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Buy the Book
Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to
2025?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
(Thomas Dunne Books, 496 pages, $27.99)
If you are searching for the authoritative Baedeker Guide to the End of the West, search no longer. Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? makes a devastating case for the end of what we know as the West.
Pat Buchanan is the unacknowledged godfather of the Tea Party Movement and much more. He has written six other best-selling books and has no match as a polemicist, yet he is also an excellent historian who backs up his opinions and conclusions with copious quotations from a wide variety of sources. (Disclosure: I am one of those quoted.)
His timing is impeccable, as America approaches what promises to be a pivotal presidential and congressional election in the midst of one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. Meanwhile, we confront the ongoing threat of radical jihadism, a Middle East that threatens a possible Armageddon scenario within the lifetime of readers of this review, and the demographic, economic, and spiritual decline of Europe, with the emerging superpower of China there to pick up the pieces.
Buchanan himself has been actively involved in political journalism since the late Sixties as ongoing media maven and presidential speechwriter and advisor under presidents Nixon and Reagan; in addition, on two occasions he has himself been a candidate for the presidency.
With the death of Bob Novak in 2009, Buchanan (along with newcomer Jeffrey T. Kuhner of the Washington Times) has little competition as the representative of the traditional conservatism that in recent decades has been superseded by the neoconservatism so evident in the last Bush administration. Buchanan considers this his most important book and the best summary of his own political views, which are of the Old Right Senator Robert Taft and Russell Kirk variety. Although he has not endorsed anyone in this year’s presidential race, his views seem more sympathetic to Texans Perry and Paul than to the other candidates. Recall that Buchanan left the GOP to run for president under the Reform Party, which has in a certain sense morphed into what is now called the Tea Party.
His thesis is clear:
America is disintegrating. The centrifugal forces that are pulling us apart are growing inexorably. What once united us is dissolving, and this is true of Western civilization. Meanwhile the state is failing in its fundamental duties. It is no longer able to defend our borders, balance our budgets, or win our wars.
Simultaneously, the Middle East in particular has never been less stable, since the disappearance in recent months of several long-entrenched leaders has left a vacuum more likely to be filled by fundamentalist Islamic parties than by Western-style democracy. And then there is China…. Need I say more?
Suicide of a Superpower details in 11 chapters a wide variety of societal decline. After his opening chapter, Buchanan examines what he as a serious Christian thinks lies at the root of the matter: that the U.S. is no longer a Christian country. Even President Obama agrees with him on that. And what may be worse than the continuing decline of religious practice in America is the loss of a common morality drawn from natural law and Divine Revelation. As Buchanan notes after quoting the British historian of religious culture Christopher Dawson, “If Dawson is correct, the drive to de-Christianize America, to purge Christianity from the Public Square, public schools and public life, will prove culturally and socially suicidal for the country.”
Buchanan is well known as a Catholic who cherishes happy memories of Pre-Vatican II Catholicism, and he recounts with obvious pain the sad decline of Catholic religious practice, cultural and political influence, and adherence to the faith, bemoaning the spectacle ranging from “the former Speaker of the House to the Vice President of Catholic politicians who openly support abortion on demand.”
Another chapter chronicles “Demographic Winter.” “People of European descent are not only in relative but a real decline. They are aging, dying, disappearing. This is the existential crisis of the West.”
And also the existential crisis of the Jewish nation, which is most threatened not by any Iranian weapon of mass destruction but by its own low reproductive rates. By mid-century, Palestinians west of the Jordan River will outnumber Jews two to one; adding Palestinians in Jordan raises the ratio to three to one.
Other chapters examine mass immigration from Latin America and predict what Buchanan believes is America’s inevitable withdrawal of its military from hundreds of military bases through the world, due in part to our declining economy. Suicide of a Superpower is the work of a man who sincerely loves his country and has served it well. Nonetheless he writes:
America is entering a time of trouble. The clashes of culture and creed are intensifying.…And 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.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (4) | Leave a comment
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Timothy L. Pennell| 4.1.12 @ 10:46AM
All great Civilizations come to an end, one way or another. The Persian Empire fell to Alexander. The great Empire that Alexander had won for Macedonia, was dispersed upon his Death in the East.
The Egyptians woke up one day, to find themselves hopelessly outmatched by ROME.
ROME's Western Empire became fat and lazy. They imported their Labour Force. They used the Goths like we use the Mexicans. Their Military became a Quasi Mercenary Force (Like that of the Carthaginian Force that Rome had defeated) with 9 out of 10 Roman Soldiers NOT being a Roman. They had become their Century's Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Eastern Empire was on the rise. Their Emperor had laid plans to Rebuild the Roman Empire to her full Glory, only to come to an end, as the Black Death reared its Hellish Face.
Genghis Khan. Attila the Hun. The Aztecs and the Maya. The Soviet Empire. All gone, for different reasons, but gone, just the same.
Enter: The West.
The Sun never sets on the British Empire. At least, it didn't used to. So, what happened? They were THE World Power since the sinking of the Spanish Armada. They had Lands all over the World. They brought order, and Education, and Western Culture to savages, all over the world, and like Alexander, they incorporated these new Subjects, in to the Empire.
So, what happened?
Liberalism. Liberalism happened. Good intentions replaced the Old Order. No longer would men STRIVE to achieve their goals. The Government would take care of them, from now on. Britain began to let go of her Colonies. No longer could she gain Wealth from her former holdings. No longer would it spend its Treasure on the World's Greatest Navy. Great Britain did something that no Great Power had ever done before. It just walked away from all of it.
France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal. They can't even muster an Army. They have no Navy. They cannot defend themselves in the event of an attack. And worse yet, they have allowed their greatest Enemy to live inside their borders, by the MILLIONS, because to do otherwise, would be Racist. (Where have we heard that, before?)
Our Southern Border is being overrun. Our European Base, is being hopelessly diluted. What began with a Democrat Scheme to increase their numbers: The Immigration Act of 1965, has become a Deluge, as we have an Administration of Colour, who would like nothing more than to RID THIS COUNTRY of every last person of European Descent. That's why they won't Close the Border. That's why they won't ENFORCE the Immigration Laws. That's why they KILL any attempt to fight Voter Fraud by States mandating Photo I.D.s, to Vote.
Because we felt GUILTY for things we never did - (Peggy Noonan. Elliot Spitzer's sl*t - Kathleen Parker. Mort Zuckerman. The rest of you know who you are.) - we have a White Hating, Jew Hating, America Hating Black Muslim President who REFUSES to open the Vault in "Asia" (Hawaii) and let us see who he REALLY is.
Because we felt GUILTY, we elected a Marxist/Communist/Maoist to the Highest Office in the Land. No Experience. No Vetting. A man who sat in the HATE CHURCH of a White Hating, Jew Hating, America Hating POS "Pastor" for 20 Years. A man who has been FRIENDS with Cop Killing, Recruitment Center Bombing, Pentagon Bombing, Unrepentant DOMESTIC TERRORISTS for 20 Years.
But it's okay.
Because we proved that we're good people. We proved that we're not Racist. And we will continue to prove these things until we discover that the VISIGOTHS have overrun the City, and we are no longer the Great Empire that we once were, and that a New Dark Ages is upon us.
Alas.
The repeat of History claims another one that failed to LEARN from what had transpired in the Past.
Pity.
RJ| 4.1.12 @ 12:10PM
It is true that Protestant ethics and virtue was a main ingredient of America's exceptionalism. Also, the Founders believed that luxury would lead to laziness and corruption. America's economic prosperity has led to laziness and the noticeable decline of Christian values has led to a society in decline. Each generation chooses its own values. We can turn this situation around, but the trend has been strongly in the other direction for the last several years.
Tony| 4.1.12 @ 4:07PM
A distinguished professor from Yale said to me the other night that the only hope for the survival of the humanities in America lay in small Catholic colleges (and, I'll cheerfully add, small evangelical colleges also). So we have been rearing a most dangerous and irresponsible class of "rulers": the highly schooled but not deeply educated elites, to be found on Wall Street, in corporation offices, in law firms, in charge of hospitals, running the public and quasi-public media and Hollywood, and so forth. These are people not only ignorant of Christian doctrine, Christian art, and Christian history. They are also ignorant of the greatest of pagan thought, and of pagan history. It's not only that they are ignorant of Scripture. They're even ignorant of Plato and Aristotle, and Cicero and Virgil. They are the worst of all possible "rulers": they have high IQ's, lousy education, boundless ambition, and no ties to anything local or small or traditional. Their arrogance, too, is in proportion to the gaping chasms in what they have studied.
George Gilder | 4.3.12 @ 10:48PM
Another scintillating review by "Matthew Kenefick", who transcended the obvious foibles of Pat Buchanan to project his pedi-crucial insights.