In Concord, Pat Buchanan Says America’s Strength Comes from Unity, Not Diversity

By Ben Leubsdorf – The Concord Monitor

America’s strength comes from its unity, not its diversity, conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said last night at Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts.

“There’s two arguments. . . . The liberals, they say our diversity, our new diversity, is our strength. The more diverse we are, the stronger we are as a nation and a people,” Buchanan said. “And the other harkens back to an earlier era. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. The Pledge of Allegiance: One nation, under God, indivisible. That’s how America is made strong.

“They both, I don’t think, can be true,” he added.

Buchanan was the featured speaker at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications’s annual First Amendment Awards ceremony. Joe McQuaid, the Manchester school’s president and chairman, is also publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, which strongly backed Buchanan’s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. The latter year, he won the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.

“In Greek mythology, it is said that Apollo placed a curse on Cassandra of Troy, so that her predictions, though valid, would not be believed. A lot of Pat Buchanan’s warnings have proved quite accurate,” McQuaid said last night while introducing Buchanan. “America would do well to listen to this Cassandra.”

Buchanan spent much of his 20-minute speech reviewing changes over the last half-century in what he described as an increasingly polarized and fragmented news media. He also touched on presidential politics and the nation’s changing demographics, which he said don’t bode well for Republican candidates.

“The GOP vote in 2008 was 90 percent Christian, 90 percent Americans of European descent. Both these groups are shrinking, aging and dying. . . . When America looks like California demographically, I believe it will look like California politically,” Buchanan said.

A former aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Buchanan has run for president three times, as a Republican in 1992 and 1996 and once, in 2000, as the nominee of the Reform Party.

In his books and columns, Buchanan has voiced controversial views….

Read more at The Concord Monitor…