Ideas Have Consequences By Adam Graham Most r…

Ideas Have Consequences

By Adam Graham

Most readers on Amazon.com who gave Pat Buchanan’s latest book a negative review dismissed “The Death of the West” as a 21st Century sequel to Mein Kampf, viewing that as superior to responding to Pat Buchanan’s ideas and argument in a serious manner.

Indeed, to many it is simply enough to declare a book racist or politically incorrect rather than facing the facts it presents. Buchanan mentions this tendency several times in the book to simply dismiss those who question the nation’s affirmative action and immigration policies. A well-researched and well thought-out book deserves better than what it has gotten.

Buchanan proceeds in a logical manner from one point to another to explain what he views as the biggest threats to Western civilization. Chapter 1 gives the readers population numbers and UN projections of what the future holds for the Industrialized World which according to UN population figures are shrinking rapidly while the third world grows.

Chapter 2 focuses on the West population decline’s biggest cause: falling birth rates. Buchanan mentioned the increased presence of women, particularly married women, in the workforce which leads many women to delay having children or to have less of them for the decline. In the course of this, the “family wage” was eliminated. It was the belief of society that businesses should pay married men more so that they could support their wife and children. This has since been considered sex discrimination.

Of course, Buchanan’s suggestions will cause many bristle at what they view as pure sexism. The greatest lesson to be learned from Buchanan’s book is that “ideas do have consequences”. One can have a world where men and women work together in the workplace, where the married man makes the exact same wage as the single woman, and where people forego having children or have a seriously small number. However, they’re not going to maintain replacement rates of population growth nor be able to support a strong and healthy Social Security system. Such systems depend on a large growth rate in population, not the tiny increases that we’ve experienced in recent years.

While gender equality laws have promoted the freedom of women to work in the workplace, making the option not only economically viable but also inviting, they’ve limited the freedom of women to choose to stay home with their children by barring their husbands’ employers from even considering their marital status and economic situation in paying their salaries and making the decision to stay home hard if not impossible for any family.

In Chapter 3, Buchanan discusses the ideological roots of America’s cultural revolution, and in Chapter 4, its key players. Chapter 5 provides a key overview of Ethnic tensions and migrations that threaten Europe. In Chapter 6, he turns to America and the country’s growing Chicano population.

While many of Buchanan’s controversial quotes about Mexican immigration made it into press, but this one somehow hasn’t. Buchanan writes, “…any man, woman, or child from any continent, (sic) can be a good American.”

Buchanan’s problem with the Mexican Immigration is not that he hates Mexicans. Rather, he believes that unlike prior immigrants, most new Mexican immigrants have no interest in assimilating into American society. He describes the average Mexican immigrant as a proud Mexican who has no interest in becoming part of American society but still remains loyal to Mexico.

Chapter 6 is called “La Reconquista” in which Buchanan alleges that Mexicans do want to see Mexico reacquire the US South West from California to Texas. He quotes members of Mexican nationalist groups and a Mexican government official to back-up his claim in addition to a Mexican-American college professor. I’m not certain how many Mexicans really share these ideas. Indeed, the largest organization Buchanan cites has 400 chapters nationwide. Even if each chapter has 100 members, that’s still only 40,000 people. Does this thought really represent the majority of Mexican Americans?

I don’t know and Buchanan doesn’t give us much proof that they do. He does mention one small majority-Mexican town that made Spanish its official language and made helping the border patrol a crime. His theory of Mexicans retaking the Southwest finds its strongest argument in history. He points out how Sam Houston and thousands of other Americans migrated to Texas and then were able to claim the territory as their own.

Much more substantial is the general argument that American society can’t survive if a growing percentage of the population has no respect and in effect detests the people and culture that have made this nation great. Buchanan fears that America will no longer be a melting pot but is set for the Balkanization that many Canadians experience with the French-speaking province of Quebec. Buchanan’s concern is that Mexican immigrants (legal and illegal) are a concentrated population group that thanks to a liberal education establishment and Mexican Nationalism are not being assimilated into American society but rather remaining separate from Americans while obtaining growing political power across the country.

In Chapter 7, Buchanan takes on the war against America’s past and our country’s heroes. While Buchanan does spend time talking about the denigration of Washington and Jefferson and the reduced role of real history-makers in national history, he spends an inordinate amount of time defending the Confederacy. Perhaps, this is because there have been so many attacks on any attempts to honor and remember the Confederate dead of the Civil War.

To take the view that many take, that the entire South hated blacks and that’s why we had the war is idiocy. For most of the South, they weren’t thinking about slavery but rather Southern nationalism. Like it or not, the Confederacy is part of many people’s heritage and to demand that people not be allowed to honor that heritage is absurd. What if a White American were to declare that Blacks should not honor their African heritage because their ancestors committed atrocities. We’d suggest they were short-sighted racists who couldn’t see the evils committed by their own culture, the exact same can be said of those who decry the evils the South committed, in arguing that the Confederate dead and past shouldn’t be honored while forgetting Sherman’s march to the Sea and other Union atrocities.

Buchanan is not a Confederate fanatic as many allege. He believes that both sides in the Civil War should be viewed as heroes (with the exception of General Sherman) as part of our proud American past. Indeed, if Buchanan were a racist who longed for the days of slavery, how do you explain his closing the book with a quote from the abolitionist John Brown?

Chapters 8 and 9 Buchanan explains “the Dechristianizing of America” and presents Nixon’s silent Majority argument for the 21st Century. These chapters are interesting but they’re mostly review for Conservatives who have read books like Bork’s “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”.

In Chapter 10, Buchanan presents his solutions to the problems he’s discussed in Chapters 1-9. I’ll examine each solution and dissect it:

—Amend the Civil Rights Act to allow businesses to pay parents more than single people (including single fathers and mothers).

A good idea. America is a free country and people ought to be free to put their values in place in the workforce. It is a matter of choice on the part of employers as well as employees. Companies that choose to pay their parents more would have an edge in retention of employees. If an employee didn’t like the policy, he or she would be free to work elsewhere.

—Eliminate the Tax Deduction for Day Care and Increase the Federal Tax Credit for children to $3000 per child in order to allow women the choice of staying at home.

—Give Employers Tax Incentives to pay higher wages to parents:

I have a problem with the Income Tax and a problem with using the tax code as a means of social engineering. Lets be clear, though. As long as we have an income tax, social engineering is going to be going on and I would rather see it being used to promote conservative values than those of feminism and the left. Until Americans realize that what we really need is freedom to live our lives without government using a cattle prod to push us towards a certain outcome, we might as well be prodding people in the right direction.

—The Burden of Corporate Taxation should be shifted off family businesses and farms and onto the larger corporations.

This suggestion is part of the reason why many Conservatives ceased to support Buchanan as his leaning towards labor often turn into full-fledged class-warfare rhetoric. To take more from large corporations in the hopes that it will improve the lot of smaller businesses is absurd and goes contrary to proper economic theory. Larger taxes are passed off to consumers and family farms and hurt the Economy in general.

—Legal Immigration should be scaled backed 250,000 per year:

This is common sense and more likely to be accepted than Buchanan’s prior proposal of a 20-year moratorium.

—“The H1-B Visa program, expanded to benefit Silicon Valley, under which 200,000 professional workers are brought in yearly, should be suspended.”

While I’d agree with a scaling back in the program due to economic hardship at this time, this proposal has NOTHING to do with “The Death of the West”. These visitors are immigrants from mostly industrialized countries who are working in the US for a few years. They have nothing to do with anything Buchanan has said in the book but just a protectionist idea included for the heck of it.

—Oppose Amnesty for Illegal Aliens and deport Illegal Aliens

Amnesty is way too costly in terms of the economic price that would be paid and it must of course be opposed. To work to do a mass deportation of illegal immigrants would be hard, but it is necessary and delaying what needs to be done won’t make it any easier. Any deportation is not about racism but the rule of law. If our borders aren’t secure and we merely pardon those who violate them, do our laws really mean anything at all?

—“Immigrant Children Should be Immersed in English”

Absolutely. This is key to assimilation is that we all speak one language. The Bible tells us in the story of the power of Babel that when God wanted to divide a strong and united people, all he did was change their language and then everything fell apart. In addition, English is the language of opportunity and those children who don’t know English will be the ones to suffer in the American economy.

—“The Republican Party’s drive to make Puerto Rico a state should be defeated.” And Puerto Rico should become Independent.

First, I’ve never heard of a serious attempt to make Puerto Rico a state. Sure, there’ve been congressional resolutions on the issue but it always comes back to the same thing, about a quarter of Puerto Ricans want to become a state, about a quarter want Independence and half are happy to remain a Commonwealth. I agree that Puerto Rico shouldn’t be a state and so do 75% of Puerto Ricans, which is why it’ll never happen. However, I don’t think Independence will happen anytime soon either.

—“The US Border Patrol should get the manpower it needs to police our borders”

This would be a costly proposition but the cost of not doing it in increased entitlements to Illegals has been much larger.

—“Businesses that repeatedly hire illegal immigrants…should be prosecuted”

Another good point, if we’re going to have laws, lets try enforcing them and in addition to that lets level penalties for non-compliance. I know these are revolutionary principles but maybe we’re at last ready for them in the 21st Century.

—Any expansion of NAFTA should be opposed

Yes, free trade with Central America has less benefits and more risks than free trade with Canada and Mexico.

To protect American sovereignty, he opposes funding for the IMF and World Bank. He also urged the president to send the Kyoto Protocol and International Criminal Court treaty to the US Senate to be rejected as a sign of America’s defiance. He also says America should get back to bilateral trade agreements and get out of the WTO. He also opposed further expansion of NATO and called for a withdrawl of US forces from Europe and Asia, warning that many empires had collapsed by over-extending themselves as the US has done. I’m not sure I’d go as far as Buchanan did on everything (particularly troop withdrawls from South Korea) but everything else is a good idea.

On politics, Buchanan suggests the GOP abandon what have been fruitless efforts to gain minority support and focus on gaining the support of White voters by advocating a tightening of immigration laws and ending racial preferences and quotas.

I think that if nothing else Buchanan errs strategically in the plan. White voters aren’t concerned about these issues. In addition, GOP attempts heretofore have not been successful because the party has not dedicated itself to explaining how conservative positions and ideas will make their lives better but rather has been based on cheap, “we don’t hate you” rhetoric and tokenism.

Buchanan proposes what many conservatives may find abhorrent due to our law abiding and law-respecting nature that we must encourage and support public officials who take stands against unconstitutional court decisions, citing Judge Ray Moore’s defiance in the state of Alabama. He also urges Congress to use its Constitutionally-given power to circumscribe and limit the jurisdiction of federal courts.

Buchanan proposes the passage of pro-life laws, however the restrictions he proposes are hardly imaginative and have been proposed by leaders for decades.

More interesting is Buchanan’s proposal of the use of boycotts as a weapon in the culture war. Many would point to the failure of Southern Baptist boycott of Disney but Buchanan sees a problem with the Southern Baptist boycott of Disney. Disney is a huge conglomeration that includes ABC, Disney, ESPN. Disney is so big that even those trying to take part in the boycott were probably inadvertently supporting the company one way or another.

Instead Buchanan proposes, “If traditionalists and Republicans would unite, select a single product being advertised on one particularly offensive TV show with weak ratings, and everyone would boycott that one product they could force the advertiser to pull his (sic) ads. Then follow up on the next product until no one is willing to pay the cost of advertising on a TV show so offensive.”

Most of Buchanan’s suggestions are of a more common sort (using initiative and referenda to effect political change, de-funding federally-funded ideological interests such as Planned Parent and returning power to communities and localities). Buchanan’s most superfluous suggestion is holding a national history bee as part of an effort to improve America’s knowledge of American history. I’d point out that we hold an annual geography bee and most kids still can’t locate Iraq on a map.

Having read through Pat Buchanan’s book, I don’t find it racist, nor do I find it hateful. Buchanan’s opponents have slandered a thoughtful book in order to avoid addressing the serious problems Buchanan presents. Leaders can ignore Buchanan’s concerns at this country’s peril. We can put off problems until they become crisises—after all that’s the American way, or we can address them forthrightly.

I personally recommend Buchanan’s book as an insightful examination of the challenges that face conservatives at the start of the twenty-first century.