You know that either you’ve gone ’round the bend, or your country has, when Pat Buchanan starts making a lot of sense.

I actually spent my vacation last year reading Buchanan’s “Where the Right Went Wrong.” Attracted by the title, of course. Yet I have to say that while Buchanan did his usual thing - invoking liberals as commie dupes, luxuriously wallowing in the “culture war” muck - what surprised me was the degree to which I did agree with it, with his criticism of free trade as it is now practiced, and especially with his criticism of neoconservative foreign policy.

Buchanan has consistently ripped the delusional Wilsonian thinking that prompted out excellent Iraq adventure. So it should come as little surprise that he came out swinging this week in defense of Ron Paul, the Texas Congressman who has riled Republicans with his old-style paleoconservatism at the debates - including his assertion that the killers of 9/11 were “over here because we are over there.”

This insinuation that they don’t merely hate us for our freedom prompted an outburst by Rudy Giuliani who - like many of the Republicans in attendance - apparently has no idea what the word “blowback” means, and take umbrage at the notion our actions, in any way, could play a role in why Osama bin Laden does what he does.

Because they hate us for our freedom; that’s all we need to know. And it’s all some do know.

Paul challenges that petulant orthodoxy, and though he’s got the proverbial snowball’s chance, he’s actually generated a bit of heat in the blogosphere, becoming somewhat of an Internet celebrity. But that - and the fact he winds up leading these post-debate polls - has so shaken the GOP establishment that they’ve taken to smearing him.

Buchanan sets them straight:

Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden was among the mujahideen whom we, in the Reagan decade, were aiding when they were fighting to expel the Red Army from Afghanistan. We sent them Stinger missiles, Spanish mortars, sniper rifles. And they helped drive the Russians out.

What Ron Paul was addressing was the question of what turned the allies we aided into haters of the United States. Was it the fact that they discovered we have freedom of speech or separation of church and state? Do they hate us because of who we are? Or do they hate us because of what we do?

Osama bin Laden in his declaration of war in the 1990s said it was U.S. troops on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia, U.S. bombing and sanctions of a crushed Iraqi people, and U.S. support of Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians that were the reasons he and his mujahideen were declaring war on us.

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Almost all agree that, horrible as 9-11 was, it was not anarchic terror. It was political terror, done with a political motive and a political objective.

What does Rudy Giuliani think the political motive was for 9-11?

Was it because we are good and they are evil? Is it because they hate our freedom? Is it that simple?

Why, yes. For most neoconservatives, it’s exactly that simple.

And that is exactly what the Republican front-runners are campaigning on.

Paul is a problem for the creaking GOP establishment because his mere presence suggests something more and more of people are coming to perceive - that this is a faulty premise. But we have based the entire “War on Terror” upon this premisee; and this it is now official conservative orthodoxy, one which you question at your own peril - as Paul found out when Rudy jumped down his throat.

But as we continue stumbling down this path, this orthodoxy - this pure mythology - is making for strange bedfellows. I’d frankly like to hear the leading Democrats (Mike Gravel doesn’t really count) say the things Paul has said, because I think Paul is right. Any party that based its positions on this realistic assessment of why terrorism has become the issue it has is one I would vote for - because even while I might take strong issue with Buchanan (and Paul’s) “third world invasion of America“-type nonsense, terrorism and the policies we craft to address it are the most important issues of our time. Better to trust those who have their feet on the ground, rather than their addled heads fogged by the clouds of mythology.