Nothing sets Pat Buchanan off like the repeal of institutionalized bigotry. Of course, Pat Buchanan reacting angrily to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell isn't exactly surprising: If you've heard of Buchanan, you're probably aware of his intense dislike for just about everybody who isn't exactly like him. No, what's really striking about Buchanan's latest screed is just how out of touch he is with the world around him: From public opinion to the role of Congress, he just has no idea what he's talking about.

Here's Buchanan:

A Democratic Congress, discharged by the voters on Nov. 2, has as one of its last official acts, imposed its San Francisco values on the armed forces of the United States.

…

Why are we undertaking this social experiment with the finest military on earth? Does justice demand it? Was there a national clamor for it?

No.

Poor Pat Buchanan, too blinded by his hate to realize than those “San Francisco values” are American values. Not just because “all men are created equal” has been articulated (if not always acted upon) as an American value since the Declaration of Independence, but because the overwhelming majority of Americans -- 77 percent -- agree that gays should be able to serve openly in the military. “Clamor” is, I suppose, a subjective term -- but yes, DADT repeal reflects the will of the people.

(Buchanan doesn't explain his assertion that justice does not demand that gays enjoy equal treatment under the law.)

Buchanan lashes out at Congress for doing its job:

The least respected of American institutions, Congress, with an approval rating of 13 percent, is imposing its cultural and moral values on the most respected of American institutions, the U.S. military.

Congress, in concert with the president, is supposed to impose its will on the military. That's one of the things that differentiates America from a military dictatorship. Though I guess you can't expect someone whose claim to fame is having worked for Watergate-era Nixon and Iran-Contra-era Reagan to grasp such concepts. And this business about “imposing cultural and moral values” is a bit much, given that all Congress did was tell the military to stop imposing Pat Buchanan's cultural and moral values.

Buchanan favors a misguided and overly simplistic decision-making process:

One Marine commandant after another asked Congress to consider the issue from a single standpoint:

Will the admission of gay men into barracks at Pendleton and Parris Island enhance the fighting effectiveness of the Corps?

Buchanan doesn't explain why it is appropriate to assess a discriminatory policy from only that “single standpoint.” Plenty of policies governing the military are rightly made even if they do not “enhance the fighting effectiveness of the Corps.” The military exists to defend America and its values; it therefore makes little sense to subjugate those values to the military. In any case, the people whose job it is to lead the military favored repeal and think fighting effectiveness will be just fine. Why doesn't Pat Buchanan share their faith in the brave men and women of the United States military?

Buchanan conflates “gays” with “child molesters”:

Don't ask, don't tell" is to be repealed. Open homosexuals are to be welcomed with open arms in all branches of the armed services.

Let us hope this works out better for the Marine Corps than it did for the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church's problem wasn't that it was too hospitable to gays; it was that it (at best) did little to stop child molesters from molesting children. Those two things are quite different.

Did I mention that Pat Buchanan does not like gays? He doesn't:

This is a victory in the culture war for the new morality of the social revolution of the 1960s and a defeat for traditional Judeo-Christian values. For only in secularist ideology is it an article of faith that all sexual relations are morally equal and that to declare homosexual acts immoral is bigotry.

But while this new morality may be orthodoxy among our elites in the academy, media, culture and the arts, Middle America has never signed on and still regards homosexuality as an aberrant lifestyle, both socially and spiritually ruinous.

Buchanan's efforts to speak for “Middle America” are increasingly misguided: He doesn't even speak for the middle of the Republican Party, much less the nation as a whole. Remember how 77 percent of Americans favored DADT repeal? Yeah … so did 70 percent of white evangelicals. And 67 percent of conservative Republicans. There's a reason why Buchanan's assertions of the dominance of anti-gay sentiment don't include any actual numbers: They aren't true anywhere outside of his own mind, where it is always 1952.

The world has turned upside down. What was criminal vice in the 1950s -- homosexuality and abortion -- is not only constitutionally protected, but a mark of social progress.

Buchanan didn't elaborate, but that sounds an awful lot like a complaint that “homosexuality” is no longer “criminal.” But remember: He (says he) doesn't like it when Congress imposes “cultural and moral values.”