Why I am Troubled by Patrick J. Buchanan

...and you should be, too.

An open letter to Patrick J. Buchanan

Dear Mr. Buchanan:

I'm writing you this letter, which I will forward to MSNBC, because I find your presence on television to be so disturbing that I can no longer be silent. After watching you for too many years to count, whether it was on CNN, McLaughlin Group or currently on MSNBC, I have become increasingly concerned about the hatred you carry for others and freely put on display, as though other people's lives are some sort of esoteric game and the kind of rhetoric you both write and verbalize has no effect.

You, sir, are a Catholic and yet, seem to violate our most basic tenets for sport. The whole "Do onto others as you would have done onto you" concept seems completely lost on you. You, sir, are Jesuit trained. You have been taught to think, to question, to articulate, but also to consider the least of your brothers, to be concerned about social justice and to accept all people as God's own children.

In spite of the exceptional training you received, you seem to have spent your life turning your back on it. I have no quarrel with genuine conservatism, but hatred of others disguised as conservatism is morally bankrupt. Your recent attacks on the ability of Judge Sonia Sotomayor are not based in reason or fact, but are the straw-man you use to decry your perception that white men have somehow gotten the short end of the stick in this country. I am white and I am raising two white men. They see the world as a place where everyone belongs and hard work will be rewarded. They do not think they are somehow cheated from success by the success of others. They learned that from their folks and from our Church.

To decry others as out to get you, to dig up dirt on opponents, to scream or write invective filled arguments designed to malign, to incite others to follow your lead and hate people who do not share your story is to deny that God does, in fact, live in them as well as you.

You have helped to divide us as country for the past 40+ years by demonizing others. I do not decry your right to free speech, but I do lament that you have dedicated so much of your life to squandering the precious gift of that right that was paid for with the blood of others.