Pugnacious, Principled, Patriot: Pat Buchanan Deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Pat Buchanan is an American patriot.

There was once a time in the American conservative movement when saying that was forbidden. 

In December 1991, William F. Buckley Jr. went “In Search of Anti-Semitism” from one Pat Buchanan. He spent 40,000 words in National Review to come to the following conclusion:

 “I do not believe that Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite. What I do believe is that he has said things that bear upon anti-Semitism, and has said them in contexts that can only give aid and comfort to anti-Semites.”

Judging someone not by what they say, but by who it theoretically helps—hasn’t that been the centerpiece of the Left’s cancel culture strategy?

Twelve years later, in March 2003, National Review published an essay from David Frum, a Canadian who has since become a dual Canadian-American citizen, accusing Buchanan and others of being “unpatriotic conservatives” for not supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Today, not only are more conservatives than ever calling Pat Buchanan an American patriot, they’re calling for him to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Recently, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.V., co-authored a piece published in Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, titled, “Pat Buchanan Belongs Among the Conservative Movement’s Greatest Heroes.”

“Awarding Pat Buchanan the Presidential Medal of Freedom would not just honor a man—though doing so would be long overdue,” the pair wrote. “It would also send an unmistakable message that the era of conservative timidity is over, that the movement which once censored and sidelined its boldest voices is gone for good.”

The Heritage Foundation followed Roberts’ op-ed by releasing an advertisement advocating for Buchanan to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., also joined the chorus, writing a letter to President Donald Trump asking the president to bestow the award on Buchanan.

The Missouri senator wrote that Buchanan is “a courageous intellectual and political trailblazer” who made a name for himself “challenging the elite consensus on behalf of the Americans he famously described as the ‘conservatives of the heart’—the working men and women who shared our beliefs and convictions, but had been abandoned by both parties in Washington.”

Buchanan is undoubtedly deserving of this honor. The reason that he is, however, is a great tragedy: For Buchanan to have been proven right—on immigration, trade, foreign policy, and American culture—some things in our country had to go terribly wrong.

Prior to my time at The Daily Signal, I spent three years at The American Conservative. During my time there, I often joked that it would be nice if we could be proven wrong because that would mean something would be going according to plan. I’m still waiting for that day.

I’ve never met Pat, but he had been my teacher long before I worked at his magazine.

I knew I wanted to go into politics at a sickeningly early age. My father would jest, half-seriously, “Why don’t you try something more honest, like bank robbery?” Too much of a coward to explore that career option, I continued on in politics. 

My politics was formed by the conservative movement of the Obama administration and the early Trump era when Conservative Inc. wasn’t quite sure what to do with Trump or the four years he had in office. My views then were exactly the opposite of what they are now: I was a free market fundamentalist, neoconservative, social libertarian. My personal newsstand consisted of National Review and the Weekly Standard and my shelves with books from Barry Goldwater and Mark Levin.

Then, in 2019, The Washington Post published the Afghan Papers, a series of documents from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction that were obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request. They revealed for years that high-ranking officials in the U.S. government were regularly lying about U.S. operations in Afghanistan and America’s prospects for victory.

I began asking myself how could the very leaders, intellectuals, and institutions I was taught to revere end up being so wrong?

I went searching for conservatives who were right from the beginning. I found Pat, his books, and his magazine, The American Conservative. 

The force of his writing carried a wit and candor that only an American Irish Catholic could summon. (On my nightstand, I keep a small collection of his quotes, titled “Deng Xiaoping Is a Chain-Smoking Communist Dwarf,” which I read for laughs after a bad day or in search of inspiration.)

Pat taught me that America was not an idea. It’s a people with a shared history, a shared culture, and a shared language. It’s a place with inestimable bounty worthy of defending at its borders.

Because America is not an idea, Pat taught me above all that it is natural, proper, and just to place America, and Americans, first.

It is natural to recognize America’s bounty is meant to benefit its citizens.

It’s proper to value American workers over foreign labor. 

It’s just to use our military to defend our national interests, not the interests of other countries.

Our nation’s ruling class at best ignored these lessons. At worst, they actively suppressed them.

But the American people have internalized these lessons, and entrusted leaders who have done the same. Close the borders. Enforce the laws. End the wars. Protect our workers. Save the country. It’s a unique opportunity, and it could be the last.

Charlie Kirk, soon to be the latest to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, understood the urgency. Those of us who have spent our lives in the conservative movement knew it was only a matter of time before he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. None of us would have ever imagined he would be receiving this honor so soon and under such cruel circumstances. 

In his life, and his tragic death, Charlie has earned the highest civilian recognition our nation can bestow. For the conservative movement, his assassination has been and will be a poignant reminder that there is no time like the present to appreciate its architects, celebrate its champions, and honor its heroes.

In a 1995 speech at the California Center for the Arts, Buchanan said, “You have my word: As long as there is life in me, I will spend the rest of my days fighting to restore the lost sovereignty of the United States, and to rescue the Republic I love from the grip of their godless New World Order.”

Buchanan has honored his word. To honor him, present Buchanan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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