Buchanan book says America is on “a path to national suicide”

Mark Jaws writes:

Only Pat serves my meat the way I like it, red and raw. I got this link off of Drudge.

Here’s the Drudge article:

NEW BUCHANAN BOOK DECLARES ‘END OF AMERICA’ Sun Nov 25 2007 20:40:15 ET **Exclusive** “America is coming apart, decomposing, and…the likelihood of her survival as one nation…is improbable—and impossible if America continues on her current course,” declares Pat Buchanan. “For we are on a path to national suicide.”

The best-selling author and former presidential candidate is on the eve of launching his new epic book: DAY OF RECKONING: HOW HUBRIS, IDEOLOGY AND GREED ARE TEARING AMERICA APART.

This time, Buchanan goes all the way: “America is in an existential crisis from which the nation may not survive.”

The U.S. Army is breaking and is too small to meet America’s global commitments.

The dollar has sunk to historic lows and is being abandoned by foreign governments.

U.S. manufacturing is being hollowed out.

The greatest invasion in history, from the Third World, is swamping the ethno-cultural core of the country, leading to Balkanization and the loss of the Southwest to Mexico.

The culture is collapsing and the nation is being deconstructed along the lines of race and class.

A fiscal crisis looms as the unfunded mandates of Social Security and Medicare remain unaddressed.

All these crises are hitting America at once—a perfect storm of crises.

Specifically, Buchanan contends:

• Pax Americana, the era of U.S. global dominance, is over. A struggle for global hegemony has begun among the United States, China, a resurgent Russia and radical Islam

• Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a product of hubris and of ideology, a secular religion of “democratism,” to which Bush was converted in the days following 9/11 • Torn asunder by a culture war, America has now begun to break down along class, ethnic and racial lines.

• The greatest threat to U.S. sovereignty and independence is the scheme of a global elite to erase America’s borders and merge the USA, Mexico and Canada into a North American Union.

• Free trade is shipping jobs, factories and technology to China and plunging America into permanent dependency and unpayable debt. One of every six U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished under Bush

• “Sovereign Wealth Funds,” controlled by foreign regimes and stuffed with trillions of dollars from U.S. trade deficits, are buying up strategic corporate assets vital to America’s security

• As U.S. wages are stagnant, corporate CEOs are raking in rising pay and benefits 400 to 500 times that of their workers

• The Third World invasion through Mexico is a graver threat to our survival as one nation than anything happening in Afghanistan or Iraq. European-Americans, 89% of the nation when JFK took the oath, are now 66% and sinking. Before 2050, America is a Third World nation

• By 2060, America will add 167 million people and 105 million immigrants will be here, triple the 37 million today.

• Hispanics will be over 100 million in 2050 and concentrated in a Southwest most Mexicans believe belongs to them

Buchanan’s Recommendations:

• A new foreign-defense policy that closes most of the 1000 bases overseas, reviews all alliances, and brings home U.S. troops

• A purge of neoconservative ideology and the “Cakewalk” crowd” from national power.

• To avert a second Cold War, the United States should “get out of Russia’s space and get out of Russia’s face,” and shut down all U.S. bases on the soil of the former Soviet Union

• To reach a cold peace in the culture war, Buchanan urges a return to federalism and the overthrow of our judicial dictatorship by Congressionally mandated restrictions on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

• To end the trade deficits and save the dollar, Buchanan urges a Hamiltonian solution: a 20% Border Equity Tax on imports, with the $500 billion raised to be used to end taxation on American producers

To prevent America becoming “a tangle of squabbling nationalities” Buchanan urges: No amnesty for the 12-20 million illegal aliens; a border fence from San Diego to Brownsville; Congressional declarations that children born to illegal aliens are not citizens and English is the language of the United States; and a “timeout” on all immigration.

Developing…

- end of initial entry -

Dimitri K. writes:

If Buchanan also added a comment somewhere in his book, in small letters, that the foundation of Israel was not the only reason of all those problems, I would agree that he is a sensible person.

As for his foreign program, it is too radical and suspiciously resembles one that could be proposed, say, by Iran. Well, maybe the best policy lies somewhere in the middle between Bush and Buchanan.

LA replies:

I don’t see in the Drudge summary the anti-Israel line Dimitri is talking about, which is not to say they’re not in the book. In Buchanan’s last book, State of Emergency, while parts of it were excellent, his treatment of Islam was woefully inadequate. His views on that subject are incoherent. On one hand, he’s been an apologist for Islam, siding with the Muslims in the Cartoon Jihad and saying that our goal must be to “win Muslim hearts and minds,” a recipe for Tony Blair type obsequiousness and surrender. On the other hand, he’s indicated alarm about the Islamic threat. It remains to be seen whether he will resolve these contradictions.

The question, in other words, is which impulse will win out in him? His hostility to Israel and neocons, which propels him to side with Islam? Or his concern for American and Western survival, which would require him to oppose Islam (and thus to be, as much as he would hate it, on the pro-Israel side)?

Indian living in the West writes:

I have a terrible feeling this book will be another rant—runaway doomsday rhetoric which will do no justice to the issues at hand.

The problems that he speaks about deserve to be discussed—but my feeling is that his desire to “predict” the future will get the better of his judgment as usual. This is an irresistible urge which few writers are immune to—if you try to “predict” stuff you sell five times more copies. So of course, he would do this. And he has, I am sure, already made a killing with his previous rants, Death of the West being another prominent one.

There are several problems with Buchanan’s approach usually—the first of which is that he never seems to come to grips with the causes. In Death of the West he blames the Frankfurt School. How could four treasonous Marxists have wrought so much damage to the country on their own? Who were their allies in this? And how did the country start swinging to their rhetoric and their ideas? He has no answers to all this. He notices the problems (or at least some) but he cannot identify anything more than that.

I suspect that his new book will be driven to paint more doom and gloom scenarios.

I agree that all the things he talks about are serious problems. But he seems to think this will mean the death of the country. As I don’t like making such predictions, I wouldn’t make one. These things may well mean the death of the country. But I think the more likely possibility is that America will survive in a shape and form which most “traditionalists” on your blog will want to have nothing to do with. However, it won’t be a Bosnia will bullets flying everywhere and the economy having collapsed as many rightists like to fantasize.

In all probability it will remain a rich country but racially mixed like Brazil. Political and government corruption will become more rampant—along Asian and Latin American lines. Organized crime will increase. But will the country become poor and destitute? No. Will whites become a racial minority? Almost certainly this is now a foregone conclusion. But does this mean whites will disappear? Again no.

So as one can see, the final outcome is not quite as disastrous as the Buchananites and paleo-conservatives like to paint it. They may well retort and say that the death of white America means the death of America for all practical purposes. And they would indeed be right in their own way. But even so, what does the America of 2007 have in common with the republic that Washington and Madison founded (I don’t even know where to start here but how many Constitutional principles have been butchered since the New Deal)? Or for that matter even the America that fought and won WWII (which was just two generations ago)? So if that America is already dead, which America’s death are we talking about now?

Nations, republics, empires go through several stages before they die. The Romans went from a virtuous hardy republican and peaceful agrarian people to a fighting republic with an expanding boundary to an Empire presided over a despot to a ruthless tyranny overcome with debauchery and corruption. At what point did Rome “die”? We can all agree 1500 years later that it is dead. But death happened in hindsight somewhere?

Where will the date be put on America’s death? I am no historian but the America that I grew up reading about and admiring is already dead and finished. The 1950s was when it breathed its last.

LA replies:

I think ILW is being way too “doomy,” almost to the point of indulging in it. Finding national death every which way he looks, he ceases to be able to make fundamental distinctions between changing occurring within a form, and the end of that form.

However, I liked what ILW said about Buchanan’s propensity toward prediction mongering. For example, in Death of the West, he got completely carried away with the birth rate issue. He seemed to derive a positive glee from his predictions of certain doom due to low birth rates. He failed to see that a population’s fertility goes up and down. Then, having played the doom-meister, he suddenly switches hats and starts calling on the West to save itself. This is a major source of the incoherence of Buchanan’s message. His ambivalence about Islam is another. Another has been his inability over the years to decide what the immigration problem consists of—is it the totality of immigration, or just illegal immigration? This may be a professional deformation resulting from being a columnist. However, there was much in State of Emergency that was worthwhile and powerful. I made a few comments about the book but never got around to writing about it as a whole which I had intended to do.

Gary M. writes:

Indian living in the West makes some interesting points about the “Brazilianization” of America. And even though Brazil is not a horrible place (from what I’ve heard—it’s just about the only country in South America I haven’t visited), it’s definitely a step down from what we are and have been in the not so distant past.

One aspect ILW did not mention is the linguistic fracturing that is likely to occur. Brazil may have extremes of wealth and poverty, and racial tensions, but at least everyone speaks a common language, Portuguese. We will see increased crime, poverty, corruption, and ugly racial animosities, and on top of that we will add the antagonism that naturally follows when two linguistic “tribes” are both competing over the same real estate.

ILW also neglected to point out that if you happen to be middle class (or better) in places like Brazil, you live behind a wall, not because it’s stylish, but because you have to. You have to take a different route to work everyday to keep would-be kidnappers off balance, “tip” the street urchins when you park your car to go inside a restaurant (i.e. pay protection money so that your vehicle doesn’t get broken into or stolen), and pay bribes to who-knows-how-many people in the course of everyday life just so you can get things accomplished that we take for granted here.

Our political elites are either (a) too stupid to understand this, (b) think it can’t happen here, or (c) understand that it can happen, and don’t care because they’ve got some sort of (mostly) unexpressed hostility toward ordinary middle class America.

Indian living the West writes:

Yesterday I watched an all-time classic, Howard Hawks’ Red River.

One only needs to watch this movie (which was made in the 1940s) and compare it to the garbage that is currently being produced to see where the country has gone in six decades.

For all practical purposes, Red River was the real America. And I think we can all agree that it is dead.

LA replies:

ILW is indulging himself in the thrills of the end times with a blanket statement that in the form in which he presents it is neither true nor helpful. Let’s stipulate that America is “dead.” Dead in what respect? In all respects? Or just in some respects? Irreversibly, or reversibly? I myself have said things such as that “Britain is dead,” or “America no longer exists,” the title of an article I wrote five months before the 9/11 attack, but I always carefully qualified those statements. By “America no longer exists,” I meant, not that America literally didn’t exist, but that America in key respects no longer had the will to defend its existence as a nation. That didn’t mean that such will could not be recovered. In every article last year in which I sounded the note that “Britain is dead,” I said, as it is now it is dead, but it could recover.

The statement, “There is much ruin in a great country” suggests that there is a lot to be ruined. Meaning that it could be ruined in some respects, while in others remain vital and capable of renewal.

By ILW’s standards, the moment America had changed from the America of Washington’s day to, say, the America of Jefferson’s or Jackson’s day, it was already dead; or when it changed from the America of 1920 to the America of 1940 it was already dead. This way of talking is too sweeping and is not helpful.

Kevin V. writes:

Indian living in the West asks: “There are several problems with Buchanan’s approach usually—the first of which is that he never seems to come to grips with the causes. In Death of the West he blames the Frankfurt School. How could four treasonous Marxists have wrought so much damage to the country on their own?”

The answer to that most interesting question has been, I believe, definitively given by the late Allan Bloom in his “Closing of the American Mind,” published in 1987. As many of the recent symposiums on that landmark book have noted, the book’s “middle part that no one read” in between the good bits about how rock music stinks and how black power radicals crushed the academy is a very plausible scenario for how a specific Germanic inheritance was transplanted into non-native soil and, due to local conditions, took on certain characteristics (ones we’d all recognize and which are lamented with regularity at VFR and elsewhere).

LA replies:

Just for the record, I read the whole book twice. However, I can’t say that the Germanic part of his thesis left a lasting impression on my thinking, except off-hand for his insight that every time a supposedly conservative politician speaks of “our values” he is unconsciously speaking the language of Germanic relativism.

ILW replies:

I only referred to the America of old as being dead. As I pointed out, an America obviously lives today and it will survive in some shape or form in half a century’s time. I am hardly being a doom monger in that respect. I would be if I said the country would descend into “ethnic war” or “racial war” as many doom merchants regularly say. I don’t think anything of the kind will happen.

Of course, picking a point in history when the “old America” died is arbitrary. One could equally say that it died during the New Deal because of the sweeping changes that FDR introduced—particularly the cancerous growth of government bureaucracy which eats away any vital country’s essentials.

So in what respects did the America of the 1950s share some continuum with the founding? Ideas of God, family and country were still alive and well in the 1950s. Sexual corruption as we see today was very rare. It is an amazing thing but the difference in sexual mores between the Americans of the 1990s and the 1950s would be greater than the difference between the Americans of the 1950s and the 1850s. The 60s changed everything. The family suffered a serious blow and of course the rampant uncontrolled immigration which is regularly discussed here started in the 1960s.

All of those things that I mention above meant that the country broke away from its founding character in fundamental ways. Is this not true?

I have to ask you this: can you restore the country to the way it was in the 1950s? The answer is clearly no. There is almost no country on earth where one could turn the clock back. How do you bring the family back to where it was in the 1950s without impinging on sexual freedom? How do you turn sexually promiscuous people into the family men and women of the 1950s? Clearly, this is impossible. Similarly, the sense of nation and purpose which was last to be found in the 1950s is gone. Some of it remains as is clearly visible from the number of readers who respond to your writings but then one has to ask oneself why haven’t the “conservative” elements succeeded in not only stopping the march of progressive nonsense but also making it retreat?

Immigration is a good example here. There is clearly much opinion in favour of limiting it. In the 1950s, when they wanted to limit it, they simply deported all the Mexicans who were living illegally. Fast forward to the 1990s onwards and there has been a growing movement to do the same but it has politically not got anywhere. While it is commendable to be an optimist, it makes sense to take stock every few years to see if a movement has had any success. What success have immigration restrictionists really had? Even their own congressmen regularly defy them and public opinion. So clearly, the sense of national purpose is gone?

It is probably crude to measure anything by the results achieved but nonetheless it is an effective way. On abortion, prayer in schools, immigration, affirmative action—“conservative” positions on these issues have gone nowhere in two decades. So what makes you think that the future will be any different? Particularly when the left’s numbers are swelling with every passing day—with the addition of racial minorities who will unfailingly vote for the left?

On Brazil, I know all about the crimes in Brazil. I know people who have worked there. A guy I knew at college worked in Sao Paolo for a year. He had some incredible stories about crime there. The way you avoid crime in Brazil is by staying away from the (mostly black) favelas. But then it is not like South Africa where the blacks simply want to slaughter the whites. The whites survive and prosper in Brazil and occupy all important positions of power. The other important financially successful minority there are the Japanese.

Bobby writes:

I’m a bit perplexed as to why discussion on your site, in regards to Pat Buchanan, inexorably leads to you and others dismissing him because of his dissenting perspective on Islam and Israel. Is it too little that his views are probably 90% in agreement with yours? Yet most readers and you as well, still feel compelled to dismiss him on the grounds that he’s (supposedly) anti-Israel and sides with Islam over America? It just seems like you and others are running a witch hunt against anyone who disagrees over anything you say, and once you find some article of contention, you dismiss that person from the traditionalist movement. I’m not saying Pat Buchanan is perfect, nobody is. I just wish you and others on this site would consider that by marginalizing him, his insights, and his literature, you’re marginalizing and repudiating the most popular traditional conservative left in America. Searching for heresy is no way to invigorate a movement and only scares people off. When Buchanan leaves the limelight and passes on, who will be left to raise the issues so important to you and your readers in the national media?

[LA replies: If Bobby doesn’t like seeing me criticize Buchanan, then why is he challenging me on my positions re Buchanan which cannot help but lead me to a rehearsal of those same criticisms that bother Bobby? If Bobby wants more peace on the pro-national right, then why does he engage in absurd overstatements about me, such as that I run a witch hunt against anyone who disagrees with anything I say? If Bobby wants to reduce contention, why does he make such contentious statements?

[In any case, I don’t think anyone in this discussion was dismissing or marginalizing Buchanan. I think we were objectively and rationally discussing the question whether Buchanan can resolve the contradiction between his pronounced anti-Israelism and his less pronounced concern about Islamization. That’s a real problem, even if Bobby thinks it’s not, and even he denies that Buchanan is anti-Israel.]

A few Questions:

Do you believe America would be where it is now if Buchanan had won the 1992 nomination and the Presidency? Would we be bogged down in Iraq right now, still have open borders, and spreading democracy around the globe?

Can you name another mainstream figure that more closely represents traditional conservatism?

Do you really believe Buchanan wants Islam to triumph over the West or that he takes Islam’s side against America? Death of the West is a clarion call for Western revival and brought the issue of demographic changes in Europe and North America into mainstream debate.

If Pat Buchanan isn’t ideologically pure enough for you and members of this site, who in America is? Can a movement to reclaim America ever amount to anything if we marginalize natural allies?

Do you think Buchanan really wants Israel’s destruction? [LA replies: Yes. He’s indicated it many times, literally, as in his support for the “one-state solution,” the merger of Jews and Palestinians into single state. If Buchanan wants people not to think that he seeks the destruction of Israel, there is a simple way for him to achieve that: renounce his past statements about Israel and stop making statements that add up to the destruction of Israel. Buchanan can do that any time. By drawing attention to his statements I am not demonizing him but showing the meaning of what he himself says.] Can you recognize that a nationalist like Buchanan might have reservations about wedding one nation’s foreign policy completely with our own and not want the destruction of that nation? [LA replies: Again, Bobby is undermining his own ostensible purpose. Bobby’s supposed aim is to lessen the tensions between Israel-defenders like me and Israel-critics like Buchanan. But Bobby engages in the standard apologia for Israel’s enemies, which is that they’re not anti-Israel, they simply don’t want America to be so involved in Israel. Unfortunately these same people then turn around and start demonizing Israel as the cause of Muslim terrorism, attacking Israel for defending itself from Muslim terrorism, and proposing steps that must lead to Israel’s destruction. So, they are not merely seeking “hands-off” on Israel, are they? They have an anti-Israel agenda. But so blind are they in their animus against Israel that they can’t see how obvious they are being.] Is Buchanan’s view here completely verboten in your view from traditionalist thought? [What is verboten in my view—and this has been my consistent position for many years—is for people to support, rationalize, or excuse people who are seeking the extermination of Jews.] While I might not agree we should be subsidizing Japan’s defense, it doesn’t necessarily mean I wish that nation be destroyed and wiped off the earth. [LA replies: Buchanan in the crudest language demonized Israelis as animalistic aggressors when, after enduring suicide attacks for a year, they finally entered the West Bank in April 2002. A man who denies a nation’s right to defend itself is a man who is ready to support those who wish to wipe that nation off the earth. Again, if Buchanan doesn’t want me to draw these conclusions about him, the solution is simple; he can stop saying the things that have led me to those conclusions.] I don’t think his view is as controvertial and anti-Israel as your perceive it to be. Disagreement amongst allies isn’t to be purged, but discussed and debated. Let’s leave the purges to Communists.

You argue that Buchanan is weak on the Islam problem. But wouldn’t Buchanan’s immigration restrictions and assimilation programs effectively mitigate this?

As a loyal reader and fan of both you and Buchanan, I wish everyone here could coalesce around this book, much like Alien Nation. It is a call for American renewal and something that can inspire typical Americans into a deeper concern over their nation’s future. This book, from what I’ve heard so far, is something that deserves our whole-hearted support, because while not perfect, Buchanan is definitely on our side.

[LA replies: I copied the entire Drudge abstract of Buchanan’s argument. If I didn’t think Buchanan was saying something worthwhile I wouldn’t have done that. In my first comment after the initial entry I defended Buchanan from Dimitri’s comment that Buchanan was being anti-Israel, which I hadn’t seen any sign of in the abstract. I then proceeded to point to the contradiction between Bushanan’s long-time anti-Israelism and his concern about the Islam threat. The spirit of that was not demonization, but asking an objective question. Unlike the Israel critics’ supposed “mere criticisms” of Israel, the criticisms I made of Buchanan were in fact just that, criticisms, not statements that were marginalizing him or demonizing him.]

Bobby replies:

Thanks for the reply. The purpose of my writing to you was to further my understanding of just what role you think Buchanan should play in the traditionalist movement. It was not to act as an “apologist for Israel’s enemies” but merely to understand further your critique of Buchanan, something I’ve appreciated more after reading your open letter addressed to him.

Perhaps my questioning was not straightforward enough. I wasn’t attempting to apologize for his views on Israel, merely to understand your perspective on them and whether you consider them appropriate and acceptable positions within the conservative community. Just what do you think his role should be? Is there anyone with more media exposure and reach than him, who exemplifies your views?

I disagree with you as to the extent of Buchanan’s supposed anti-Semitism. I interpret Buchanan’s ideas regarding peace in Israel as having both parties interests at heart. I disagree, given the existence of an organization as disreputable as Hamas winning an election there, but Buchanan seems to be wanting Israel to pursue a different, less militaristic, path to peace for Israel’s sake, not for the sake of Hamas or the terrorists. I sincerely doubt he would ever welcome the complete annihilation of Israel. Their situation is somewhat analogous to ours, in Buchanan’s eyes, with Israel making foolish military decisions, similar to our invasion of Iraq. But would Buchanan wish the destruction of America because he disagrees with the Iraq invasion? Certainly many neo-cons would reply that he disagrees that America has the right to defend itself.

While I disagree with Buchanan on the issue, I wouldn’t characterize it the same way you have. A point of disagreement amongst traditionalists. But one that should result in ostracism from the movement? Which if your interpretation of Buchanan is right, should justifiably happen.

My main concern was the ethos of conversation was one of “oh Pat Buchanan, he’s anti-Israel, he’s not worth our time, he disagrees with us on Islam, lets be ambivalent or negative about the book.” The previous entries testify to this, despite the summary of the book not including anything about Israel or Muslims.

Again. What is your view of the book, given the summary offered and what should Buchanan’s role be in the movement?

LA replies:

It is less a matter of my pronouncing what should be Buchanan’s role in the movement, a power I do not have and do not claim, than a matter of my figuring out how do I respond to this complicated and difficult person in a way that is responsive to the truth, so that I am neither expelling from consideration a person who often says useful things, nor embracing someone who does not deserve to be embraced. And I handle this, I think, by treating Buchanan objectively, by bifurcating the good and bad Buchanan. When he says something useful, I treat it as such, when he when he says something bad, I treat it as such. That is the only way I know of dealing with someone who is both appalling and, on some key issues, a champion for our side.

Mark writes:

You comment on the dilemma that Buchanan faces:

“The question, in other words, is which impulse will win out in him? His hostility to Israel and neocons, which propels him to side with Islam? Or his concern for American and Western survival, which would require him to oppose Islam (and thus to be, as much as he would hate it, on the pro-Israel side)?”

It is interesting that you use the word “impulse,” perhaps without too much thought, which suggests that Buchanan’s positions may be somewhat less than rational.

I assume that Buchanan’s undoubted hostility toward Israel stems from the same “impulse” that has led him to embrace German irredentism and to display remarkable hostility toward Poland and every other nation that has in any way inconvenienced the predestined march of Germany through history: the fact that his mother was German. Likewise, I believe that his championing of the Confederacy (visiting Confederate civil war cemeteries but avoiding Union cemeteries) arise from a similar source: the fact that, on his father’s side, he is descended from Southern slave owners.

Of course, these are all complex historical questions, which commonly Buchanan reduces to cartoon-like simplicity based on family loyalty and a romantic obsession with lost causes. His personal pathology would be in no wise interesting were it not for the attention he draws as a public pundit.

Anyway, I enjoy your stimulating discussions.

Larry G. writes:

Dimitri K. writes:

“If Buchanan also added a comment somewhere in his book, in small letters, that the foundation of Israel was not the only reason of all those problems, I would agree that he is a sensible person.”

I think you misread Dimitri. I read this to mean that Dimitri hopes that Buchanan, having been anti-Israel in the past, would come to his senses, and would insert in his book, in a low-key way that allows Buchanan to save face, an acknowledgement that Israel is not the sole source of the Arab’s jihad.

PS—I hope Buchanan gives you a royalty on the phrase “Path to National Suicide.” ;-)

LA replies:

I think Larry G. is probably correct that I misread Dimitri.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 26, 2007 10:54 AM | Send