Pat Buchanan had an online chat with Ralph Nader in 1999. Here’s a snippet from the transcript:

Pat Buchanan: Let me say that my criticism of American corporations is that so many of them are ceasing to be American in their outlook, in their interest and in their concern. They’re turning their backs on their country, and their workers and that’s not the system of free enterprise I’ve celebrated all my life. And I have no interest in defending that. They’ve ceased to be American companies

Ralph Nader: About two years ago, I sent letters to some of the largest American corporations. I asked since they were born in the US, since they made their profits off the labors of American workers, since when they get in trouble they go to Washington. for corporate bailouts by US taxpayers, and when they get in trouble overseas they call the US Marines, I suggested that these companies pledge allegiance to the American flag and the republic for which it stands, of course, ending with the delightful phrase, with liberty and justice for all. Only one company said it was a good idea: Federated Department Stores, I guess because they can’t relocate overseas. All the rest who replied, about half of them, said no. I guess that illustrates what Pat was saying.

Sam Francis is right until he begins the paragraph starting “The real reason….” Then he goes off the rails. Although those elites tend to have an international outlook, owing to the nature of their contacts and markets, their chief trait is present-mindedness. They don’t think about what our society—and their markets—will be like in 25 years; they think in terms of the next quarterly report. They don’t have a philosophy; their minds are structured to the exigencies of spreadsheets. Francis, Buchanan, and other paleocons chronically give those corporate leaders far too much credit for strategic vision.

No, one reason for their support for affirmative action is venal: they’re BUYING PEACE. If they side with Jesse Jackson and give him $100,000 each, he won’t boycott them. Having bought the “robber baron” image of the businessman, they work hard to prove that they’re different; they have a heart. Then blacks and other minorities, as well as white liberals, will buy their products.

A second motive is guilt-riddance. When Bill Gates and Warren Buffett make enormous benefactions to liberal causes, they aren’t implementing some long-range vision of a nationality-less world. They’re broadcasting a message to people who hate them for being rich.

A third motive is competitive: the large corporations can afford the expenses associated with implementing those programs, expensive programs that could bankrupt their small competitors.

All three motives are obvious and obviously closely related, and all three are short-range, which is the way those people think.

Over the years I’ve often wondered how so many paleocon theorists have managed not to have heard of Occam’s Razor.

One aspect of frieda’s “buying peace” point is that the law says businesses can’t “discriminate,” whatever that turns out to mean, and AA is the only way to give a big business an easy-to-administer way to make sure that what they’re doing isn’t held to constitute discrimination.

On Francis’ point, I agree that that the abolition of particularities is not a conscious overall policy. I do think though that the view that particularities of race, nation, religion, sex and what not are annoyances that should be done away with is one that large international corporations naturally adopt. A big rationalized organization likes to have inputs — raw materials, spare parts, employees and what not — standardized and graded in accordance with functional standards. It makes planning, management and central control easier if you don’t have to consider attributes that don’t directly bear on the process of production. So an educational system that emphasizes vocational training, and tends toward the abolition of ethnic, religious and family ties and to sexual distinctions, would naturally meet their approval.

[… Frieda jumps, shoots … swish … nothing but net]