Buchanan on radio

I just listened to Patrick Buchanan being interviewed by radio host John Gambling about his book State of Emergency. Buchanan’s message regarding the immigration threat is bracingly strong, but also disconcertingly confused. There was no clear and consistent message or call to action, but a grab-bag of often contradictory complaints. First he talked about immigration. Then he switched into complaining that we’re not trying to assimilate the immigrants. Well, then, which is it—immigration or insufficient assimilation? (Not that we couldn’t do both, reduce or stop immigration and return to strong assimilationist policies, but the problem is that 99 percent of those who focus on unadequate assimilation as the problem also say that immigration is not a problem; they assume that the immigrants all assimilable, when they’re not. Therefore to start complaining about weak assimilationist policies in the midst of an attack on immigration diffuses the anti-immigration argument.) Then he went into his riff about low Western birth rates and that whole doom and gloom scenario, with its implication that we can’t do anything to stop immigration until the native birth rate is increased. So, what do we do in the meantime? Then he switched to the problem of illegals. So, is the problem illegal immigration, or immigration as a whole? Then he said that America is finished. But if America is finished, what’s the point of talking about it? Does he think we can stop and reverse the immigration and save America, or not?

A further potential contradiction is his position on Muslims. In recent years Buchanan has established a record for himself as a major appeaser of Islam, denying that it represents a threat to us, arguing that at all costs we must avoid a civilizational clash with Islam, and publishing an article by a British leftist claiming that Islamic terrorism is not real but an image manufactured by neoconservatives. He passionately attacked the European newspapers that bravely stood up to Muslim intimidation by publishing the Muhammad cartoons, and he has said we must “win the hearts and minds” of Muslims rather than confront them. Winning Muslim hearts and minds, avoiding civilizational conflict—this obviously implies that we must not criticize or seek to reduce Muslim immigration, let alone repatriate sharia-supporting Muslims. In fact, Buchanan seems to be saying that America’s problem is Hispanic immigration, while Europe’s problem is Muslim immigration. This bifurcation of the issue—allowing Buchanan to come across as a patriot defending America even as he continues to appease jihad-waging Muslims—will not do.

He ended however on a strong note. When Gambling asked him, would the massive changes he is describing in the Southwest be a good or a bad thing, Buchanan said he believes in nation, believes in sovereignty, believes in borders, believes in the country America has been, and that all of that is imminently threatened by immigration and particularly Bush’s amnesty bill. He said America is in an existential crisis.

Ben writes:

I saw him on Hannity and Colmes last night and he was doing the same thing. He kept talking about assimilation but would never just come out and say they don’t fit into our culture. Period.

I agreed with a lot of the things he was saying, but I could feel he was holding back from coming out and just saying what needed to be said. He also kept making a big deal about employers taking advantage of Mexicans (while I agree with this), but it seemed to me to be a tactic to get the racist label off of him, like he has compassion on them and really doesn’t want immigration because he doesn’t like seeing people taken advantage of.

Also I agree with you that he has lost so much creditability in regards to Islam, that it’s hard to listen to anything he says anymore. Pat used to be one of my favorites, but after recent columns, I find his columns to be unbearable and unreadable. I stopped reading him recently because of this. Especially during this recent Israeli “war.”

LA replies:

There is virtually no one in the West who will stay consistently with the idea that an immigration-related problem is due to the character and culture of the immigrants themselves. They might make such a point occasionally, but then they will immediately edge away from it and start talking about some secondary issue like assimilation and alienation and stuff like that. This is a basic test of conceptual clarity and conservative seriousness: is one willing to say that a non-Western people is different from us, period?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 24, 2006 12:14 PM | Send