Ok, back now. There may be some gaps in my knowledge about Pat Buchanan. I’ve never read his books. I am also used to positive karma here. My direct knowledge consists of seeing him be the genial old dinosaur on MSNBC that everyone seems to like. When he and Rachel Maddow debate, they are genuinely friendly. The way he is treated by liberal colleagues who know him personally is inconsistent with him being something akin to David Duke.

Here’s the dirt I know beyond his Wiki page - he’s blunt, isolationist, and mistaken on many things, but that is not sufficient to prove racism/antisemitism/etc. His occasional comments on Franco and the Spanish civil war while on MSNBC made my jaw drop, not so much in a good way. He supported that alleged Nazi guard Demjanjuk and got a lot of flack for it in the early 90s. Only he and the Israeli court system had the cool heads to see the evidence was vague, and mistaken identity was possible. (More evidence showed up in recent months, so he’s back on trial again, but that’s another matter.) His recent book about whether Hitler could have been handled better to avoid WW2 sounds hard to defend. Still, the media has mischaracterized complex and nuanced books in the past. That’s a close call. Beyond this, how is his behavior in the last 2 decades beyond typical conservative thought? He also was against the Iraq war, so that pays some karma lost from that disconcerting/naive/possible-crypto-Nazi-dog-whistle Hitler book.

Seriously, I’d rather learn something than participate in a flame war. Post some substantive links, and I will take a look late tonight. I will not change my mind after reading “fuck you and your username is teh stoopid” before I’ve even had my fortifying after hours Guiness. Seriously, I’m not afraid to change my mind.