Pat Buchanan hates a lot of things.
But he keeps denying it. Then he goes on to list all the things he hates. Then he puts it all in a book. Then he hates that critics call him a hater. Because he wrote a book about a lot of stuff he hates and gives a lot of interviews about stuff he hates.
I haven’t (and am unlikely to) read his new book, the one that spells out all that he hates and that he claims is ruining the United States. That book cost him his job at MSNBC.
However, there’s been a lot of buzz about it, mainly from Buchanan’s own mouth, so I’ll rely on that as close enough to direct source. Also, the book really isn’t the point. It’s what Buchanan says about the book that is the point. And problem.
As best as I can tell from Buchanan’s own words and from news reports, as well as past interviews, if Buchanan wrote a musical it probably would be called The End of the World as Privileged Prejudiced White Guys Prefer It and it possibly would include a number called “A Few of My Favorite Things.”
The lyrics to that song might be:
Teardrops on brown noses and whiskers on Christians
Bright white immigrants and all English questions
Brown people’s rights tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite thingsCream colored people and crisp apple streudels
Church bells and moral yells and schnitzel with noodles
Melting beliefs and narrow views that cling
These are a few of my favorite things
Who saw Pat Buchanan on CBS with Charlie Rose this morning? To Charlie’s credit, he did not snort (much) in disgust, but it was evident. Here is the video link and transcript: Buchanan: Western Civilization on Its Last Legs.
Charlie Rose, did, though, give Buchanan the perfect segue that enabled Buchanan to launch into his racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic tirades about the current US, which he insists is putting a viper to its jugular with all of its multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-ethic, multi-lingual culture.
But, he staunchly denies being a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-any religion other than his own, and homophobic person.
Why?
I’d rather him walk out in a white bedsheet. How in the world are any of Buchanan’s positions not exactly as bigoted as they sound?
Why doesn’t Buchanan just own his hate: yeah, Jews and Muslims should be forced to convert to Christian Evangelism or Catholicism, probably those Methodists and Lutherans and Episcopalians too, just like the Spanish governor made all those Texans take Roman Catholic oaths in order to get land grants (oh, the good old days!). And forget all this integration and immersion and tolerance and ESL business. While we are on it, kill that ERA for once and for all, dump affirmative action, and quit fighting the divine right of the white, Christian male to rule the world!
Why does he insist that he, and his book with chapters such as “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America” are not totally and utterly bigoted?
This, Pat, is so much of what is wrong on the “right” these days.
Here are a couple of notable excerpts from the interview — major disgust moments and totally self-explanatory and identifying of Buchanan as the disturbing, misinformed hater that he is, despite his lack of self-awareness (allegedly). (Emphasis mine.)
Buchanan: And what I’m warning about in our country is that the United States of America which is shifting to become a multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-ethic, multi-lingual country, there is nothing that’s going to hold us together if we lose our common language, our common Christian, Judeo- Christian faith, our common moral consensus, which we are losing.
Rose: So you’re not saying the nation has to be white and Christian which some of your critics believe you are saying?
Buchanan: The critics should read the book instead of trying to blacklist and censor the book, Charlie. No. Any individual can be a good American. When I was a young man in 1960, because of the melting pot we had all come together – Irish and Germans and English and Polish and Jewish and Czech and Greek – into one nation and one people under God.
Yes, Pat, we get it: any individual who is white can be a good American. You don’t like the pigmented folk from those furrin nations with all their weird, non-English ways.
What you blindly and deafly do not get is that we do not all share a common “moral” consensus based on a common Christian faith. I’ve been raised Christian my entire life. My kids attend a Christian school. We’re pretty Christian around my household, and we believe strongly in the role Christianity and the Church play for our family. And yet, I do not expect this of others. It’s my personal choice and thank goodness I am free to make it.
Also, perhaps not shockingly to anyone other than you, Pat, I sincerely hope that in my entire Christian life I have not held a single moral value that matches any of yours. I don’t know how to explain this bizarre Christian cognitive dissonance other than to say I take the teachings of Christ to heart and it pretty much means that, like Jesus, I do not use phenotype to determine who to love.
As for language, well, I studied a lot of languages. I think everyone should (but again, I won’t legislate that; I’ll leave it up to the individual). Languages are a window into the history and culture of a people. Absolutely fascinating. My children attend a school where they are taught English and Spanish, and it is so enriching.
But Buchanan can’t let go that what the melting pot means is that we toss in everyone and they come out as a white Christian or that anything else means disaster and catastrophe.
Rose: But I thought what America meant was diversity. I thought what the Statue of Liberty meant was that we welcome everybody to our shores and that that is what has made us strong, because people have come from outside the united states to make giant contributions – in war and peace – to make us the strong country that we are, and that is what our central power – that is what has given us enormous strides in technology, in science, in health, and, yes, in fighting the wars that we felt were necessary for our national security.
Buchanan: Charlie, what is the motto of the United States? E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. It is not just a diversity that makes America strong. It is the unity we finally had in the Depression and World War II, in the 1950s. We were one people united under God, indivisible in one nation.
What is happening now is that the elites in this country have taken the melting pot and thrown it out. They’re saying to people, ‘Come to America, keep your culture, keep your separate religion, keep your separate different beliefs.’ America is becoming a nation of nations.
Rose: How are they saying keep your beliefs but not at the same time accept the values and the Constitution of the country that you have come to? It is one thing to understand your own roots, it’s another thing not to accept the principles and the Constitution of the United States.
Multi-national, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural have been pretty good to me. In fact, that pretty much describes who I am.
My great-grandfather, a railroad man and farmer, had a saying that he literally lived by: every man has a seat at my dining table.
Different language, culture or beliefs, male or female, all were welcome at his dining table — not the kitchen table in the kitchen, not separate, not under preconceived conditions of looks, language, religion or attire. Any. Man. That’s how I was brought up, by my people, my Christian, American people. For over 100 years. That’s how my people lived and believed a hundred years ago, Pat. Before your precious mid-20th century golden years.
(In the interview, Buchanan hearkens back to how great things were post Word War II and in the 1950s. He just barely restrained himself from mentioning who I suspect is his personal hero: Joe McCarthy.)
Don’t you even try to tell me about a superpower crumbling because of multi-culturalism. That’s what my people believed was the foundation and cornerstone both of this amazing nation: equality and acceptance.
The greatest threat to the domestic US, our safety and security, is if thought like Buchanan’s takes hold and takes power.
The greatest threat to us today, the very thing that will destroy the US, is if people like Pat Buchanan take hold of this nation and achieve their goals: destroying all individuality and freedom.
