Posted on 10/31/2011 9:36:59 PM PDT by WilliamHouston
Pat Buchanan's new book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025 is the bluntest and most cogent statement of the truth about the present course of Western civilization that has been seen in American bookstores in many years.
In this book, Pat takes the gloves off and hits the American Left with the Hard Right. He knocks the liberal establishment out of the ring. Everything that real conservatives have privately known to be true for generations is finally aired in this brave and long overdue new book.
Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization. As people of European ancestry abandoned their traditional faith, Western culture began to die. As Western culture began to die, Western civilization began to die. Finally, the people of the West are literally dying out and the Third World is flooding into the West to take our place in our own homelands.
The American Left has become a utopian death cult in the grips of a suicidal ideology like the Shakers. The Baby Boomer elite that was captured by the counterculture in the 1960s has set America on a course to national oblivion: radical multiculturalism, open borders, the welfare state, affirmative action, the obsession with diversity, the embrace of the sick and degenerate "free love movement," the embrace of abortion and family planning, the embrace of an adversary secular culture that has flatly declared war on Christianity.
As a historian, Pat Buchanan is here to remind us of the awful truth that this sort of progressive worldview and the lifestyle that accompanies it has consequences:
First, America is disintegrating into a balkanized landscape of racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious enclaves - a secession of the heart, as Buchanan describes it - that disagree with each other on the most profound and fundamental questions that unite a people.
Is this not true? Surely, the Left must admit there is some truth to this after the debt ceiling crisis and the failure of Barack Hussein Obama to usher in the "post-racial" and "post-partisan" America that was promised in this 2008 presidential campaign.
Does it seem like America is unraveling at the seams? Does it seem like the "center" has collapsed? Does it seem like the federal government is increasingly unable to perform the most basic tasks of a functioning government? Does it seem like we talk past each other on television?
That's what happens when there is no longer any moral or cultural common ground to appeal to anymore in Washington. The Left set out to dismantle America's traditional Christian culture - it was racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, nativist, reactionary, bigoted, repressive, etc. - and succeeded in shredding our national fabric which underpins our state.
Second, the attack on the European-Christian core of the American nation by the revolutionary cadres of the Baby Boomer elite has been successful. Christianity is no longer the dominant culture in America. It has been replaced by a secular hodgepodge of various radical utopian leftwing counterculture causes. The adversary culture has become the dominant culture.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, the "Civil Rights Movement" triumphed in America. The "Antiwar Movement" triumphed in America with the assistance of the Mainstream Media. The "counterculture" of the hippies and beatniks triumphed in America and became the new mainstream - the free love movement, radical environmentalism, gay liberation, second wave feminism, the cult of self-centered, liberated individual that rebels against any form of restraint.
What's the result of this? What does the awe inspiring Baby Boomer culture of social liberalism look like when it has been tried out in practice?
A quick survey of the wreckage of the European-Christian core of America will find a demoralizing culture of chronic drug addiction and nihilism, millions of aborted babies, dysfunctional children living in shattered households, soaring household debt, soaring income inequality, sexually transmitted diseases, infidelity, the "hook up" culture among adolescents, teen pregnancy, the "man-cession," unprecedented suicide rates, obese slobs covered in tattoos and piercings, "boomerangs," and now Millennials are being labeled the "Lost Generation."
If European-Christian America is a jet plane, then we have stalled somewhere above the clouds. Now comes the terrifying descent, the inevitable nosedive, and the awful crash into reality.
The Left, which has always hated European-Christian America, has succeeded in destroying European-Christian America for the Gen X'ers, the Millennials, and their children.
Third, the utopian leftists of the 1960s made sure to throw open America's borders to all comers. These hippies invited the whole Third World into the United States to feast upon the fat of the land. They were also encouraged not to assimilate to the hideous and racist culture of the richest and most scientifically and technologically advanced society that had ever existed in all of world history.
By 2042, freedom loving European-Christian Americans will become a minority in the United States - the European-Christian core of the American nation, which was the wealth producing dynamo that rocketed America to the top of the international pecking order, is swiftly collapsing like a black hole.
Every year the burden of taxation, affirmative action, diversity, multiculturalism, the welfare state, and socialist wealth redistribution schemes to fund these wild utopian projects becomes more unbearable for the 53 percent that is the Atlas that carries around the 47 percent on its back.
If something can't continue, it will stop.
As things stand today, it is the aging and shrinking European-Christian core of America (along with intelligent, hardworking, and entrepreneuerial Asian-Americans) who are propping up the declining United States. Foreigners know this despised, maligned constituency is the foundation of America.
Black America is culturally and economically a basket case. Hispanic America is worse off in some ways, better in others. White America has gone completely off the rails under the influence of the counterculture. Even Asian America has been negatively affected by the sickness of the dominant culture.
The Left is ideologically committed to pushing the limits of diversity, democracy, and radical egalitarianism. In Suicide of a Superpower, Pat Buchanan unflinchingly takes on all three liberal sacred cows from a traditional conservative perspective.
Historians will look back in stupefacation at twentieth- and twenty-first century Americans who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.
Far from being a strength, diversity is our greatest weakness. Far from being the American ideal, the Founders took a dim view of democracy. The Constitution of 1789 was designed to shackle and restrain democracy within a republican political order. The Declaration of Independence acknowledges equality only in the sense that all men have natural right to liberty.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights are the foundational documents of the republic and the organic documents of American union. And the word "equality" does not appear in either. Nor does the word "democracy."
The Founding Fathers rejected social equality. They rejected economic equality. They also rejected the Left's insane dogma of human equality. None of these forms of equality are reconcilable with liberty.
In 1971, the Atlantic Montly ran a cover article by Harvard's Richard Herrnstein. His thesis was that even if we are able to equalize the home and school environment of all children, natural academic ability will enable some children to outperform others. No matter how much money is invested in reducing class size and enhancing teacher training, an "hereditary meritocracy" will arise in a public school system where expenditures are equal ...
America plunged forward. U.S. and state governments and local school districts began the most massive investment in education in all of history. Expenditures per pupil doubled and tripled. Head Start, a preschool program for low-income children established in 1965, was lavishly funded. Perhaps $200 billion was poured into Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provided additional funds to schools based on their population of low-income students.
What were the results? Writes Murray, "no evaluation from Title I from the 1970s onward has found credible evidence of a significant positive impact on student achievement ... A 2001 study by the Department of Education revealed taht the gap widened rather than diminished.
There is no proof that all people are literally equal at the cultural or hereditary level - it is an absurd idea, a doctrine easily refuted by history and experience. Similarly, there is no proof that human societies can conform to the Left's ideals of social equality and economic equality and survive in the long run.
In order for social and economic equality to exist and for "diversity" to be celebrated as our greatest strength, you need a massive state apparatus to constantly redistribute wealth and repress freedom of association - you have to strangle liberty to force society to conform to this type of "equality," as it is a rebellion against natural law and cannot be sustained without the state application of force.
European nations that are being forced to conform to this cruel and inhumane leftist experiment are dying. European-Christian Americans are dying out at a slower pace. The Left looks upon the death of European Christendom as a "progressive" development and a cause for celebration. It wants First World nations without Europeans and without Christianity.
The pursuit of this utopian fantasy will usher in a dystopian return to the Dark Ages: Western civilization will collapse, the American Republic will collapse, the global economy will collapse, the world will descend into chaos and warfare, as the shibboleths of the Left become as antiquated as Roman aqueducts in the future which is about to befall us.
America is entering a time of troubles. The clashes of culture and creed are intensifying and both parties are perceived to have failed the nation. Republicans were repudiated in 2006 and 2008, Democrats in 2010. And the crises that afflict us - culture wars, race division, record deficits, unpayable debt, waves of immigration, legal and illegal, of peoples never before assimilated, gridlock in the capital, and possible defeat in war - may prove too much for our democracy to cope with. They surely will, if we not act now.
At this point, Pat Buchanan is warning us yet again as a statesman that such a world is all but inevitable. Even if we were to radically change course now, the momentum of Western decline will still take us straight into the path of the historical iceberg. It is too late. This sucker is going down like the Titanic.
Predictably, Buchanan's small minded critics on the Left - groups like the SPLC, Media Matters, and "Color of Change" - are distorting his work and charging him with heresy against the hoary old pieties of political correctness, as the Tea Party, the flash mobs, and Occupy Wall Street, not to the mention the mobs in Greece and Spain, arrive as omens of the American future.
A true statesman writes for history and posterity. One day the Millennial generation will look back and wonder why no one listened to the man who saw it coming and who could have been our president.
P.S.: Perhaps the most unimportant observation made in Suicide of a Superpower is that the GOP will share the fate of European-Christian America. The Republican Party can either start representing the interests of the shrinking pool of European-Christians which constitutes 90 percent of Republican voters or follow in the footsteps of the Whig Party.
All Buchanan and your arguments rest on assumptions that are false or preposterous:
1. Poland should have ceded Danzig to Germany. a) Danzig was already controlled by Nazis. Poland wanted to keep some purely trade-related rights to a port. Giving Poles nonmilitary access to ports is so offensive to Germans, that they are justified carving up Poland with the USSR. (meanwhile, they already controlled Danzig, and could have merely blocked access to the ports. They didn’t do that, they conquered the whole country. So, that definitely must be Britain’s fault)
2. Buchanan’s whole argument rests on the fact that Hitler would have “played nice,” if he just could have had Danzig. Well, what is your proof? I think there is plenty of proof that wasn’t the case. There was Austria. There was Czechoslovakia. There was Poland. The fact of the matter there was a lot of intelligence that Nazi Germany had aggressive plans besides that. We know now that Hitler was only prevented from kidnapping Pius XII by the Italian military.
I would never argue that Churchill is beyond criticism, but you need a lot more proof than you have given me to show that Hitler was peaceful beyond just wanting Danzig, who was pushed by a bloodthirsty Churchill.
“Danzig was a free city, not part of Poland, and it was undemocratically controlled by Nazis after 1933. You might as well asked why Poland didn’t cede control of Jupiter.”
That’s utter nonsense.
The so-called “Free City of Danzig” was under the control of neither Germany or Poland, but both states had rights to the city, and the war came about because Germany was determined annex Danzig after 1938 and Poland refused to cede its rights to the city.
“Since Nazis already controlled Danzig in 1939, when they invaded Poland, it was obviously a nonsensical pretext to invade Poland.”
Again, this makes no sense at all: Poland had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany just a few years before, and Poland had invaded Czechoslovaka with Hungary.
“Don’t you get that? They were taking Danzig, which was already controlled by an nonDemocratic Nazi government, they were taking Poland.”
If Poland had ceded its rights to Danzig and acquiesced in the annexation of Danzig by Germany, then Hitler would have never invaded Poland and treated Poland like just another one of its satellites like Hungary, Croatia, and Slovakia.
(1) Danzig was “controlled” by the Nazis, but it was, as you have pointed out the “Free City of Danzig.” Unlike Hamburg or Berlin, Danzig was not part of Germany, and it wasn’t part of Germany because Poland also claimed the “Free City of Danzig.”
(2) If Poland had ceded its stupid rights to a city that was destroyed anyway in WW2, then Germany would have never invaded Poland.
(3) Danzig should have never been made into the “Free City of Danzig” in the first place. 95 percent of Danzig was German. It was German than Los Angeles is American.
(4) Germany carved up Poland with the USSR because, because the Poles struck an alliance with Britain who gave them the war guarantee. Had not Britain not given the war guarantee, Poland would have ceded that stupid city, and history would have taken a different course.
(5) Austria was a German state. The Sudetenland, the Rhineland, and Danzig were indisputably part of Germany. That wasn’t a Nazi position either.
(6) Poland invaded Czechoslovakia in league with Germany and Hungary to annex the Poles who lived under Czech rule.
(7) No, Hitler never had “aggressive plans” against Britain. In fact, he wanted an alliance with Britain. He wrote a whole book about foreign policy that was based on his proposed alliance with Britain.
(8) You said earlier that Buchanan wanted Hitler to kidnap the Pope. Then you retreated from that argument and admitted you made up the story.
(9) Churchill was a buffoon who destroyed the British Empire. It was his actions that lost the Empire. British historians like Barnett and Taylor have made these arguments for years now.
(10) Hitler wanted Danzig and the Polish Corridor and for Poland to play a satellite role (similar to Croatia, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia) in his war against the Soviet Union.
In hindsight, we know that Hitler invaded Poland and struck the alliance with Stalin (an alliance with communists that he despised) because of the Polish war guarantee that Chamberlain had foolishly issued.
If the Poles had not taken that worthless war guarantee from Chamberlain, and if the Poles had ceded Danzig which was 95 percent German anyway, which was destroyed in the course of the war anyway, then Hitler and Stalin wouldn’t have invaded Poland, but would have probably gone to war with each other.
Britain would have never gone to war with Germany. France wouldn’t have gone to war with Germany. America wouldn’t have gone to war to bailout Germany. Japan wouldn’t have dared attack America by itself.
Instead, the worst case scenario unfolded, a war that could have been prevented, an unnecessary war.
You have no proof Hitler never would have invaded. If Germany had merely not allowed Poland access to Danzig, then maybe you could make that argument. If Germany just wanted Danzig, and that's all, they had no need to carve up Poland with the USSR. The U.K. would most likely NOT have intervened in that circumstance. The fact is Hitler toadies were ALREADY running Danzig. Germans weren't being oppressed by Poles. At most, Poles were given an access to a port. But all Hitler had to do was say the word and that would have ended. Hitler, in effect, already controlled Danzig.
I will be the first person to agree that the Versailles Treaty was unjust and a mistake. But that in no way excuses the action of the Nazis. Versailles aside, Germany had no right to Austria or Czechoslovakia. That had nothing to do with the Treaty. Austria had a far longer tradition and existence than Germany.
By the way, I notice you have studiously avoided the Catholic question. You can’t acknowledge Pacelli or Pius XI, because your whole argument would fall apart. Will you accuse the Catholic Church of being a warmonger, because they were way out in front of Churchill in identifying Nazi Germany. Pius XI called Hitler, “an insane and arrogant prophet,” although the phrase was probably written by Pius XII. Pacelli was in Germany since 1917, and saw Hitler first hand. He obviously didn’t agree that Hitler just wanted a little German territory and he would go away. Meanwhile, he was suppressing the Catholic Church in Germany.
I didn't say Hitler "wanted" to kidnap the Pope. (he was only a baby at the time, and unaware of what was going on) Buchanan knows Hitler planned to kidnap the Pope and actually ordered the kidnapping. (He was frustrated by his own people , as well) Buchanan opposed stopping Hitler, ergo he had no problem with it. Buchanan's inability to acknowledge or criticize Hitler and Pius XII's mutual hatred of each other is kind of at odds with your description of him as pro-Catholic. Both Pius XI and Pius XII thought Hitler was the most dangerous man in the world, not to mention a complete threat to the existence of Catholicism in Germany.
So Buchanan's position is that he knew more about Hitler that Pius XI and Pius XII, and they were incompetent?
Thanks, I have just started reading it on kindle.
“You have no proof Hitler never would have invaded. If Germany had merely not allowed Poland access to Danzig, then maybe you could make that argument.”
It is clear from the German archives that Hitler had no grand design on Poland and was only reacting to circumstances after he failed to get what he wanted which was Danzig and the Polish Corridor.
Hitler wanted an alliance with Poland, which is why he signed a non-aggression pact with Poland, not unlike the one he signed with the other countries in the region like Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
“If Germany just wanted Danzig, and that’s all, they had no need to carve up Poland with the USSR.”
You are confusing the timeline.
Hitler sought out the alliance with Stalin because Poland refused to cede Danzig to Germany because it had been given the war guarantee from Chamberlain.
“The U.K. would most likely NOT have intervened in that circumstance.”
The UK intervened because it gave Poland the war guarantee. Poland refused to back down over Danzig because it had the war guarantee. Germany brokered the alliance with the Soviet Union because of that stupid war guarantee and partitioned Poland with the Russians.
It all goes back to the foolishness of the British and Polish governments. Chamberlain’s pride and the stupidity of Poland’s leaders.
“The fact is Hitler toadies were ALREADY running Danzig.”
The fact is, Danzig was not a part of Germany, even though it was a German city that wanted to be a part of Germany. The war came about because Poland which had a ridiculous whopping minority of 5 percent of the city refused to cede their rights to Germany.
“Germans weren’t being oppressed by Poles.”
If Boston was severed from Massachusetts and turned into a “free city” by a consortium of European powers, America wouldn’t have acted any differently from the Germans. The Germans were completely justified in annexing Danzig and the whole world would have been infinitely better off had they been allowed to do so.
“At most, Poles were given an access to a port. But all Hitler had to do was say the word and that would have ended. Hitler, in effect, already controlled Danzig.”
Danzig was not part of Germany. All the Poles had to do was to cede the stupid city - it was destroyed anyway in the war.
It was a GERMAN city. Danzig was more German than Chicago, New York City, Boston, Miami or Los Angeles are American. Even the United States recognized the injustice that had been done to Germany by Britain and France after WW1 by rejecting the Versailles Treaty.
“I will be the first person to agree that the Versailles Treaty was unjust and a mistake.”
You are defending the Versailles Treaty which was rejected as a vindictive and punitive treaty by the United States.
It was the Versailles Treaty that created that clusterfuck in Europe and it was British and French foreign policy that tried to preserve the unsustainable and which made the war inevitable.
If Danzig had simply been returned to the Germans (it was 95 percent German, everyone in Germany including the communists agreed that it was German),l then there would have never been a war with Poland.
“But that in no way excuses the action of the Nazis.”
Why was Hitler so popular? Because everyone in Germany - liberals, conservatives, Nazis, communists, moderates, monarchists, democrats - agreed that Danzig was a German city and that it should be annexed to Germany.
The Polish position was ridiculous. Danzig was 95 percent German. Its people were German and the city had been part of Germany. It should have been returned to Germany.
Instead, it was separated from Germany by the British and the French which allowed it to become the occasion of a world war.
“Versailles aside, Germany had no right to Austria or Czechoslovakia.”
“Czechoslovakia” wasn’t a real country. It was a tyranny dominated by the Czechs (like “Yugoslavia” in the Balkans) that had been created to reward the “good guys.”
Slovakia didn’t want to live under Czech rule. Neither did the German, Hungarian, or Polish minorities. Even today, Czechoslovakia doesn’t exist.
Austria was a German state that had been destroyed by the Western Allies after WW1. The Austrians were hardly oppressed and their union with Germany was a sensible arrangement.
“That had nothing to do with the Treaty. Austria had a far longer tradition and existence than Germany.”
Yeah, the Habsburg Empire came out of WW1 being punished by an even more stupid and vindictive and unwise treaty than the one that had been forced upon Germany.
Just look at what happened to “Yugoslavia.”
“By the way, I notice you have studiously avoided the Catholic question.”
The only “Catholic question” you have created is your argument that Buchanan said in his book that Hitler should have kidnapped the Pope, which you later admitted was a straw man, and then that Buchanan is “anti-Catholic” even though Buchanan himself is not only a Catholic but a Catholic traditionalist and has always consistently defended the Catholic Church like in his recent column.
As for Poland, it was Winston Churchill who gave away Poland to Stalin along with the rest of Eastern Europe at the Yalta conference, where he was joined by his pal FDR who would do anything to appease “Uncle Joe” because his own administration was full of a communist infiltrators.
“Buchanan’s inability to acknowledge or criticize Hitler and Pius XII’s mutual hatred of each other is kind of at odds with your description of him as pro-Catholic.”
I don’t think we have read the same book. Buchanan spends most of his time (like many other British historians) criticizing the stupidity of British foreign policy that resulted in the destruction of the British Empire.
The idea that Buchanan is “anti-Catholic” is risible. Buchanan himself is a Catholic and spends much of his time in this book, you know, the one that I actually reviewed above bemoaning the decline of the Catholic Church in America.
“Both Pius XI and Pius XII thought Hitler was the most dangerous man in the world, not to mention a complete threat to the existence of Catholicism in Germany.”
Hitler has been dead since 1945.
What happened to the Catholic Church after the triumph of the victorious Allies? Hitler lost you know. Was that a victory for the Catholic Church? Is the Catholic Church stronger in Italy and Spain today than it was under Franco and Mussolini?
Is the Catholic Church stronger today in America? Is it stronger today in France?
“So Buchanan’s position is that he knew more about Hitler that Pius XI and Pius XII, and they were incompetent?”
Buchanan’s position, which is really not his own position, but a position which has been advanced by number of British historians, is that giving the war guarantee to Poland was a foolish decision that resulted in the destruction of Poland, arguably a more foolish decision than the Stamp Act or the Quebec Act which ignited the American Revolution.
Even mainstream historians no longer take seriously the absurd idea that Hitler was out to “conquer the world” or that he was going to “invade America.” Hitler couldn’t even conquer Britain and his own writings make clear that he admired Britain and actually wanted an alliance with Britain.
The only country that Hitler really wanted to go to war with was Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union. Instead of a Second World War, there could have been a Nazi-Soviet war, which would have been infinitely better for America, for Poland, for Britain, and France than the world war which came out of the Polish war guarantee.
Nietzsche was right. He saw all this coming over a century ago. Inevitably.
How about believing in a strong military ? That’s something Pitchfork Pat DOES NOT believe in.
BTW, one can be a Conservative without being a Christian. After all, Mark Levin and Michael Savage are certainly Conservatives and both are Jewish. SE Cupp is an atheist and is most certainly a Conservative, as was Ayn Rand. (And let’s not forget, many of your fellow FReepers are Jewish.)
Pitchfork Pat plays the same sickening identity politics of the Ignorant Left.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Oh, it matters when you collect a paycheck from the same people that pay Ed “The Red” Schultz who organized a rally that was endorsed by the Communist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America(DSA). That matters a great deal.
“Buchanan has consistently opposed third world immigration, abortion, multiculturalism, diversity, affirmative action, the welfare state and has stood up and taken a forthright stand for Christianity.”
So does Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Glenn Beck. So does every FReeper on this site.
“Instead of Buchanan, we got Poppy Bush, Bob Dole, W., and John McCain. Now we all have to live with the consequences of those foolish decisions.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Herr Buchanan serve in the same Nixon administration that gave us the EPA ? That’s certainly a consequence that we’re all living with, isn’t it ?
It’s a nice ad hominem. False, in so far as Pat is a committed Catholic. But where is he wrong here?
Are you argueing that Hitler’s Leibernsraum politcy or irridentist and revanchist expansion was anything but consquest after the annexation of Czechoslovalkia and not just the Sudenland? Becuase if you are, you and PAt are both either purposely ignorant or lying for politics.
Nice review. I agree with the premise: the Left has taken what was once a genuinely free country and corrupted it with a system of perpetual dependence on the government and decadence. Unless somehow the American people wake up to the failure of socialism and multiculturalism and act quickly, the United States will certainly go the way of Rome.
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