TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2002 -- It’s back to the amen corner for Patrick Buchanan. Back before the first Gulf War, which he opposed, Buchanan railed against "the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States." Twelve years later, Buchanan and his isolationist allies on the right are now adroit enough to couch their anti-Jewish phrasings in more complex code language. The new Jewish boogeyman of choice -- for right and left -- is the "neo-con."

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Max Boot, points out "when Buchananites toss around "neoconservative" -- and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen -- it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is "Jewish conservative." But it goes father than that. In this increasingly heated war-time environment, tossing around the term "neocon" is a way to both discredit opponents ad hominem and inflame passions.

Buchanan chooses the domestic front for his latest assault. Rather than muddle around the question of war with Iraq, which is now appearing more and more imminent in the new year, Buchanan trots out his attack in the series of events that lead to the downfall of Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. In a December 30 piece -- I found it posted on TownHall.Com -- headlined "The Neocons & Nixon’s Southern Strategy," Buchanan lays into those conservative writers who admirably criticized Lott’s nostalgic and revisionist praise for Senator Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat (i.e. pro-segregationist) run for president in 1948. "Charles Krauthammer enters a claim for the Kristol-Bennett crowd, while Jonah Goldberg of National Review and cashiered Bush speech-writer David Frum inist they, too, played supporting roles," Buchanan writes. "With Lott gone, Bill Kristol is now collaborating with the New York Times in its rewrited of the history of the 1960s, a decade of liberal debacles, to credit racism for the Republicans’ success." Buchanan provides an interesting construction. Everybody he names has something in common. Krauthammer, Frum, Goldberg, Kristol -- hmmm, what could it be? Oh, I’ve got it. They’re all Jewish. I wonder why Buchanan didn’t throw into the mix Andrew Sullivan, who was one of the earliest and most prominent critics of Lott’s statement. Could it be because Sullivan, like Buchanan, is Roman Catholic and that would muddle up his anti-Jewish screed?

As for substance, Buchanan’s piece makes at least one valid contribution. It points out that the administration of Richard Nixon actually had some achievements on the civil rights front. (Nixon, for example, provided money for civil rights enforcement and had a good record of making African-American appointments; Nixon turned to a social liberal, former Michigan Governor George Romney, to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development). But Buchanan glosses over a major point. The 1968 Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, owned the civil rights record of Lyndon Johnson, a Southerner who had fought for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the War on Poverty. Nixon’s "law-and-order" campaign appealed to both angry Northern white ethnics who felt left out of Johnson’s social largesse and white Southerners who could no longer vote with Johnson’s party.

But Buchanan’s piece really isn’t about the substance. It’s about conjuring an alliance between one of his major opponents on the right, William Kristol, and the New York Times. (In an earlier era, Buchanan may have called it the Jew York Times.) Buchanan is at the forefront of those on the right and left who have embraced the anti-"neocon" banner. Perhaps Buchanan’s biggest partisan is Justin Raimondo, who adds an argument about military service -- or lack therof -- to the brief of complaint against "out neocon chicken hawks, who inhabit the arcane world of neoconservative thinktanks, richly-endowed academic niches, and a war-besotted media, get a thrill out of the idea of spilling blood – without having to dirty their own hands, or those of their progeny." Never mind that many of the alleged chickenhawks came of age during the advent of the all-volunteer army and were too young to serve in Vietnam.

Of course, you hear a lot about the neocons from the left as well. While Jason Vest shies away from the egregiousness of Buchanan, he does focus an odd amount of attention on a Jewish organization known as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, JINSA, in a piece for the Nation. Vest is no anti-Semite, but his story is certainly fuel for the fire for the conspiracists of the right and left. "Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views..." Vest breathlessly begins in tones that would not be unlike the description of secret meeting of the Elders of Zion.

With such important issues as war and peace at stake these days, it’s important for our country to have a healthy debate of views. That’s what the Phoenix did a few weeks back. But it’s also important that people bandying about different terms know what the implications of what they’re saying. The scary thing, especially in the case of Buchanan, is when they know exactly what they’re doing, and they do it anyway.