From Holden:

Pat Buchanan is one of the more distasteful voices on the right, but from time to time I find myself agreeing with him. Yesterday on Meet the Press was one of those times.

The United States of America has always been free and always been secure. There have been despotisms from time in memorial. There are 22 Arab states, not one of which is democratic, and the United States has not been threatened by any of them since the Barbary pirates.

In my judgment, what happened on 9/11 was a result of interventionism. Interventionism is the cause of terror. It is not a cure for terror. The idea that the president of the United States, as he said in his inaugural, is going to help democratic institutions in every region in every nation on earth is a formula for permanent war, Tim. And look, the president of the United States has no constitutional authority to do this. Where in the Constitution do we get the right to intervene in the internal affairs of countries that do not threaten us and do not attack us? If they don’t, their internal politics are their own business. As Quincy Adams says, “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the champion of freedom everywhere, but the vindicator only of her own.”