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 "they're-taking-our-jobs" approach strikes me as amazingly socialist in that it assumes that a person is entitled to a particular job at a particular price because he wants it at that price and the government's job is to prop up that price regardless of market conditions.
I also believe that I have certain obligations to my country and my countrymen, and I do not want to see my countrymen lose work or suffer from declining wages as a result of mass immigration. If you'd examine American history, you would learn that many American statesmen felt the same way.
Thorin, you hit the nail on the head once again. That would be the upshot of the kind of immigration policy that Garbanzo advocates. Sad to say that much of this is already in place if not in structure certainly in practice.
As far as I am concerned...you bet. What the Ice-man laid out in his posts is pretty much the way I see what is happening in this country. And he did a great job of explaining the underlying factors and historical background of this immigration invasion and why it spells trouble ahead. I give the Ice-man a lot of credit for having the guts to speak the whole truth in no uncertain terms on this very controversial subject. The truth may hurt but if the truth never sees the light of day due to PC this crisis will only get worse.
From the other side of the coin - many Mexicans believe that the southwest belongs to them because the US stole it from Mexico. And we did take a lot of land from Indians and Mexico and others so the modern idea of protecting "our" borders can plausibly said to be somewhat hypocritical.
I am neither xenophobic nor racist, and neither is Pat. However, I believe the West (America and Europe) will cease to be the West if they cease to have a majority of European descent.
The argument does not rest upon racism or xenophobia. It rests upon this question: Does not a society lose its identity if it is suddenly overwhelmed by people who were not born into it and whose ancestors were not a part of it?
The question of whether individuals whose ancestors were not part of a society can adopt it as their own and become full-fledged members is an entirely different question. The answer is that yes, it is possible, but it is difficult and cannot happen overnight. America at the turn of the last century was a Balkinized mess, littered with ethnic ghettos and immigrant-driven political machines. It took 41 years of no immigration (1924-1965) and two world wars to successfully assimilate all the Italian, Irish, German, and Slavic ethnics. Experience shows that the only way to make aliens full-fledged members of a society is to cut them from their roots, immerse them in the new society, and force them to accept the new society's heretage and roots as their own. How can this be done if natives cease to be a majority?
Also, I think that it is a sad day in America when our['hispanic'] patriotism and loyalty is being questioned. Never mind the high number of 'Hispanics' who are currently serving in our military or the millions of proud Americans who would never think of a 'reconquista'. But I guess that we will never be 'real' Americans in a lot of people's eyes.
I know there are many Meztizos who are proud, loyal Americans. However you cannot ignore the rhetoric of the leaders of the Meztinzo communities in the US. Mexican polititians openly speak of reconquista, as do leaders of all the major Meztizo organizations. President Fox says that he considers all people of Mexican origin living in the US as his citizens. Is this not a real problem, which is in part due to too much Meztizo immigration?
Sigh. Go back and read my post. You obviously didn't get past the first sentence. And do try to get past this leftist nonsense that anyone concered with demographics is a racist. It is such a bore.
Obviously, /sarcasm.
My people is the human race.
Opps. Sorry, I mean't Iceberg.
I am for the relatively free (but regulated) movement of capital and of labor everywhere. A global market place is the only thing that will spread freedom and wealth all around the world.
Race consciouness serves only facism of the left or right. you get facism of the left, when victimhood is wielded as a weapon against those who are wrongly, but irrefutably (to the so-called victims) called oppressors. you get facism of the right when race is used illegitimately as a basis of really locking out, victimizing, exterminating, enslaving the "other."
If race consciousness just disappeared both the possibility of left facism and right facism would disappear too -- or at least one of the potential sources of each would be severely diminshed. I'm too much of a pessimist to believe that we wouldn't find other was to step on each other.
Race consciouness serves only facism of the left or right. you get facism of the left, when victimhood is wielded as a weapon against those who are wrongly, but irrefutably (to the so-called victims) called oppressors. you get facism of the right when race is used illegitimately as a basis of really locking out, victimizing, exterminating, enslaving the "other."
If race consciousness just disappeared both the possibility of left facism and right facism would disappear too -- or at least one of the potential sources of each would be severely diminshed. I'm too much of a pessimist to believe that we wouldn't find other was to step on each other.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.