Down, Pat!
Ex-Nixon campaign aide and full-time racist Pat Buchanan thinks those damn kids shoulda’ stayed off the White House lawn on March 24th, that they’re immature, and not so bright.
Yesterday, on CSPAN’s “Washington Journal” Buchanan had this to say in response to a callers query:
Caller: Today, as I look at the march on Washington, I’m sorry to say this, but it’s the march of the know-nothings. They have a lot of emotion but they had very little intelligence. Everything is phrases and — so I would like Pat to comment. I wasn’t one of your pitchfork people but I’ve always appreciated your comments on Crossfire and all that.
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Buchanan: Thanks very much, but I agree with the gentleman. I mentioned that I was in the teachings in Washington University in 1965, and when I went out there, the people, the young people questioned me. They knew the history of Vietnam back with the French and before then, what we were doing, the agreements in Geneva. They knew everything.
They were extremely intelligent. Later on after Kent State, I went out and spoke at Kent State, and they were just emotional. And I would agree with him about yesterday. Maybe it’s the film that was taken out, but the kids seemed full of passion and emotion, and caught up, and not a great deal of thought, frankly.
And I can understand the passion in the immediate aftermath of that killing down there in Broward County. But that’s what you’ve got, so much passion as though you can, you know, wave a magic wand and and put an end to these school killings, and we can’t do it.
And as the gentleman says, I think the generation does -and you can never know exactly- but the generation I think the generation of the 1960’s, the early to mid ’60’s was intelligent in a lot of ways, even when it was the liberal side… it was mature, it knew where it was going where it was going. It had ideal, some of it like the crowd up there at Columbia, Mark Penn and his friends that helped us. I put out a statement I think denouncing them for revolutionary takeover of our institutions, and it got 95-5 support in the polls.
First, while Buchanan praises the “emotional” students at Kent State he ignores the fact that he wrote the speech for Nixon that is widely-credited (but perhaps “blamed” is a better word) for leading to the Kent State massacre that left four “emotional” protesters dead.
Second, like those students exercising their right to protest, these kids all over the world aren’t blithely asking anyone to “wave a magic wand.” They’re calling for lawmakers to get off their hands, wash the blood off those hands, and get those hands dirty getting to work on passing real, comprehensive gun reform legislation. These are smart, articulate kids who are working toward practical solutions to real-life dangers that threaten their lives on a daily basis, and end them almost as often.
And third, Buchanan and his gun-loving ilk sure are running scared from these kids who show “not a great deal of thought.” Could it be because they’ll be of voting age soon?
The times, they are a-changin’, Pat.
