Posted on 02/04/2002 9:52:14 PM PST by ouroboros
Through a syndicated column, a long career as a CNN pundit and three quixotic presidential campaigns, the former Republican presidential aide Patrick J. Buchanan has established himself as the country's most prominent foe of immigration. In his tirade ''The Death of the West,'' he makes clear that he sees newcomers as only part of the problem. Braiding two separate complaints, he argues, first, that plummeting birthrates will make white people a minority in much of the West; and, second, that an intolerant liberal elite has transformed America's culture, wrecking its most precious traditions -- which happen to be its bulwark against getting swamped by foreigners.
Buchanan's demographic alarum marks the re-emergence of a genre of racial-doom books not seen (for reasons that are obvious enough) since before World War II. In 1960 a quarter of humanity was of European descent, Buchanan notes; today whites make up just a sixth of the human race, and they're aging. The American birthrate is below replacement level for the first time since the Depression. Of the 22 countries with the world's lowest birthrates, 20 are in Europe, and Spain's median age will be 55 in a few decades. Barbarians will soon be at the gates. Only 8 million Russians will be living in the mineral- and oil-rich lands east of the Urals, irresistible lebensraum for a Chinese population rising toward 1.5 billion. Europe's generous welfare states, viable in a society that has 5 workers per retiree, will buckle once that ratio falls to 2. Short on labor, Europe must choose either penury for its elderly or a huge immigration from Africa and a ''second great Islamic wave.''
Buchanan's explanation of what sent our own country to hell in a handbasket is the standard-issue cultural-conservative one. Abortion, pornography, euthanasia, gun control and political correctness are the crimes; feminists, liberal judges and Marxisant scholars are the perpetrators. Americans of different stripes will agree with at least some of Buchanan's assertions: that racial activism has taken on aspects of a religion in the hands of the hard left, that international prosecutors pursue rightists like Augusto Pinochet with far more zeal than leftists like Fidel Castro, that the ideology of ''human rights'' was put to the service of imperialism in Kosovo, that ''hate crimes'' legislation has less to do with justice than with ideological special pleading, that political correctness -- the punctiliousness that Americans bring to matters of race, gender and sexual orientation -- maintains a tenacious hold on public life, chilling free discussion. Future historians will snicker at it, as we do at Victorian prudery; but they will also shudder, as we do at McCarthyite persecution.
Still, just as there were real perverts in Victoria's day and real Stalinists in McCarthy's, there are real segregationists in our own. Buchanan focuses to the point of obsession on the crusade against symbols of the Confederacy, from Virginia's abolition of Confederate History Month to the vandalism of a statue in Selma of the Confederate general and Klansman Nathan Bedford Forrest. While claiming to reject ''the blood-and-soil idea of a nation,'' he does not recognize a difference between ''civilization'' on the one hand and race on the other. You can tell this by the way he flings around the term ''third world'' as a synonym for ''nonwhite.'' California, he says, ''is on its way to becoming a predominantly third world state'' (which will surely be news to the English biochemists and French stockbrokers queued up to enter it).
Much of this provocation is surely ladled out just to rile the bien-pensants. Buchanan loves ideological dust-ups (''The pill and condom have become the hammer and sickle of the cultural revolution'') and purple oratory (''Western women are terminating their pregnancies at a rate that represents autogenocide for peoples of European ancestry''). His signal debating trick is a cheap one, ever beloved of rabble-rousers -- to take a broad historical trend and find someone to scapegoat for it. Thus, Republicans are fleeing social issues not because they cost votes but because ''the media have whispered in Republican ears.'' The 20 years after World War II were a ''golden age of marriage,'' but this superb modus vivendi ''fell apart in the 1960's, when feminists managed to add 'sex' to the discriminations forbidden by the sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1964.'' And Americans, in his reading, were duped out of their ancestral faiths by a few wily atheistic savants from the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse chief among them.
Buchanan is now reflexively hostile to any evidence that the United States retains any strong points at all. He deplores the fact that no top college has an American history requirement. But clearly universities are doing something right, for in what other country does the biography of a hitherto little-studied 18th-century politician spend months on the best-seller list, as David McCullough's ''John Adams'' has done? Buchanan also detects, quoting James Burnham, a ''deepening loss, among the leaders of the West, of confidence in themselves and in the unique quality of their own civilization.'' This is a bizarre complaint from one who rails at the International Monetary Fund and at the ''braggadocio'' of those who declare the United States the world's only superpower. Western leaders, in fact, are self-confident as never before -- and the central pillar of that self-confidence is their belief that, to some extent, all cultures are becoming Western ones.
In 1992, Buchanan electrified the Republican National Convention with a declaration that Americans were locked in a ''religious war'' and a ''cultural war'' for the nation's soul. What distinguishes ''The Death of the West'' from his lament then is that today he considers that war decisively lost. ''A new generation has now grown up,'' he writes, ''for whom the cultural revolution is not a revolution at all, but the culture they were born into and have known all their lives.'' Far from coming to an accommodation with this new order, he is past even wishing the country well: cultural revolutionaries ''have replaced the good country we grew up in with a cultural wasteland and a moral sewer that are not worth living in and not worth fighting for -- their country, not ours.'' Having spent years fighting what he took to be a dangerous faction in American life, Pat Buchanan has come to realize that what he has been fighting is America itself. He has decided he prefers the fight to the country.
Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
How does one best-seller prove that "clearly universities are doing something right"? Does Caldwell know the ages of the people buying this book? Does he know whether they went to "top universities"? Does he know why they're buying the book? How does Caldwell extrapolate his conclusion?
You don't have to be a fan of Pat Buchanan to agree with him on the American history requirement, and also think Christopher Caldwell's argument here is incredibly weak.
Worse than this. There is no argument at all, only an attempt at sniping.
Hey, Caldwell, have you actually read Pat's book?
Where's your qualifications? You actually think that you're more intelligent than Pat Buchanan? Give it up you slimy, Left-Wing turd.
A less absurd notion of the left's is that certain animals should not be allowed to become extinct. In fact, I don't think it at all absurd to object to anything becoming extinct, providing we don't have to go to absurd lengths to avoid it. If the civil rights of humans have to be invalidated to save an animal, I say let the animals go extinct. I may not like it, but man comes first. Some of you will disagree with me here. I'd be disappointed if you didn't.
This truism then is the one that I will reference to ask a question. If it is a terribly tragic thing for timber wolves, snail darters and bald eagles to become extinct, shouldn't it be a little cause for concern if a certain variety of humans is headed in that same direction? Hey New York times, how about a "save the Race" run or a telethon or a concert to save the endangered Caucasian? What? No concern over this topic? Garsh, what a surprise.
The fact that the Caucasian race has slipped from 1/3rd to 1/6th of humanity since 1950, is of no concern for the same outlets that endlessly obsess on lesser life forms. Superiority in relationship to other races isn't the issue. If this trend continues the Caucasian race will become 1/12th of humanity by 2035, 1/24of humanity by 2060 and 1/50th of humanity by 2080. Is this, or is it not a reasonable topic to discuss? Evidently the Times feels that it isn't. And therefore I submit that a major truism of the left is breached by the Times'. Extinction is okay if it's the proper entity that is headed in that direction. And for all the carping about Pat Buchanan's opinions and not so overt racism, I've never heard him expound on the merits of any race becoming extinct.
A litany of demons is raised in this article. Stalin, McCarthy, Klansmen, Pinochet, Castro and inferences to Hitler (but no outright mention to tarnish the intellectualism of this sterling zinger) are lofted in this article. Evidently the more names such as these you can place in an article about Buchanan, the better. But who do they have more in common with? Does Buchanan advocate the demise of any group? Well, no. It is only the Times that seems to be "just fine" with the prospects of a race in decline. Now, is that more Buchanan like, or is it closer to the list of people provided by this writer?
Buchanan is belittled because he laments the decline of western values. And the Times dismisses this as if it were merely a demon's ploy. But wait just a minute. We have schools, businesses, media outlets and other refusing to fly the flag of the United States. Why? Well because it might be insensitive. It might offend someone. If that isn't at least a hint of what's to come, I don't know what you could call it. We have states approving text books that do not mention our nation's founding fathers. But no, the Times thinks this isn't an example of our culture being stripped away.
Well I think they are wrong. I think our culture is being stripped away in a blatant manner. And I don't think it's possible for anyone to claim otherwise. Our heritage in this nation was to be able to own a weapon to protect ourselves, from criminals and our own government. That's what those dead white guys who founded our nation said. Who thinks their words are revered these days. Raise your hand if you're an idiot.
Okay, let's review class. The populace of Caucasians on the planet is constant while the populace of third world nations is exploding. Why is that? Well, the truth is, that although the living standards are very low, most of the poor people on the planet are able to subsist. They proliferate in alarming numbers. They are able to grow enough food, or obtain enough food that they drive up population numbers. Even the unfortunate ones that die, do not stop the rising tide of third world inhabitants.
In the United States however, our society has undergone a devastation transition since WWII. For all the talk about living standards, people in the United States must now work longer hours to provide homes for their families. Where one wage earner could earn enough to provide for his family, we now see two wage earners having to work full time, and losing ground all the while. The major factors that impact this situation are globalism and the massive influx of cheap labor into our nation. These two factors have placed downward pressure on incomes.
Now, what happens when both adults in a household work? Well guess what, they don't have the money or the time to care for more children. And thus the population rate in white moderately successful nations around the world has declined.
A careful study of the policies of the United Nations in conjunction with leading western powers would likely show the reason why the white populace is in rapid decline. But that study might open a few eyes. Evidently the New York Times agrees. For if eyes were opened, it would become appearent that the policies we have adopted are having a devistating effect on our very existance as a race.
If anyone would like to dump on me for thinking that Buchanan is right to address this issue, be my guest. Just don't ask me to be concerned the next time the bald eagle or lassie is put on the endangered species list. You may think I'm warped and this opinion is absurd, but I think my race has as much right to exist as they do.
Stick in your ear New York Times!
Anyone who supports Buchanan’s position on race and immigration must have the intellectual fortitude to declare that National Alliance and Skinheads are visionaries who have been viciously maligned by the liberal press.
Please put in a belated < /sarcasm > tag before I just DIE laughing!!!
1. The European population has not declined since WWII, in fact, it has only increased, just not as fast as other groups, who now find themselves overburdened with high-birth rate that makes economic growth doubly difficult.
2. Europeans are not facing the plight of extinction, far from it. Any group with hundreds of millions of specimen is not “endangered”.
3. Ask any anthropologist, Caucasian (actually it should be Cacusoid as Caucasian specifically refers to the inhabitants of Caucasus Mountains) race spans from western Europe to central Asia, from Northern Europe to Northern Africa. Obviously, you define “Caucasian race” quite differently from the real race experts, hence the under-estimated population size.
Your three points were all that you derived from my comments?
Go back and read it again.
3 factual inaccuracies in your statement:
1. The European population has not declined since WWII, in fact, it has only increased, just not as fast as other groups, who now find themselves overburdened with
high-birth rate that makes economic growth doubly difficult.
Let's see, you read the original article and my commentary and still haven't figured out that we were talking about a decline in percentage of the caucasion population base in relationship to the world's population. No I did not express that exact topic in the paragraph you responded to, but the pararaph just prior to it did. There was no topic change so would think that if you tried real hard you might understand what I was talking about. But then perhaps I'm giving you too much credit. Sorry if I am.
2. Europeans are not facing the plight of extinction, far from it. Any group with hundreds of millions of specimen is not “endangered”.
Any group that is declining as a percentage of the whole as the caucasian race is, is in danger of losing it's ability to self-govern. That is a critical aspect of this topic which I didn't mention, but that any relatively well informed sixth grader should be able to extrapolate. And as for endangered, sorry bud, a few hundred million becomes less significant as the total increases beyond 6 billion. By the time it's 12 billion the caucasian populace will still be at a level reatively similar to what they are today. The topic of declining figures and replacement rates is mentioned in this article.
3. Ask any anthropologist, Caucasian (actually it should be Cacusoid as Caucasian specifically refers to the inhabitants of Caucasus Mountains) race spans from
western Europe to central Asia, from Northern Europe to Northern Africa. Obviously, you define “Caucasian race” quite differently from the real race experts,
hence the under-estimated population size.
Are you really so shallow as not to know that caucasian is a term used to describe whites and has been for decades? I didn't coin it myself. If you want to press the issue, perhaps it should only apply to the caucasus, but since when has that been implemented?
As with most articles I write, there are a few who simply cannot grasp the issues, so they complain about non-dotted Is and non-crossed Ts. There were no factual inaccuracies in my comments. There were simply non-factual perceptions. Thanks for playing.
15 posted on 2/5/02 12:34 AM Pacific by Aquatic
I used "European" to describe what you had failed with "Cacausian". Anthropology 101.
Your three points were all that you derived from my comments?
A better question would be: did you actually write what you wrote? As long as you don't deny having written the following, my rebuttal to your "extinction" theory stands, every bit of it.
Hey New York times, how about a "save the Race" run or a telethon or a concert to save the endangered Caucasian? What? No concern over this topic? Garsh, what a surprise.
And therefore I submit that a major truism of the left is breached by the Times'. Extinction is okay if it's the proper entity that is headed in that direction.
It is only the Times that seems to be "just fine" with the prospects of a race in decline.
A careful study of the policies of the United Nations in conjunction with leading western powers would likely show the reason why the white populace is in rapid decline. But that study might open a few eyes. Evidently the New York Times agrees. For if eyes were opened, it would become appearent that the policies we have adopted are having a devistating effect on our very existance as a race.
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