,” as he was nicknamed, even deployed a phrase that combined Trump’s two signature slogans: “Make America First Again.”

“Pat was the pioneer of the vision that Trump ran on and won on,” says Greg Mueller, who served as Buchanan’s communications director on the 1992 and 1996 campaigns and remains a close friend. Michael Kinsley, the liberal former New Republic editor who co-hosted CNN’s “Crossfire” with Buchanan, likewise credits his old sparring partner with laying the intellectual groundwork for Trumpism: “It’s unclear where this Trump thing goes, but Pat deserves some of the credit.” He pauses. “Or some of the blame.”
Buchanan, for his part, feels both validated and vindicated. Long ago resigned to the reality that his policy views made him a pariah in the Republican Party—and stained him irrevocably with the ensuing accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia—he has lived to see the GOP come around to Buchananism and the country send its direct descendant to the White House.
“I was elated, delighted that Trump picked up on the exact issues on which I challenged Bush,” he tells me. “And then he goes and uses my slogan? It just doesn’t get any better than this.” Buchanan, who has published such books as The Death of the West, State of Emergency, Day of Reckoning and Suicide of a Superpower, admits that November’s election result “gave me hope” for the first time in recent memory.
But none of this means he’s suddenly bullish about America’s future. Buchanan says he has “always been a pessimist,” and despite Trump’s conquest, two things continue to color his dark forecast for the nation. First, Buchanan harbors deep concerns over whether Trump, with his off-topic tweeting and pointless fight-picking, has the requisite focus and discipline to execute his nationalist agenda—especially over the opposition of a media-establishment complex bent on his destruction. Second, even if Trump delivers on the loftiest of his promises, Buchanan fears it will be too little, too late. Sweeping change was needed 25 years ago, he says, before thousands of factories vanished due to the North American Free Trade Agreement, before millions of illegal immigrants entered the country, before trillions of dollars were squandered on regime change and nation-building.
He has lived to see the GOP come around to Buchananism and the country send its direct descendant to the White House.

He’s not unlike the countless Trump voters I met across the country in 2016, many of them older folks yearning for a return to the country of their youth, a place they remember as safer, whiter, more wholesome, more Christian, more confident and less polarized. The difference is that Buchanan refuses to indulge in the illusion that a return to this utopia of yesteryear is even possible. Economically and demographically and culturally, he believes, the damage is done.
“We rolled the dice with the future of this country,” he tells me. “And I think it’s going to come up snake eyes.”
***
The living room of Buchanan’s home in McLean, Virginia, a wealthy suburb of Washington, could be mistaken for a museum. Between this wood-paneled space and his red-carpeted basement there must be 3,000 books on the shelves, meticulously categorized by genre, author or time period, a classical backdrop to Buchanan’s extensive collection of historical guns (including a rare replica of Robert E. Lee’s revolver) and a lifetime’s accumulation of family photographs, newspaper clippings, campaign keepsakes and miscellaneous relics.
His house is a monument to failed uprisings against the political establishment. Above the mantel rests a spectacular painting of Buchanan gazing out a bus window during a ride through scenic Iowa. Across the room, encased in wood and glass and standing some 4 feet tall, is the gilded pitchfork he received from “the Buchanan Brigades,” a group of campaign supporters, symbolic of his populist insurgency (and, unintentionally, of his paradoxical existence as a Georgetown-educated tormentor of the Washington elite). Resting on the coffee table is the most delicate souvenir of all, a piece of pristine stained glass gifted to him by a New Hampshire voter. The size of a nightstand surface, its craftsmanship is immaculate, with a dove’s red-and-white tail weaving through blue scrawl in memory of the year, 1992, and the motto of his presidential campaign: “America First.”
It all feels like ancient history, and Buchanan himself these days looks, well, rather ancient; the wrinkles run deep across his brow, and untamed wisps of gray hair shoot divergently from the back of his head. This aging exterior should not fool anyone. He is as mentally agile and rhetorically sharp as he was during his heyday on CNN and PBS, before the star commentator turned into a presidential candidate. As we talk for hours, Buchanan recalls those three campaigns—and the rest of his half-century in public life, not to mention his childhood, adolescence and early career—with a vivid clarity and a command of detail.
Buchanan has had plenty of titles over the years, from spokesman to candidate, but his favorite is historian. He cherishes history not just for its drama but for the lessons bequeathed and the parallels he can extract: the seductive appeal of populism, the rising tide of nationalism, the similarities between the current president and the two he worked closely alongside. Above all, Buchanan loves history because, in his mind, it contains our civilizational apex; he treasures the past because he is convinced that his beloved country, these United States, will never again approach the particular kind of glory it held for a middle-class family in the postwar years.
Such assured pessimism is somewhat surprising, given that Buchanan’s boldest achievement—and perhaps the most lasting aspect of his legacy—was being Trump before Trump was Trump.
“The ideas made it,” Buchanan tells me, letting out a belly laugh. “But I didn’t.”

There is some sad irony in the fact that Buchanan, whose vision is finally penetrating and driving the uppermost echelons of government, has seen his public profile diminished to an all-time low. This is somewhat intentional: Since being fired from MSNBC in 2012, he has hunkered down, content to make occasional Fox News appearances, write two columns a week for Creators Syndicate and spend more time at home with his wife, Shelley, binge-watching television shows such as “24” and “Homeland.” (“I dated a girl who reminded me of Claire Danes,” Buchanan grins. “She was crazy as a hoot owl.”) The couple doesn’t get out too often. They attend 9 a.m. Sunday Mass at Saint Mary Mother of God Church near Capitol Hill, then shop at their local Safeway and settle in for the coming week. They have an occasional dinner out at J. Gilbert’s steakhouse in McLean but mostly have simple meals at home; when it’s not Lent, Buchanan has two glasses of Grgich Hills Chardonnay each night. The slower pace suits a man who has battled heart problems and had several hospital stays in recent years.
His intellectual metabolism, however, remains turbocharged. After he walks a half-mile each morning around his neighborhood, Buchanan and his wife—Nixon’s former secretary, whom he calls “junior” and “kiddo” despite the fact that she is slightly older than he is—brew eight cups of coffee in a pot that is often finished by noon. In those intervening hours, Buchanan reads and annotates copious amounts of news; he begins with Drudge Report and AntiWar.com—two aggregators of reporting and opinion, one from the right and one from the libertarian-leaning left—before weaving his way, red markup pen at the ready, through the print editions of his five preferred newspapers: the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. (He used to read USA Today, too, but recently canceled the subscription.) This daily intake informs Buchanan’s well-considered stances on every current event we discuss during our conversation and provides fodder for his columns, which, however distasteful they may be to many on the left (and some on the right), cannot possibly be mistaken for material poorly researched.
Buchanan loves to write; he spends more time on his columns today than ever before, he says, about five hours on each one. The rest of his time, in recent years, has been consumed by books. He offered an ode to his former boss Richard Nixon in 2014 with The Greatest Comeback, an unappreciated tale of Tricky Dick’s political resurrection, and this May will release his 13th book, Nixon’s White House Wars, which is something of a sequel, offering a thorough and mouthwatering insider’s account of one of history’s most bellicose presidencies. “The first one had a happy ending,” Buchanan says. He shrugs his shoulders. “The second one, not so much.”
The path Buchanan took to becoming one of Nixon’s key loyalists was unusual, to say the least. Raised in a middle-class Roman Catholic family of nine children in Washington—back when the District of Columbia was “a sleepy and segregated Southern city,” he once wrote—Buchanan excelled in his parochial-school education and, despite an appetite for troublemaking and partying while he was a student at Gonzaga High School, he earned a scholarship to attend Georgetown University a few miles away. When Buchanan was expelled from Georgetown in his senior year for hospitalizing two D.C. cops during a traffic altercation that degenerated into fisticuffs, he and his father successfully petitioned the university to reduce his expulsion to a one-year withdrawal. Buchanan went to work in his father’s accounting firm during the suspension, began rethinking his life ambitions and, upon returning to finish college, decided to pursue a career as a columnist. (He had developed an interest in journalism as an 11-year-old boy, when he wound up in a full-body cast thanks to a football injury and spent four months doing nothing but reading newspaper and magazine coverage of the Korean War.) After Georgetown, Buchanan won acceptance to Columbia University’s journalism school, where he was surrounded by brilliant liberals who would go on to populate the nation’s most prominent newsrooms—an experience that shaped Buchanan’s distrust of the media’s objectivity. Upon earning his master’s, he sent out 17 job applications and fielded offers from three other newspapers—the New York Daily News, Charlotte Observer and Albuquerque Journal—before packing his bags for the Globe-Democrat, a conservative newspaper in St. Louis.
His break arrived quickly. After five weeks of reporting for the business section, an editorial writer position opened, and Buchanan never looked back. Three-and-a-half years later, in 1965, when Nixon came to town for a local party function, Buchanan cornered him in a kitchen and offered his services ahead of Nixon’s imminent 1968 campaign. “The Old Man,” as Buchanan still calls Nixon—“He was like a father to me at times”—hired him, and they became conjoined: Buchanan was a speechwriter, political adviser and special assistant in the White House. He gave famously defiant testimony in front of the Senate Watergate Committee and remained loyal to Nixon until the end, yet somehow emerged with his reputation enhanced even as, in his own recollection, “All those friends of mine went to the penitentiary.”

For all the comparisons of Trump to his own campaigns, Buchanan argues the more relevant parallels are between the 45th and 37th presidents. “They both confronted bureaucracy and a hostile media that hated Nixon and hates Trump,” he says. “The ‘deep state’ wants to break Trump’s presidency, just like it tried to break Nixon’s.” One difference between the two men is restraint: Whereas Trump appears consumed by “irrelevant things and peripheral attacks,” Buchanan says, “Nixon told me, ‘Don’t ever shoot down. Always shoot up.’” He lets out a sigh. “I feel for the guys that are in there,” Buchanan says of Trump’s team. “The problem is the president is distracted—and his adversaries know it. If I were them, I’d keep egging him on.”
Certainly, though, Nixon—and nearly every other former president—benefited from the absence of social media and the insatiable, 24-hour news cycle. Buchanan remembers his old boss occasionally calling him late at night, raving about some perceived slight and asking him to write and distribute something in response. By the next morning, Nixon had cooled off. “You didn’t do that, did you?” the president would ask him. (Buchanan recalls a former colleague once joking, “Watergate happened when some damn fool came out of the Oval Office and did exactly what Nixon told him to do.”)
Buchanan says Trump has “tremendous potential,” but adds, “This is my great apprehension, that the larger issues—the taxes, the Obamacare thing, the border security agenda, the trade agenda—could be imperiled by unnecessary fights.” He thinks for a moment. “It’s not a bad instinct to be a fighter. But sometimes you have to hold back.”
When it comes to Trump’s fight with the news media, however, Buchanan wants the president to keep swinging. Not only is it justified, he says, based on recent coverage, but Buchanan—a journalist by training—believes undermining the media’s legitimacy is essential to winning popular support for the president’s agenda. Here again, he speaks from firsthand experience in yet another American political war, the Nixon administration’s assault on the Fourth Estate. After the president’s November 1969 speech responding to nationwide protests against the Vietnam War was panned by all three major television networks, Nixon asked Buchanan to craft a memo detailing the president’s successes in his first year; instead, the young speechwriter advised the White House to wage “an all-out attack on the media.” Nixon liked the idea, but he didn’t want to be the messenger. Buchanan drafted the speech, and 10 days after Nixon’s nationally televised address, Vice President Spiro Agnew, an imposing figure who was then one of the most popular Republicans in America, delivered his now famous speech in Des Moines slamming “a small and unelected elite” who possess a “profound influence over public opinion” without any checks on their “vast power.”
It’s not a bad instinct to be a fighter,” Buchanan says of Trump. “But sometimes you have to hold back.”

Conservatives loved it, especially on the heels of Nixon calling them “the great silent majority,” a phrase Buchanan had coined. The entire sequence remains one of Buchanan’s career highlights—“it was a sensation,” he says of Agnew’s speech—and he says it holds important lessons for Trump. For starters, the president needs a strong and reliable surrogate. “Nixon would give Agnew all the lines he wanted to say, but couldn’t say because he was the president. Trump needs somebody like that—he’s doing it all by himself,” Buchanan says. He smirks. “Is Mike Pence going to do that?”
Moreover, Buchanan argues, calling out media bias has consistently worked in the 48 years since Agnew’s speech—and still does. “What we did was call into question their motives and their veracity. We said they are vessels flying flags of neutrality while carrying contraband,” Buchanan tells me. “And that’s a message that is still well received today, because people know it’s true.”
***
The architect of Nixon’s “all-out attack on the media” never strayed far from the media himself. He went on to became one of the best-known television personalities of the modern political era, a celebrity pundit who parlayed his popularity and visibility into a presidential bid two-and-a-half decades before Trump did the same.
After a brief stint as a holdover in President Gerald R. Ford’s administration, Buchanan returned to writing, pouring himself into a syndicated column that quickly became an acerbic must-read on the right. Radio opportunities weren’t far behind, and after five years of co-hosting a D.C.-based program alongside liberal journalist Tom Braden, the two took their act to CNN for an experiment called “Crossfire.” It was a hit, and so was “The McLaughlin Group,” an argumentative public affairs panel show that also began airing in 1982. Buchanan, suddenly the star conservative on two of political television’s premier programs, had emerged as one of the most influential media voices in the country. There was a vacuum of compelling content in those early days of always-on news—and Buchanan eagerly filled it with forceful opinions that were encouraged by producers who discouraged compromise and common ground. It’s the one element of his legacy to which he attaches some regret, repeatedly citing the poisonous tone of cable news discourse as a culprit in our societal and cultural disunion.
A decade after Buchanan left, the White House again came calling. This time, Ronald Reagan wanted him to serve as communications director. Buchanan had no choice but to accept—“the Gipper himself!” he recalls of receiving the offer—and spent two years, starting in the winter of 1985, steering the 40th president’s press operation. Buchanan sees fewer parallels between Reagan and Trump, though he offers two cautionary notes from his experience in that administration. First, he says, Trump must be “conscious of the coalition that brought him here” the way Reagan was responsive to the concerns of working-class cultural conservatives; Buchanan is particularly concerned that Trump, in addition to not following through on border security and protectionism, could hurt his own older and blue-collar voters with any type of dramatic health care overhaul. Second, Buchanan, in a nod to Trump’s testy public demeanor, remembers that Reagan’s famously sunny disposition wasn’t always on display—he just made it seem that way. “I saw Reagan explode a number of times in private. He was an Irishman, and you could see that temper go off,” Buchanan tells me. “But he never let the anger show in public.”

Eleanor Clift, the liberal longtime Newsweek journalist, first met Buchanan while covering the Reagan White House. “Everybody knew where he was ideologically,” Clift recalls, “and he was far to the right of President Reagan, and you could get him to tell stories about Reagan making fun of him and tasking him with selling things to conservatives.” She says Buchanan wasn’t much of a source for mainstream reporters because most of his energy was spent wooing the right. It was several years later, when the two began sharing the set on “The McLaughlin Group,” that Clift realized Buchanan’s gift for framing a political argument. “When he puts his analyst hat on, there’s nobody better,” she says. (Clift and Buchanan are in talks with television executives to bring “The McLaughlin Group” back on air, they tell me, but decline to elaborate.)
Buchanan was such a lucid communicator, in fact, that some conservatives wanted him to run for president. Having remarked shortly before leaving the White House in 1987 that “the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan,” Buchanan re-entered the media realm—resuming his roles on “Crossfire” and “The McLaughlin Group”—only to face mounting pressure from the right to enter the race for the Republican nomination in 1988. He ultimately declined, but published a page-turning autobiography in that presidential year, Right From the Beginning, that seemed a preliminary step toward a potential run for something, someday. The book is fascinating for its glimpse at Buchanan’s idyllic America, the earnest age of sprawling middle-class families and booming church attendance and fistfights at the local hangout after one six-pack too many. What it barely mentions, in making the case for a return to this safer and gentler society, are the dangers of trade and immigration—two issues that would animate Buchanan’s campaign against George H.W. Bush four years later.
“Between the years on ‘Crossfire’ and the years he ran for president, he was conservative but became very protectionist and nationalist, and that was of course a surprise,” Kinsley tells me. “The Republican Party stood for free markets completely and the Democratic Party stood for protectionism, and the idea that Pat Buchanan, who had worked in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, would become an ardent protectionist was shocking.”
When I ask about the transformation, Buchanan tells me the story of his uncle, a Republican activist who hailed from industrial Pennsylvania, confronting him at the 1976 GOP convention. “Free trade is killing us, Pat,” he told him. Buchanan says the incident “planted a seed in my mind,” but that a decade later he was still an avowed free-trader working in the Reagan White House. It was the winding down of the Cold War in the twilight of Reagan’s presidency that Buchanan says refocused his attention away from international dilemmas and toward those at home. Free trade had never seemed problematic; nor had Reagan’s 1986 amnesty that legalized some 3 million undocumented immigrants. The more he studied domestic policy problems, though, the more convinced Buchanan became that the country needed a drastic course correction. “We had carried the load for the West all throughout the Cold War. All of these allies had been essentially freeloading off the United States,” he recalls thinking. “And I said, ‘If the Russians are going home, it’s time for us to come home and look out for our own country first.’”
His only regret is that he didn’t take up the fight sooner, when he could have had a greater impact, and maybe could have headed off some of the decline he sees when he gazes across the modern American landscape. “Look at Detroit in 1945 and Hiroshima in 1945. And look at the two of them today,” Buchanan says. “Something went wrong.”
***
By 1992, the evolution was complete—“I was a full-fledged economic nationalist,” Buchanan says—and his crusade against the embodiment of globalism, President George H. W. Bush, became a surprise 10-week proxy war for the future of the Republican Party. Buchanan’s allies held out hope he could pull a historic upset in New Hampshire that would throw the entire nominating process into turmoil. But they knew it was terribly unlikely, and were thrilled when Buchanan captured 37 percent of the vote, even though it was still a double-digit defeat. He wound up winning nearly 3 million votes nationwide against Bush, and though he carried no states, was invited to speak at the party convention. When he delivered his fire-breathing “culture war” speech, urging Republicans to “take back” the country from the alien forces of militant secularism and liberal multiculturalism, Democrats said it was proof of a GOP tacking hard and fast to the right. That was the whole idea: Buchanan, unlike Trump 25 years later, was a committed social conservative who saw crusades against gay rights and abortion as part of the campaign to restore his ideal America. But they also limited his appeal, and some in the party establishment hold a grudge to this day, convinced Buchanan scared off independents and jump-started the Clinton dynasty. Buchanan dismisses this notion, but long ago made peace with the fact that he would need to damage Bush in order to shape the future of Republicanism. “He wasn’t going to remove the sitting president from winning the party’s nomination,” says Terry Jeffrey, Buchanan’s research and policy director that year. “But the question was: Which direction is the party going to go?”
It was an open question in 1996, when Buchanan mounted a second and more viable campaign, this time against establishment favorite Bob Dole, as well as Southern son Phil Gramm and publisher Steve Forbes, among others. Doubling down on the nationalist rhetoric—which, unlike Trump, Buchanan continued to combine with heaping doses of social conservatism—he carved out his role at the far right of the field. Things looked good when he won a nonbinding contest in Alaska and even better when he upset Gramm in the first official contest in Louisiana. Dole edged him by 3 percentage points in the much-anticipated Iowa caucuses, but eight days later, Buchanan’s political career climaxed with a 1-point win in the New Hampshire primary. “We’re going to recapture the lost sovereignty of our country,” Buchanan cried in a victory speech, “and we’re going to bring it home!”
It was the closest he would ever come to the presidency. Buchanan won just one of the remaining contests as Dole coasted to the nomination. Four years later, Buchanan broke from the GOP after years of tension with its establishment wing and sought the Reform Party nomination. He won it, over the objections of some activists, but bombed in November, winning fewer than 500,000 votes nationwide. (Ralph Nader’s Green Party tallied roughly 2.5 million votes more.) Buchanan, however, once again put his imprint on history: He won 3,407 votes in Palm Beach County, Florida—a liberal, heavily Jewish community—thanks to the “butterfly ballot” famously confusing many voters. George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and Buchanan makes no bones about what happened. “The Lord intervened,” he says, grinning. “We sunk Al Gore and won the election for Bush.”
Less memorably, the 2000 campaign also brought Buchanan into contact for the first time with Trump. The New York real estate tycoon and tabloid favorite was also mulling a run for the Reform Party’s nomination at the urging of Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler who had won Minnesota’s governorship on the third-party ticket in 1998. Trump never followed through, but true to the form he would display 16 years later, the future president took pleasure in brutalizing his potential competition. Trump devoted portions of a book to highlighting Buchanan’s alleged “intolerance” toward black and gay people, accused him of being “in love with Adolf Hitler” and denounced Buchanan while visiting a Holocaust museum, telling reporters, “We must recognize bigotry and prejudice and defeat it wherever it appears.”
The irony today is unmistakable. “What Trump said about Pat at the time is precisely what Trump’s opponents are saying about him now,” says Justin Raimondo, editorial director of AntiWar.com, who gave a nominating speech for Buchanan at the Reform Party convention.
His only regret is that he didn’t take up the fight sooner, when he could have had a greater impact.

Trump’s attacks stemmed from Buchanan’s suggestion in a book that year that World War II had been avoidable and that Hitler did not want conflict with the United States or its Western allies. Buchanan, who loathes international aggression—he vigorously opposed George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, further distancing himself from the GOP—has written and repeated similar sentiments about World War II over several decades, which, on top of his criticisms of Israeli influence over U.S. foreign policy, have led to charges of anti-Semitism. (Most damaging was William F. Buckley writing in National Review, shortly before Buchanan joined the 1992 race, that he could not defend his fellow conservative against such accusations. That said, some Jews in the media who are critical of Buchanan’s politics, including Kinsley, have defended him on this front.)
Buchanan has faced his share of critiques, but no one has hit him harder than Trump. In retrospect, it’s astounding that the man who used Buchanan’s playbook to win the White House had previously bashed him in the most ruthlessly ad hominem terms imaginable—yet Buchanan used his columns to cheerlead Trump’s 2016 candidacy from Day One. The explanation for this became clear once I accepted that Trump had done something entirely out of character: According to multiple sources, Trump called Buchanan out of the blue some five years ago, when the former candidate was a regular guest on “Morning Joe,” and apologized for all of the hurtful things he had said. “He made amends,” Bay Buchanan, Pat’s sister and former campaign manager, says of Trump. “Long before he got into the presidential [race], he reached out to Pat and apologized for what he’d done, realizing it had been wrong. … My brother is a very forgiving guy, and if someone asks for forgiveness, he’s going to deliver it.”
Buchanan himself refuses to comment on private conversations with Trump but does tell me the president would call occasionally during the 2016 primary to thank him for kind words during a TV appearance or make small talk about the campaign. Buchanan also says Trump mailed three “Make America Great Again” hats to his home—two of which he gifted to childhood friends, while keeping the other one for his extensive collection of presidential memorabilia.
“Did you ever offer him any advice?” I ask.
Buchanan begins to shake his head no, then stops himself. “I gave him some advice once,” he says, a smile spreading across his face. “I think he took it.”
***
Controversy has been a constant in Buchanan’s life, and will surely be part of his legacy. Buchanan, his friends say, suspected that powerful people at MSNBC were looking for a reason to fire him from the day he started there in 2002, reuniting with liberal commentator and former “Crossfire” co-host Bill Press for a similarly formatted program, “Buchanan & Press.” Ultimately Buchanan lasted a full decade at the left-wing cable news outlet before he published the book that would, finally, end his national broadcast career. In early 2012, months after Buchanan published Suicide of a Superpower, MSNBC fired him over provocative passages in the book relating to demographic change in America. Officials at 30 Rock were exceptionally disgusted with one chapter, “The End of White America,” in which Buchanan warned of the dire consequences brought on by what he had often called the “mass invasion” of immigrants from poor countries.
“Can Western civilization survive the passing of the European peoples whose ancestors created it and their replacement by Third World immigrants?” Buchanan wrote in his column the day of the book’s release, pre-emptively defending what he knew would be a polarizing thesis. “Probably not, for the new arrivals seem uninterested in preserving the old culture they have found.”
Of course, Buchanan’s views were well known by that point; he had presented identical arguments in several previous books, which explains why some of his highest-profile colleagues were furious with MSNBC’s decision. “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski issued a statement saying that they “strongly disagree” with Buchanan’s firing, and that his statements “should have been debated in public.” Chris Matthews dedicated a segment of “Hardball” to Buchanan in the wake of his dismissal, saying, “I miss him already,” and adding: “To Pat, the world can never be better than the one he grew up in as a young boy. … No country will ever be better than the United States of America of the early 1950s.”

Buchanan will go to his grave believing exactly that. He swears he has no personal animus toward people who don’t look like him; in fact, he says, the immigrant groups he interacts with in northern Virginia are “always smiling” and seem like wonderful members of the community. “Obviously they love America,” Buchanan tells me. “The question is, what is it that holds us together? The neocons say we’re an ideological people bound together by what Lincoln said at Gettysburg and what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, and that’s what makes us one nation. But my tradition of conservatism says it’s not; it’s the idea of culture and faith and belief and history and heroes and holidays.”
He takes a long pause. “Can you have a nation that consists of all the people in the world—and be one people?”
Buchanan has spent decades researching and thinking and writing about the threat he believes recent immigrants pose to America’s identity, and he comes to the subject armed with reams of statistics and arguments grounded in his reading of history. There are three main problems with the latest immigration trends, he says. First, whereas the Europeans were “never going back” and therefore put down permanent roots, millions of recent immigrants in the United States hail from Mexico and Central America and have easy access to their original home. Second, the vast numbers of new arrivals are stifling opportunity and mobility for the waves of immigrants who came before. And third, that stifling of opportunity and mobility causes prolonged concentration in closed-off communities, which robs those immigrants, Buchanan argues, of the chance to work their way out of ghettos and assimilate into American culture.
“This is why we argued in 1990 for a moratorium on immigration—those folks coming in poor could have been like the ethnic Irish and Italians and German,” Buchanan says. Instead, “they keep coming, and now you’ve got 60 million Hispanics living here, many of them in enclaves that can sustain themselves culturally and economically and socially. And it’s like they’re at home. A little piece of Mexico has been moved over here. … You look at the 24 counties from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas: Are they part of the United States or part of Mexico?”
A minute later, Buchanan adds, “You think you can go to Tucson, to what they call ‘Little Mexico,’ and ask them what the Constitution says? You think they know what the Constitution says?”
Can you have a nation that consists of all the people in the world,” Buchanan asks, “and be one people?”

It’s this type of talk that has earned Buchanan the ugliest of labels—racist, bigot, xenophobe. He says it used to bother him but doesn’t anymore. “Everybody’s a racist. The curse words of the left [are] losing their toxicity from overuse,” Buchanan says. “Those accusations used to be cause for a fight. Now they’re just tossed out.” What’s interesting is that his many friends on the left have grown similarly numb to the hullabaloo. At this point, they are resigned to rejecting Buchanan’s views while remaining convinced of his inherent respectability as a person.
“I’ve learned to live with the fact that Pat has some very abhorrent views, which I strongly, strongly object to, while at the same time I know him to be a very good, very solid, decent man, who is loyal to his friends and loves his country,” Press, his former MSNBC co-host, tells me. “I know that may be an impossible distinction, but I really don’t think Pat has a racist bone in his body. I think he just gets carried away with his view about threats to Western civilization.”
Kinsley recalls his old colleague renting a vacation home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that had an extra bedroom, where Buchanan could store boxes of books he would read while there. “Pat might be a nut, but he’s not a con man. Trump is both a nut and a con man,” Kinsley tells me. “You have to give Pat a certain amount of credit for intellect. He really thought through policy problems, and that’s where he’s not like Trump at all.”
Trump or no Trump, Buchanan has only become more alarmed about America’s political trajectory. The Republican Party is “running out of white folks,” he says, and historically immigrant groups have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. “If you bring in 100 million people and they vote 60 percent Democratic and 40 percent Republican, you’re buried,” Buchanan tells me. “What I’m saying is the America we knew and grew up with, it’s gone. And it’s not coming back. Demographically, culturally, socially, in every way, it’s a different country. And I think it’s come to resemble more of an empire than a nation and a people.”
Buchanan’s friends say that deep down he wants to be wrong about these predictions. And he admits that sometimes his pessimism gets the better of him: He never believed Trump would win in November. On Election Day, in fact, he bumped into Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock’s mother at the polling station and suggested that her daughter would soon be running for higher office—to replace Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential nominee, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. Instead, he found himself up at 3 in the morning celebrating, basking in congratulatory emails, and convincing himself that maybe, just maybe, America isn’t doomed yet.
“But this,” Buchanan tells me, “is the last chance for these ideas.”

Tim Alberta is national political reporter at Politico Magazine.
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