"Death of the West" -- Echoes from the Third Reich?

[Who is George Salt?]

After reading this it became apparent to me that the great fault-line in American politics - perhaps in Western Civilization itself - divides those who embrace the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, particularly --

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

-- and those who don't. Abe Lincoln did, the Confederates didn't. Teddy Roosevelt and the progressive Republicans did, Woodrow Wilson and the Jim Crow Democrats didn't. LBJ and the Senate Republicans who passed the Civil Rights Act did, George Wallace and his dixiecrats didn't. Buchanan has assumed the mantle of those who reject the Declaration of Independence and its ideals, who will stand up to defend it?

[DallasMike]

I think that making fanciful comparisons between Pat Buchanan and the Nazis pretty much destroys any legitimacy that your arguments might otherwise have. I'm not a big fan of Buchanan or many of his ideas (including the ones in his new book) but I know that he's not a Nazi.

[Cincinatus]

One of the reasons National Socialism found such fertile ground in Weimar Germany was not its racialist ideology but rather, the Versailles Treaty and the so-called "stab-in-the-back" Germany had allegedly endured after the Great War. There is no historical parallel to that mindset in 21st century America.

Your post is provocative and inflammatory, as it was meant to be, but I think that a better historical analogy to modern Buchananism is the "Know Nothing" movement of the mid-19th century. It was nativist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant. It was also trade-protectionist.

And most significantly, it had about the same level of popular support, i.e., around 0.5% of the population.

[IM2Phat4U]

By throwing the Nazi label around so recklessly, you just make it easier for the liberals to use it against all Conservatives. Perhaps that is your goal. What's next, some posts concerning Bush's grandfather or one comparing Christian conservatives to the Taliban?

Very nice.

[Who is George Salt?]

By throwing the Nazi label around so recklessly,

I said the parallels were uncanny; I never said he was a Nazi.

What's next, some posts concerning Bush's grandfather

Nah. Dubya's my president - I voted for him. He's a good man.

or one comparing Christian conservatives reconstructionists to the Taliban?

Hmm!

[IM2Phat4U]

Your tactics are right out of the leftist playbook. Here's one example of how easy folks like you have made it to call conservatives Nazis:

Rush Limbaugh Sings "I'm A Nazi"

Happy New Year,

I'll no longer be bumping this ridiculous thread.

[Who is George Salt?]

I said the parallels are uncanny; I never said that he was a Nazi, even though he has expressed Nazi sympathies throughout his career:

-- In a 1977 column, Buchanan said that despite Hitler's anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was "an individual of great courage...Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path." --Pat Buchanan, in The Guardian, defending Hitler, despite Hitler's antisemitic doctrine/ genocide (01/14/92).

-- "Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody." Pat Buchanan, expressing his revisionist views, challenging the fact that diesel exhaust was used to gas thousands of Jews at Treblinka, and discussing "group fantasies of martyrdom" in the New Republic (10/22/90)

-- "...it's running down 70-year-old camp guards." --Pat Buchanan, in the New York Times, discussing his attempts at getting the U.S. Justice Dept's Office of Special Investigations (which was in charge of prosecuting Nazi war criminals) closed down (04/21/87)

-- Buchanan was the one behind President Ronald Regan's visiting the Bitburg Cemetery in Germany (where Nazi SS troops had been buried), and has been said to have written Reagan's statement, SS troops buried at Bitburg were "victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." New York Times, 05/16/85

-- "Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free." --Pat Buchanan, speaking before the Christian Coalition in 1993.

What I DID say is: Buchanan has assumed the mantle of those who reject the Declaration of Independence and its ideals.

[Who is George Salt?]

He had to dig pretty hard to find one example.

Actually, it took me about 10 minutes.

[George Frm Br00klyn Park]

WGS, A related LINK. By the way, I don't think I've ever heard Pat say anything like the VERY important "Heil! In fact, it is his failure to kiss Republican or Democrat ass that is the cause of such infantile name calling. Peace and love, George.

[Mortimer Snavely]

This is the kind of stuff I'd expect from a college freshman in POS 101. Very weak indeed. A genuine understanding of National Socialism (that means its political economics, etc.) is manifestly absent.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Buchanan is an authoritarian. As a conservative, he makes me uncomfortable. I wouldn't call him a Nazi, tho.

[RWG]

Even Hitler knew when it was raining.

The parallels between the old german opinion and buchanan's might just mean that the german was a pretty good predictor/analyst of cultural phenomena notwithstanding his political ideology.

Was 9-11 the echo of the first bombing of the WTC? And where will the echo of Waco be heard?

[Who is George Salt?]

And a Happy New Year to you, too!

[monkey]

Others have pointed out the similarities between Buchanan's "dying West" and themes from Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West.

What drivel. Blake, Swedenborg, Huxley and Kinky Friedman all wrote "Heaven and Hell" books. I guess if you've read one capsulized review, you've read'em all.

[junta]

"Who is George Salt", some numbnuts no doubt. All people are not created equal, and that is some fantasy fed to stupid and desperate and otherwise depraved citizens as much as any Soviet Union propaganda was fed to the Third World during the Cold War. Ants and worker bees are equal, but me I'll take inequality anyday because I seek to live as an individual with free conscience. As far as lifting that sentence fragment from the polemical piece known as the Declaration of Independence, again that is for domestic political consumption the other 6 billion people on Earth see that type of jargon as Western Imperialism. Those outside of our borders prefer the "equality" of Karl Marx or Bill Clinton to slave owning Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry. To close, remember human equality does not exist except in fantasy.

[ZULU]

I don't see anything wrong with a country seeking to maintain its cultural identity. As a matter of fact, I feel it is an OBLIGATION of any nation to do so. New immigrants are fine. They bring new ideas and new lifeblood to our society and we are now and always were, a nation of immigrants and should remain so. It is one of our strenghts.

However, we should be selective in choosing those who wish to enter here. We should expect that, in addition to adding to our cultural mix, that new immigrants assimilate and adopt American values and liefstyles and LANGUAGE, and most importantly, ALLEGIANCE. We should also control our borders to keep out illegal aliens and other foreign invaders who violate our laws and our boundaries.

Further, I would not want to live in a country where all, or most of the people belonged to any one ethnic group. As an American, I value ethnic diversity.

I think there is a very real threat that America, a nation based on ethnic diversity and whose traditions, culture and history are based on western European values, may be overwhelmed by a sea of illegal aliens from South America and Central America. Such is now occurring in California and a number of other states. It is the obligation of the national, state and local governments to protect the bset interests of American citizens, both those born here and naturalized here, by stopping this illegal wave of foreigners from overwhelming our support service network and eating up our resources and jobs.

Europe is not the United States. Europeans have a right to run their immigration policies as they see fit. However, Britain, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, etc, are ethnic states as are India, Japan, Thailand, etc. As such I would think that their governments had the obligation to maintain the ethnic identity of their own population by a far more selective, and ethnically based criteria than we, as a multi-racial and multi-ethnic society employ. Nor do I find any fault with the latter.

Finally, I am suspicious of any analogies between Pat Buchanan, a decent American populist conservative, and "Nazis". That smacks of playing the race card, a canard so overused in our society that it has lost, or should have lost its shock value years ago.

[junta]

Agree or disagree?