Posted on 01/14/2002 9:23:05 AM PST by baxter999
Culture Wars Nearly Lost, Buchanan Warns Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com Thursday, Jan. 10, 2002
Editor's note: This is part four in a series on Pat Buchanan's new book, "The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil our Country and Civilization." Also read Western Civilization Is on the Way Out, Where Have All the Children Gone? and Failure to Control Borders Causes 'Death of the West.'
WASHINGTON – "Americans who look on this cultural revolution as politics as usual do not understand it,” Pat Buchanan writes in his new book, "The Death of the West.”
It means an end to the country we love, he asserts.
Those who seek to de-Christianize America, and who seek to demonize America’s heroes, trash our history and condemn our folk ways are not just presenting another "political opinion.” These people, or at least those who presume to speak for them, are revolutionaries.
Buchanan quotes that "budding social revolutionary Adolf Hitler” as saying, "Strength lies not in defense, but in attack.”
We used to think the only people within our borders who would tear down our country carried Communist Party cards or sported a long line of communist-front affiliations. Not so, although there’s a little overlap amongst a few of the older present-day revolutionaries. But this is the counterculture of the 1960s taking off where Lenin’s failed revolution left off.
"We will steal your children!” the '60s radicals howled at Middle America. "They did,” Buchanan says.
A whole generation has now grown up for whom the cultural revolution is no revolution at all, says the author, "but a culture they were born into and have known all their lives. Public homosexuality, pornography, abortion, trash talk on TV and in the movies, and filthy lyrics in popular music have been around since before they can remember.”
During the Hitler-Stalin war of 1939-1945, there were plenty of documentaries showing how Nazi Germany was aiming its propaganda at the children because it believed if it could control the children, it would control the future. But we could not imagine that it could happen here.
The cultural revolution cannot be appeased, warns the author. "Its relentless, reckless use of terms like extremist, sexist, homophobe, nativist, xenophobe, fascist, and Nazi testifies to how seriously it takes the struggle and how it views those who resist. To true believers in the revolution, the Right is not just wrong; the Right is evil.”
No person of good will enjoys being demonized night after night on television. No one wants to be branded as "insensitive," "mean-spirited,” or any of the other trigger words hurled at Middle America. So the party of Middle America seeks to emphasize that it too is "compassionate,” that it too believes in "the politics of inclusion.”
Of course, there is nothing wrong with "compassionate conservatism.” But there are those who would argue that compassion is the very essence of conservatism, as Ronald Reagan clearly showed when he pursued policies that created 20 million jobs and brought down the "Evil Empire.” What could be more "compassionate” than that?
As for America’s past, this from Buchanan: "Western Man was one of the many villains, but Western Man was also the only hero. For the West did not invent slavery, but it alone abolished slavery.” Again, what could be more "compassionate” than that?
The author thinks too many in Middle America have become too defensive.
"The intimidators failed with Clarence Thomas but succeeded with some conservatives who, like defeated peoples, no longer make demands. They just want to get along. But, in a culture war, where the other side is always making demands, and the other side is always ready to fight, this translates into endless retreats and eventual defeat.”
Buchanan’s prescription for the GOP’s political success? "Go hunting where the ducks are.” If the Republicans can raise their share of the vote by appealing to their base, he says, the GOP can regain its majority.
The bottom line: "If the GOP would come out for an end to the racial preferences and a moratorium on immigration, and appeal to the great silent majority, as Democrats appeal to minorities, the party’s chances in national elections could not but improve.”
And just in case anyone missed the point, there is this warning: "The Gore-Nader three-million-vote margin over Bush-Cheney may be the last wake-up call the Republican party will receive.”
Even the GOP has caved (Book P 8 for those that lie without book citations )"By 2000, the adversary culture of the sixties had become our dominant culture, its victory conceded when the political base camp of traditionalism raised a white flag in Philadelphia. On the moral and social issues-the fight for the sanctity of human life and the return of God to the public square of this land we used to call "God's Country" - the Republican party raised its gloves and pleaded, "No mas. "
Buchanan is an optimist.
Buchanan's right -- they are polluting our children. We're getting ready to head into the holiday season (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) at my sons' parochial school. Last year about this time my kindergarten son and I were sitting in traffic when we saw a billboard with MLK's picture on it. Just for fun, I asked him who he thought it might be. His response: "That's Martin Luther King -- he saved the world."
Too bad Jesus didn't rate such a mention during the Christmas season just past (oops -- I probably should have said "holiday season".) Our supposedly Catholic school had a holiday program in which I don't believe that Jesus's name was mentioned even once. We did get a rousing number about Kwanzaa though.
As a result of these experiences, a couple of things are beginning to dawn on me. First, the so-called Catholic schools stopped being Catholic when they stopped having priests and nuns as teachers (there's not a single one at my children's school -- nor is there any at any other "Catholic" school in my allegedly conservative diocese. Instead of nuns and priests as teachers, we have ill-formed laywomen who wouldn't recognize the Catholic Catechism is someone handed it to them.
Second, that what is left of the Catholicism in our Catholic schools is being relentlessly watered down to the point that the schools are merely secular private schools with a Catholic name affixed. For example, these past two weeks I've been battling the announcement that during Lent this year, the kids will have the option of eating meat. Now to a non-Catholic this is probably a small thing -- and in truth it is, but it represents a larger truth: that whatever that is Catholic that is left in these schools is being relentlessly purged. So I have to ask myself, "What is Catholic about a Catholic school that has none of the usual pious customs and a watered-down, slapped-together religious instruction that is essentially non-denominational?" Not much, it would seem.
1940: "Paris Falls to Germans: Axis Victory Unstoppable."
1778: "Washington Losing Men and Morale at Valley Forge: American Cause Basically Hopeless."
LOL! You can't get more than a few thousand Christians at a time to even agree on what it means to be a Christian. (even here on FR) Now, considering that Christians come in liberal as well as conservative flavors, how in the world are you going to get them to vote as a block?
Of course immigration policy is only one of the topics of this book. What do you think of the others like the liberal assault on our children and social institutions?
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