In 2005 I linked to an article by John Walsh on the hard-left Counterpunch website calling for unity between the left and right wings of the “antiwar” movement.
I wrote:
Among the antiwar rightists Walsh considers potential allies is Pat Buchanan, a paleoconservative and an editor of The American Conservative magazine. Walsh writes approvingly, “The intense hatred for the neocons fairly jumps off the pages of this paleocon magazine, grabs you by the throat and demands that you listen…”
Walsh also cites with approval such antiwar rightists as Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com (“who gives no quarter to the neocons or their lies”), rightwing economist Paul Craig Roberts (who has advocated evacuating the Jews from Israel to prevent World War IV) and isolationist Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, a former Libertarian Party candidate for President. Counterpunch regularly publishes the writings of Roberts and Paul.
Although Buchanan has yet to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Ramsey Clark at an antiwar demonstration, another plea for unity has appeared– this on the blog of an Orthodox Christian paleocon named Daniel Larison. In a post endorsing the idea that Muslim rage at the West is justified by our supposed rampant immorality, and inflamed by the spread of our pop culture, Larison writes:
What is potentially quite interesting is what might happen if we could somehow miraculously get together the large constituency on the left that focuses specifically on U.S. policy and the fairly large and, I think, growing constituency on the right that focuses on cultural decadence to create a popular cause demanding the dismantling of the hegemony and moral renewal. The only problem is that the two groups generally regard each other’s America as the heart of the problem that “their” America has with the rest of the world. I promise a nice steak dinner to anyone who can come up with the plan that unites these two basically mutually antagonistic groups together in a force for anti-imperialist cultural regeneration.
Get thinking, folks. I’ll pass the best ideas on to Mr. Larison. That steak dinner could be yours.
(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
