Posted on 01/03/2002 7:56:52 AM PST by sinkspur
Pat Buchanan is aware that potential readers of his new book already either adore him or disdain everything he writes "because I am the one writing it."
So in The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, $25.95), the ex-presidential candidate and conservative pundit is trying to back up his apocalyptic projections with facts and figures provided by such disparate sources as "Russian leader Mr. Putin, a British archbishop and the United Nations. By drawing on what anyone would have to consider neutral sources, this makes my message far more powerful."
The gist of The Death of the West's messages:
Low birthrates are decimating the population of almost every European country - by 2050, only one-tenth of the world's population (America included) will be of European descent.
The unchecked influx of immigrants into America, legal and otherwise, is gradually handing the nation over to insurgents who come to force their foreign values on us rather than accepting ours.
Political correctness on the part of unwitting Americans plays into the hands of those who intend to obliterate our culture.
The events of Sept. 11 may provide enough of a wake-up call, Buchanan says, to make "the death of the West" only a threat rather than a certainty.
"The book is about a point I've been making for a long time, that the West is dying," Buchanan says during a lengthy phone conversation. "If we don't change how we do things, we'll be gone by the middle of this century, if not before. The horror of Sept. 11, I think, awoke a lot of Americans to new realities. It's a healthy thing to remember there are people out there who want to destroy us."
In Buchanan's opinion, it took terrorist attacks on New York City and the Washington, D.C., area to drive that message home to an American public more intent on hedonism than heroism.
"The '90s were a time of prosperity I've likened to the 1920s," Buchanan says. "The '20s were about money, drinking, jazz. The '90s were money, drugs, rock. The '20s ended with the stock market crash, the Depression, then on to Hitler, Tojo, Stalin. The 1990s ended on Sept. 11. We're at the kind of place Walter Lippmann called 'a plastic moment,' a time when people can change their destiny. I hope this book helps that. I'm not so much predicting these awful things will happen as saying, 'This is what the end is if the numbers remain the same.' "
Not that he holds much hope: "To many American young people, people like me belong to a bad old era. They've been taught that in school, indoctrinated in it. They want to say goodbye to the way our generation did things. This is why I don't think much will be done about the problems we face."
Buchanan acknowledges he's saying things that most Americans would prefer not to hear and that many condemn as racist and inflammatory.
"My response is that it's too late in the day for political correctness," he says. "After Sept. 11, with those acts perpetrated by people we literally welcomed into this country, Americans ought to be aware there is such a thing as too much diversity, too much welcoming. Look: I've said that if you bring 100 Zulu tribesmen into Virginia and 1 million British, the British would be assimilated more comfortably. I base that on those British coming into an American culture based on English law and tradition. And when I said that, something that seems like a simple statement, I've been accused of racism."
Now, Buchanan says, "I could substitute Iranians or Saudis for the Zulu, and people might understand." And, he adds, originally citing the Zulus was in no way racist "because I'm friends with the Zulu ruler. It's just a matter of acknowledging the differences in culture."
Potential immigrants should be judged by one measure, Buchanan adds: "Are they likely to carry on our culture, which makes America a unique country and civilization? Or are they not?"
Population explosions in Islamic, African and Latin American nations are coinciding with a decline in the U.S. birthrate, Buchanan notes, citing U.N. studies. To bolster "American cultural" numbers, Buchanan concludes in The Death of the West, American women should be encouraged via tax breaks to increase the country's population: "A free society cannot force women to have children, but a healthy society can reward those who preserve it by doing so."
Though he doesn't broach the subject in The Death of the West, in conversation Buchanan is willing to also discuss his own future.
"Politically speaking, I ran two times for the Republican nomination," he says. "We came close in '96, and we'd have gotten it instead of [Bob] Dole with one more primary win. In 2000, we tried to create a new party. It didn't work. So my political career is probably over."
But Buchanan has no intention of abandoning public debate.
"I've done my best to say the things I thought necessary, and I intend to keep writing books and to keep speaking out," he says. "I love doing it. I hope the Lord gives me 25 more years. If people don't like me or my message, well, that's not my concern. Political correctness is almost an impenetrable shield of basic realities."
For education and discussion purposes only.
The oil-wealthy countries aren't really an exception -- even though the countries are wealthy, most of the people in them are poor, because the ruling elite controls the oil wealth and blows it on frippery (e.g. Saudi Arabia) or military adventurism (e.g. Iraq).
When these nations develop a solid middle class (I consider this inevitable, if civilization in general isn't wrecked, though it remains to be seen how long this will take and how much strife there will be along the way), I'm confident that they will follow the usual demographic pattern of lowered birthrates.
That is a good question. All the Slav nations have incredibly low birth rates. And not all are subsidy and femimization city. Here is a list:
Bulgaria 1.13 Czech Rep 1.18 Slovakia 1.25 Russia 1.27 Belarus 1.28 Slovenia 1.28 Ukraine 1.29 Poland 1.37 Yugoslavia (Serbia/Mont) 1.75 Macedonia 1.79 Croatia 1.94
Nonsense. By this standard, John Paul II and Bill Clinton would both deserve the exact same respectful hearing if they argued in favor of honesty and chastity.
One More Time: Targeted Tax Breaks == Welfare
Quite some time ago I asked one of the first dark skinned people I ever met whether he was a member of the Negro race. He said "no; I'm an American just like you". I never asked such a foolish question again and I will answer likewise if someone asks me if I am a real Eskimo but I will never be so stupid as to let some political parasites convince me that the word Eskimo is a derogatory term.
Aren't you the snide one. I believe that what Pat had in mind are larger tax deductions for dependents.
A distinction without a difference.
Don't be ridiculous. Their current difficulties notwithstanding, Russia is firmly on the latter side of the divide between a subsistence-agriculture society and an industrial society. Thus, it retains the low birthrate associated with the latter. If it slipped back into a nation of peasant farmers, its birthrate (and deathrate) would rise accordingly.
Can I put down $20 on that?
Why don't you try saving for your retirement? That way, you can support yourself and not require a deluge of third world immigrants to finance your golden years.
(also, on a practical note....if you think that young mexicans are going to tolerate sky-high taxes to finance retirement for a bunch of white baby-boomers...then you are naive in the extreme)
You've said it all!
I happen to think Republicans suck just as much blood from 'we the people' as do
New Agers like Guinn...
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