Buchananite Bernie

The Republicans are now the party of not terribly American people who believe in their own idea of the place rather than in any kind of reality.

Therefore, here is even Pat Buchanan's highly sympathetic, semi-official biographer as good as endorsing Bernie Sanders.

Tim points out that Sanders supports immigration controls and opposes gun controls. As for foreign policy, Sanders is persuadable, and certainly a lot better than anyone else in the race since the withdrawal of Rand Paul.

It is impossible to understand the American opposition to gun controls, in the way that it is impossible to understand the German insistence that there be no speed limits on the Autobahn, and impossible for anyone outside ever quite to understand the British class system. Some things about other people just have to be accepted.

If America does have a role as in any sense the leader of the West, then that role is wholly incompatible, either with the absence of the universal healthcare that Sanders proposes, or with the presence of the capital punishment that Sanders opposes.

Both that first absence and that second presence now place America almost outside the West altogether.

Nowhere would have abolished the death penalty by popular vote at the time. But, for all the bluster from people who need to get out more, nowhere that has abolished it would now bring it back.

And nowhere with universal healthcare would consider for one second regressing to life before it.