{"id":4919,"date":"2011-10-20T11:15:51","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T15:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/?p=4919"},"modified":"2013-07-14T01:00:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-14T05:00:30","slug":"sailer-on-buchanan%e2%80%99s-suicide-of-a-superpower-bareknuckle-brawler-and-wisest-most-objective-man-in-american-public-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/sailer-on-buchanan%e2%80%99s-suicide-of-a-superpower-bareknuckle-brawler-and-wisest-most-objective-man-in-american-public-affairs-4919","title":{"rendered":"Sailer On Buchanan’s Suicide of a Superpower: Bareknuckle Brawler and Wisest, Most Objective Man In American Public Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Steve Sailer – VDARE.com<\/a><\/div>\n

Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?<\/a> <\/em>Patrick J. Buchanan’s eleventh book, documents with vivid details and acute quotes how, among other globalist mistakes, state-sponsored demographic-replacement via mass immigration is undermining the social cohesion and trust that is absolutely required if Americans are to govern themselves in a Republic.<\/p>\n

Buchanan is not upbeat in his assessment of the perils self-inflicted by America’s “welfare-warfare state”: “Globalization dissolves the bonds of economic dependency that held us together as a people, as the cacophony of multiculturalism drowns out the old culture”. But Suicide of a Superpower’s<\/em> very existence, much less its position<\/a> on the bestseller lists, <\/a>raises the cheering question of however Pat’s career has survived since William F. Buckley Jr.<\/a> issued a fatwa<\/em> against him in 1991.<\/p>\n

The same can’t be said for several other conservative intellectuals decreed verboten<\/em> by Buckley, <\/a>such as the late Joe Sobran<\/a>. So how has Buchanan managed to stay afloat in an age of politics by character assassination?<\/p>\n

One thing to keep in mind about Pat’s career: he’s a great<\/em> guy. He’s one of the kindest, most considerate people in public life. (Full disclosure: Pat quotes me several times, citing my VDARE.com articles<\/a> on the “racial ratio,”<\/a> Affirmative Action beneficiaries vs. benefactors i.e. losers and the real meaning<\/a> of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA<\/a>) scores among others).<\/p>\n

Buchanan has made himself into exactly what you would want in a political intellectual: famously pugnacious in argument, but a gentleman who fights fair and feels the other side is entitled to its say. He wants to win<\/em> arguments, but not suppress and personally destroy<\/a> his opponents.<\/p>\n

In his new book, Buchanan laments that in 21st Century America:<\/p>\n

“The crudeness of our public debate is matched by its incivility.<\/a> In politics it is insufficient to defeat an opponent. One must demonize, disgrace, and destroy him. The tradition of political foes being social friends when the sun goes down … is pass\u00c3\u00a9. Today, we criminalize politics<\/a> and go for the throat.”<\/em>[Links added]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buchanan’s genial honesty helps explain why relatively few liberal Bigfoot journalists have piled on to the two decade-long neocon jihad<\/em> against him. They are ideologically closer to Buchanan’s neocon detractors, but they know from personal experience that Pat is the better man.<\/p>\n

The subtitle of Buchanan’s new book, Will America Survive to 2025?<\/em>, pays tribute to Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik’s 1970 essay Will the Soviet Union Survive to 1984?<\/em><\/a> (Notice the 14-year span in both.)<\/p>\n

Amalrik predicted that a dragged-out Soviet war with China would unleash centrifugal nationalist energies and ultimately dismantle the Soviet empire’s “prison house of nations.”<\/a><\/p>\n

As it turned out, the Russians blundered into war in Afghanistan rather than with China, and it took until 1991, not 1984, for the Soviet Union to dissolve into 15 countries. Nevertheless, as in horseshoes and hand-grenades<\/a>, close counts when forecasting, so Amalrik deserves his renown.<\/p>\n

In contrast to Amalrik, Buchanan’s book does not explicitly predict that the U.S. will crack up. He merely concludes:<\/p>\n

“American is entering a time of troubles. The clash of culture and creed are intensifying and both parties are perceived to have failed the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6And the crises that afflict us\u00e2\u20ac\u201dculture wars, race division, record deficits, unpayable debt, waves of immigration, legal and illegal, of people never before assimilated, gridlock in the capital, and possible defeat in war\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmay prove too much for our democracy to cope with. They surely will, if we do not act now.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly, our country does suffer from overstretch. The unsustainability of the bipartisan conventional wisdom of Invite-The-World, Invade-The-World, In Hock-To-The-World is obvious.<\/p>\n

But what comes next is not. Buchanan sums up the unpredictability of the situation nicely:<\/p>\n

“On the news of Burgoyne’s<\/a> defeat at Saratoga in 1777, which portended the loss of the North American colonies, John Sinclair wrote to Adam Smith in despair that Britain was headed for ruin.<\/em><\/p>\n

“‘There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,’<\/a> replied Smith.<\/em><\/p>\n

“We are severely testing Smith’s proposition.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buchanan is one of the few public figures to have taken our victory in the Cold War seriously. He’d dedicated his life to struggling against Communism<\/a> and then, over a two-year stretch in 1989-1991, much of what he’d hoped for came true.<\/p>\n

Most individuals in that situation would smugly keep on keeping on. But Buchanan quickly began advocating a new set of policies attuned to the post-Cold War world.<\/p>\n

This has not, however, been a terribly respectable notion. He writes:<\/p>\n

“From 1941 to 1989, America played a great role as the defender of freedom, sacrificing and serving mankind, a role of which we can be proud. But having won that epochal struggle, we found ourselves in a world for which we were unprepared. Like an aging athlete, we keep trying to relive the glory days<\/a><\/em> … As our rivals look to tomorrow, we live in yesterday.” <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As if trying to illustrate Buchanan’s point about the pointlessness of contemporary games of empire, on Friday, October 14, President Obama announced to Congress<\/a> that he was sending 100 armed U.S. troops<\/a> to South Sudan, Uganda, the Central African Republic, and\/or the Democratic Republic of the Congo<\/a> to chase around the Lord’s Resistance Army<\/a>. America’s newest and most random enemy ever is a gang of a few hundred juvenile delinquents who rape and pillage in the hinterlands. (Evidently, it takes a child<\/a> to raze<\/a> a village.)<\/p>\n

An important element in Buchanan’s good nature: he is one of the few pundits who will admit freely that his biases are tribal as well as ideological. Sportsmanship is one of Buchanan’s defining traits. He’s like a wise old Notre Dame<\/a> fan who has no illusions that the Fighting Irish<\/a> are more cosmically deserving of victory than the other football teams. But they’re his<\/em> team. Thus, he can discuss with perfect objectivity the prospects of other teams because he isn’t the puerile kind of fan who furiously argues that his team should<\/em> win. He just wants<\/em> them to win.<\/p>\n

Buchanan, advisor to three Presidents and winner of a New Hampshire presidential primary, has been “in the arena” (to use Teddy Roosevelt’s phrase<\/a>) since the 1960s. Active engagement for decades with the political process typically narrows the imagination and constricts the soul. (To see what I mean, just read skeptically Matt Bai’s long, sympathetic article Does Anyone Have a Grip on the G.O.P.?<\/em><\/a> <\/em>on Republican<\/strong> Establishment operatives like William Kristol and Vin Weber in last week’s New York Times Magazine<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Buchanan’s career in politics goes back to Richard Nixon’s comeback<\/a> in the mid-1960s<\/a>. Unlike so many others, however, Buchanan has emerged from all those years and all those conflicts wiser, more judicious, more empathetic, more broadly informed, and more principled.<\/p>\n

In contrast, neoconservatism<\/a>, which strikes neutral observers as equally tribal in motivation, has unleashed so much violence over the last decade precisely because of its pretenses to universal benevolence. If you root for some other team than the neocons root for, well, that’s not just an accident of birth, as Buchanan understands. Instead, to a neocon, rooting for the wrong team is proof that you are, as Richard Perle and David Frum<\/a> used to say, evil<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Worse, you aren’t supposed to get the joke when it comes to neoconservatism. If you realize why neocon claims to be repairing humanity are funny, you are worse than evil.<\/p>\n

As Buchanan mentions in a brief aside:<\/p>\n

“Neonconservatism, which shares attributes with the Trotskyism<\/a> that is one of its roots, is one of the new ideologies to have seized the imagination of those seeking a cause … <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, in Suicide of a Superpower<\/em>, Buchanan isn’t out to kick the neocons while they are deservedly down. He merely concludes, dryly:<\/p>\n

“The conversion of George W. Bush to neoconservatism<\/a> was not without consequence<\/a>.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buchanan’s sportsmanship helps make him a strikingly unsentimental observer of American history. For example,<\/p>\n

“No one would suggest the Indian wars were about equality. There were about conquest<\/a> and subjugation.<\/a>“<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s glad his team won, but that doesn’t justify spinning how it was done.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Buchanan sees no reason to be furtive about the fact that House Republicans triumphed in 2010 “because white America came out to vote and minorities and the young stayed home.” In Chapter 9, “The White Party,” he explains in detail how the GOP<\/strong> (or, more properly, what Peter Brimelow<\/a> calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153GAP\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, Generic American Party<\/a>) can win again in 2012 with the same dynamic.<\/p>\n

As Buchanan argues, strategies aimed at turning out the Republican<\/strong> Party’s white base are the best bet for winning in the short run. In the (very) long run, however, as Buchanan notes in his lapidary prose:<\/p>\n

“Either the Republican Party puts an end to mass immigration, or mass immigration will put an end to the Republican<\/strong> Party.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To see how much the Establishment Republicans and Establishment Media don’t want to talk about immigration, consider once again Bai’s New York Times<\/em> article about Washington G.O.P. insiders’ views on Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and other candidates. Although there are 7,179 words in the article, not a single word is “immigration.” And Bai published this after<\/em> Rick Perry<\/a> blew his lead in the race largely over immigration.<\/p>\n

In contrast, in a subsection entitled “A Moratorium on Immigration,” Buchanan offers a seven-point plan:<\/p>\n