Monday, September 28, 2009

Safire, WFB, Buchanan

When Hurricane Pat first blew through Rightworld late in 1991, WFB greeted it with one of his most consequential late articles: "In Search of Anti-Semitism." I discuss the context, the article, and the fall-out, political and personal, on pp. 168–172 of Right Time, Right Place.

William Safire had this to say at the time:

I was in that band of warhawks at which Pat loosed his cannon this year, labeling us "the amen corner" of the Israeli Defense Ministry — as if the threat to the U.S. from Saddam was a concoction of world Jewry.

That was a charge of dual loyalty, below the political belt. Pat knew it: Catholic Americans had to endure similar charges of "Romanism" for a century until the election of J.F.K. buried such notions of secret papal domination.

I withheld my reaction in hopes that a columnist with impeccably conservative credentials, and not Jewish, would make the call. William F. Buckley, an early Buchanan hero, has just done so in the National Review, finding the pattern of Pat's past remarks impossible to defend from a charge of anti-Semitism. That's a sound, if pained, judgment.

(Me): It was a judgment that had to be made, and that WFB had to make — and he did it.

09/28 02:42 PMShare