Reviewer says Buchanan is embracing eugenics

Below is an e-mail I sent on June 12 to Adam Kirsch of the New York Sun.

Dear Mr. Kirsch:

You wrote yesterday in your review of Patrick Buchanan’s book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War”:

Just from the titles of Mr. Buchanan’s books—“Day of Reckoning,” “State of Emergency,” “The Death of the West”—it is clear that he deploys a rhetoric of violence and treason more redolent of the German right in the Weimar period than of anything in the American conservative tradition. Open the books themselves, and things only get worse. Mr. Buchanan is a man who can write, in “Day of Reckoning,” that “we are on a path to national suicide,” not because he is oblivious to the echoes of the old eugenicist term “race suicide,” but because he positively embraces them.

First, just so you know where I’m coming from, I loathe Patrick Buchanan’s anti-Israelism and his “see-no-evil” approach to Hitler. I’ve attacked him for these views many times, including in my April 2002 article at FrontPage Magazine, “An Open Letter to Patrick Buchanan,” and in my recent blog article about his book, “Buchanan and World War II: The Unnecessary Book.”

The reason I’m writing is to inform you that the phrase “path to national suicide,” for which you criticize Buchanan, has nothing to do with eugenics. Buchanan is referencing the title of my 1990 booklet, The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism (available in pdf and html) which is about how mass non-European immigration is leading to the marginalization of the historic white majorities of the Western countries and the cultural transformation of the West. My concern, as well as that of Buchanan, who wrote very favorably about PNS when it was published and was influenced by it, is not race improvement through selective breeding, which is what eugenics is about; it is stopping the actual physical, cultural, and political dispossession of the founding and majority peoples of America and the other Western countries.

Such a disaster is something that I imagine you would oppose very strongly if it were imposed on Israel—as it in fact would be imposed under the Palestinian proposal for a mass “Return” of Palestinians. If, as seems to be the case, you regard opposition to the mass immigration of culturally unassimilable peoples into the West as morally wicked, but regard opposition to the mass immigration of an unassimilable people into Israel is morally justified, then I suggest you examine your premises.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Auster
View from the Right

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Nick P. writes:

I just read your comments about how you “loathe” (not disagree) with Buchanan’s anti-Israelism.

What exactly are the rules for discussing Israel? Because of the foreign aid we give Israel and the problems we have in the Middle East because of them we certainly have a right to take a closer look at their actions than we do say, Mongolia.

It is an understatement of epic proportions to say you dislike Islamic people more than Buchanan dislikes the people of Israel. So who is the extremist?

LA replies:

The lie built into your statement—and it follows the form of the standard lie of all anti-Israelites and anti-Semites—is that Buchanan is merely seeking to “discuss” Israel, and that I am silencing discussion.

Buchanan’s issue is not how much aid we give Israel. Buchanan opposes the very existence of Israel, as he’s made clear in his moral equation of Israeli self-defense with terrorism and in his support for the “one-state” solution which would mean the instant extinction of Israel.

Can you name any other country on earth that people seek to destroy, while they CLAIM that they only want to “criticize” that country, and then complain about the fact that people won’t let them merely CRITICIZE that country?

If Buchanan’s only issue were that he wanted U.S. aid to Israel to end, he could make that argument. But that’s not what he does. He has demonized Israel in numerous ways and he rationalizes those who seek to destroy Israel. And that is indeed loathsome.

And for a person who supposedly believes in the right of sovereign nations and peoples to exist, it is even more loathsome.

Everywhere Buchanan takes the side of the West against the non-West—with just two exceptions. He sides against Israel, which is a Western country though located in the Near East (just as Australia is a Western country though located close to Southeast Asia). And he takes the side of Muslims, as when he attacked the European newspapers for the Muhammad cartoons and called on America to “win the hearts and minds of Muslims.” But as Buchanan ought to know, and has no excuse of not knowing, the only way for non-Muslims to win the hearts and minds of Muslims is to submit themselves to Islam.

As for Muslims, it is incorrect on your part to say I “dislike Islamic people.” Far from attacking Muslims as Muslims, I always say that they are sincerely following their religion, but that their religion is, as an objective fact, a program that is aimed at our subjugation and destruction. Therefore I want Islam not to be in the West. I want it disempowered and returned to the Muslim lands where it belongs and where it cannot endanger us.

P.S. Also, you haven’t noticed that Buchanan is a fixture on TV. So no one is suppressing him. He is not threatened by my saying that I loathe his views on Israel. It’s pretty funny that you feel that the right of speech of Buchanan, a millionaire media star, is threatened by the writer of a small blog who is completely closed out of the mainstream.

Thucydides writes:

Your letter to Adam Kirsch is superb. Kirsch’s article was featured on “Arts and Letters Daily,” and so will get a lot of readership. Unfortunately, your letter won’t get the same distribution.

LA replies:

Thank you.

Of course he didn’t even reply. Neocons never reply to intelligent criticism from their right.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 13, 2008 12:55 PM | Send