Book Review: Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Via Peter

Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

New York; Thomas Dunne Books; October 2011; 496 pages; $27.99

The Happy Warrior

by Peter B. Gemma

Pat Buchanan’s hundreds, if not thousands, of incisive articles and commentaries have appeared in print and on the internet for decades (he became a columnist for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat at age 23). His writings have proven to be both controversial and courageous—defending Middle American values, defining an America First foreign policy, and dicing up the elitist-driven multicultural agenda. The Christian Science Monitor calls him “Dennis the Menace with the pen of H. L. Menken.”

Along the way he stopped to run for President on three different occasions. In 1992 he had a major impact on the Republican nomination process, scoring an upset victory by decisively defeating incumbent President George H. W. Bush in the crucial New Hampshire GOP primary. Buchanan continued his influential political crusade for traditional conservative issues in 1996—besting Bob Dole, the favored Republican candidate, in several states. In 2000, he hewed the tough road as a third party presidential candidate and was the lone voice supporting fair trade, a non-interventionist foreign policy, and opposing illegal immigration (as well as capping legal immigration). Columnist George F. Will says “Pat Buchanan is the pit bull of the American Right.”

Buchanan finds time to write best-selling books too—thought-provoking albeit foreboding and sternly worded titles including, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (2006), The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (2002), and The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy (1998). Somehow he can investigate and interpret the threats to America’s sovereignty, economy, and its traditional culture—yet find a way to offer practical and encouraging solutions. This is why the left-wing newspaper Village Voice conceded “Buchanan is one hell of a wordsmith.”

He obviously enjoys the battle as he enters the fray on every front.

Now comes his eleventh book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? and Pat Buchanan is at his combative best explaining the question he poses:

“Our intellectual, cultural, and political elites are today engaged in one of the audacious and ambitious experiments in history. They are trying to transform a Western Christian republic into an egalitarian democracy made up of all the tribes, races, creeds, and cultures of planet Earth.”

Then, with sword drawn, he defiantly defends the roots of the American republic as “a people of common ancestry, culture, and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heros, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, [and who] share the same music, poetry, art, and literature.”

Buchanan asserts, however, that the revolutionary agenda the secular elites are trying to impose:

“... is failing and will continue to fail. For it is based on ... an ideology whose tenets are at war with the laws of nature. Like Marxists who were going to create a new man and a new society, our establishment is attempting the impossible.”

Still, he sees the confrontation between the elites and Middle America as teetering in favor of the establishment: “The cycle is inescapable” he writes, “when the faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, and the people die.” Buchanan observes, “This appears less a bold prediction of what may happen than a depiction of what is happening now.”

A significant portion of Suicide of a Superpower deals with issues and ideas from a spiritual standpoint. Two chapters are solely on the subject—one is entirely devoted to the “Crisis of Catholicism” (Buchanan’s worldview is seen through Roman Catholic glasses). He notes that, “Catholicism and the country together went through the cultural revolution that altered the most basic beliefs of men and women. Both came out changed. ... What was immoral and scandalous in 1960—promiscuity, abortion, homosexuality—is normal now.” He states: “‘One nation under God, indivisible’ has become an antique concept in an age that celebrates diversity and multiculturalism. Our intellectual and cultural elites reject the God our parents believed in and the moral code they lived by.”

Buchanan is pointed when he addresses the reader: “Our system is rooted in a societal failure. We are not ruled by the same ideas nor do we possess the same moral character as our parents did. Today freedom takes a back seat to equality.” Here is what will make Pat Buchanan’s new book his most controversial: his opinions on immigration, multiculturalism, demographics, and even race. Suicide of a Superpower is about as stark and dark as Pat Buchanan gets.

In the chapter entitled “Demographic Winter,” he writes that demography should not always be equated with destiny “for all human capital is not created equal. In making history, it has often been the quality of a people who mattered most.” The author cites such examples as the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and the Founding Fathers of this nation—how just a few men can change the course of history in defense of blood and soil. He does note, however, that:

“As the West worships at the altar of democracy, is deeply egalitarian, and has thrown open its doors to a Third World in which ethnonationalism is embedded, it is the West whose destiny will ultimately be determined by demography.”

Drawing from UN findings, US Census Bureau studies, research papers, and news investigations on the world’s demographic trends, he warns that by 2050 only one of the ten most populous nations will be a “First World” country—the United States. But the kicker is that by mid-century America will be essentially a Third World country demographically: 54% of its people will trace their roots to Asia, Africa, and Latin America according to a UN report.

Buchanan says, “Peoples of European descent are ... aging, dying, disappearing … among the peoples of color who will replace them, the poorest and least developed nations are reproducing fastest.” He notes that in 1950, Europeans and North Americans accounted for 28% of the world’s population. In 2050, that number is expected to be 12% with a median age close to 50. The author cautions that in First World countries, the birth rate is as low as 1.3 children per woman—pathetically below the 2.1 level necessary just to maintain even current population levels. In contrast, Africa’s population will double to 2 billion by 2050—under-achieving nations such as Niger will quintuple its population; Uganda, Guinea-Bissau, Burundi, et al will triple theirs.

Without younger workers to pay taxes, boost the economy, carry the load of pensions and health care, etc., the West’s international debt crises will get dramatically worse. The author cautions, “The riots that tore through Greece, France, and the UK in 2010 are rooted in the demographic crisis of the West and are harbingers of what is to come.”

Similarly, on the domestic front, Buchanan writes of “The End of White America.” According to the 2010 U.S. Census, white Americans will be a minority by 2042—whites under the age of 18 are projected to be a minority even sooner: 2019. The author refers to a Washington Post story which revealed that in the period from 2009-2010, foreign-born Hispanics gained 98,000 construction jobs while white—and black—construction workers lost 511,000 jobs. In the second quarter of 2010, native-born workers lost 1.2 million jobs, while foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs. Blue collar white men constituted 11% of the workforce but represented 36% of those who lost jobs.

In 2010, more than 15% of America’s workers were foreign born—in California illegal aliens hold down 10% of California jobs, a state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation. By 2040, 30% of the Texas labor force will not have a high school diploma and the average household income will be drastically lower than 2000.

As with Europe, the root cause of this problem comes from the white birth rate being dramatically below replacement level for decades. And, of course, there is the invasion of illegal aliens—and a tidal wave of legal émigrés as well.

The author categorically states, “Ethnically, linguistically, and culturally, the verdict of 1848 [the boundary-setting U.S.-Mexican War] is being overturned. Will this Mexican nation-within-a-nation advance the goals of the Constitution—to ‘insure domestic tranquility’ and ‘make us a more perfect union?’ Or has our passivity in the face of invasion imperiled our union?”

Buchanan opines, “Mexico is moving north.”

A side note. Beside his own pithy observations, Buchanan has peppered Suicide of a Superpower with short quotes that range from profound to highly provocative:

• Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations: “The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event.”

• President Harry Truman: “This is a Christian nation.” ... President Barak Obama: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”

• Historians Will and Ariel Durant: “Utopias of equality are biologically doomed.”

• Commentator Sam Francis: “The real meaning of the doctrine of equality is that it serves as a political weapon.”

The latter two quotes come from the chapter entitled “Equality or Freedom?”

In that compelling section, he sets out with a perceptive discourse on the original definition and newer development of “equality” in politics and public policy—from the ideals that inspired the Founding Fathers to the social experiments in the name of egalitarianism today. Then Buchanan focuses on the political correctness of “equality.” Lyndon Johnson established a PC police academy with the motto, “To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed.” As outlined in Suicide of a Superpower, the demands for equality have grown exponentially from the 1960s to near hysteria today: children are bused out of their neighborhood into culturally strange and academically substandard schools; government-dictated racial quotas and “affirmative action” programs veto the merit-based hiring and promotion practices of businesses; Christianity, “our cradle faith” as the author puts it, has been kicked out of the public square and demoted to just another religion—all faiths are on an equal par with atheism for that matter.

“When one considers the scores of thousands of bureaucrats in federal, state, and local government, at colleges, and in corporations, all working to secure proportional representations of races, ethnic groups, and genders,” Buchanan notes, “we begin to see how equality and freedom are at war and why America is a failing nation.” He warns:

“Eventually one realizes that this transfer of wealth and power from one class to another is really what the ‘equality’ game is all about.”

It is raw political power that drives the multicultural forces and the open borders lobby, and like the radicals in the French revolution, American elitists lead the charge for revolutionary change in the name of égalité. Neo-conservative godfather Ben Watternberg boldly wrote, “The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of almost transcendental quality,” while writer Susan Sontag proclaimed, “The white race is the cancer of human history.”

Buchanan drives his counter-point home with precision:

“Ethnomasochism, the taking of pleasure in the dispossession of one’s own ethnic group, is a disease of the heart that never afflicted the America of Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, or Dwight Eisenhower. It comes out of what [author] James Burnham called an ‘ideology of Western suicide,’ a belief system that provides a morphine drip for a people who have come to accept the inevitability of their departure from history.”

Pat Buchanan, the happy warrior, has no tolerance for such “inevitabilities.” He asserts that there still exists in hearts of Americans “the will to remain one nation under God and one people united by history, heritage, [and] language ...” The author notes that in the 31 states where elections have been held, all but one have voted against same-sex marriage; in every state that had the opportunity to vote for English as its official language, the issue has prevailed; and bans on public funds for illegal aliens—housing, tuition, employment benefits, etc.—have been enacted in hundreds of local, county, and state jurisdictions.

The author invokes Thomas Paine of 1776: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

In his concluding chapter, “The Last Chance,” Buchanan gives us marching orders to re-take the barricades. Among them are ...

1. Dismantle the empire. “It is absurd that the United States, stumbling toward a debt default, must borrow from Japan to defend Japan, borrow from Europe to defend Europe, and borrow from the Persian Gulf to defend the Persian Gulf,” he writes. Buchanan wants the cost-cutting, policy-reviewing process to address “an archipelago of 700 to 1,000 bases in 130 countries, our imperial embassies, foreign aid, the military-industrial complex at home, and the hidden billions spread through the government for intelligence work and nuclear weapons.”

2. Downsize the state. “To balance the budget by cuts alone, spending would have to fall 40%,” he warns, “were tax increases alone be used to balance the budget the tax load on corporations and citizens would have to rise 67%.” The author outlines a variety of options, from “a halt to foreign aid unrelated to national security” to tying Social Security and COLAs to the consumer price index. An economic nationalist—in line with other countries who protect their workers—Buchanan advocates reducing:

“our dependence on goods made abroad and grow our dependence on goods made in the United States. We should impose tariffs on all imports and use every dollar of tariff revenue to reduce taxes on U.S. producers.” Imposing a 25% tariff on imports of $2.5 trillion in imports “would yield $600 billion, which would virtually eliminate corporate taxes in this country.”

3. A moratorium on immigration. “If America is not to disintegrate, if she is to regain the ‘out of many, one,’ unity we knew in the Eisenhower-Kennedy era, the first imperative is to re-adopt the immigration policy that produced that era of good feeling, so that the melting pot, fractured though it is, can begin again to do its work.” Buchanan declares the U.S. must cut “new immigration until unemployment falls to 6 percent. To bring in foreign workers when 23 million Americans are still underemployed or out of work is to put corporate profits ahead of country.”

He favors no amnesty, a return of illegal aliens to the homelands, and reforming:

“our immigration laws to give preference to those from countries that have historically provided most of our immigrants, who share our values, speak English, have college or advanced degrees, bring special skills, and can be easily assimilated. We need more taxpayers and fewer tax consumers.”

4. End reverse discrimination. “Congress should settle the question with finality by enacting into law Ward Connerly’s Civil Rights Initiative, which has won the support of the electorate in every state but one where it has been on the ballot,” Buchanan advises. Here is the Connerly wording:

“The state shall not grant preferential treatment to or discriminate against any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

Those “three dozen words, written into the Constitution or federal law,” Buchanan says, “would bring down the evil empire of reverse discrimination ...”

Buchanan warns that, “the crises that afflict us—culture wars, race division, record deficits, unpayable debt, waves of immigration, legal and illegal, of peoples never before assimilated, gridlock in the capital and possible defeat in war—may prove too much for our democracy to cope with. They surely will, if we do not act now.”

But the happy warrior is indeed acting—counter-attacking—and is asking for reinforcements. That’s the real answer to Pat Buchanan’s rhetorical question “Will America Survive to 2025?”

This article appears in the Fall issue of The Social Contract Quarterly (http://www.thesocialcontract.com).He generously allowed it to appear here by lowering his writer's fee to $1000 (in gold coins)