Book Review: Patrick J. Buchanan: Suicide of a Superpower

Yes, it's a new book by Pat Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? is the title, and the author is the same man that Donald Trump labelled a "Hitler-lover" a number of years back. Considering how long Hitler has been dead for, that'd be quite some little fetish. Despite all the accusations that Patrick J. Buchanan is an anti-semite he manages to stay on MSNBC as a conservative commentator years after Michael Savage was fired for homophobia. Michael Savage is almost a moderate by comparison. Savage apologized for his homophobic statements, Pat Buchanan doesn't really apologize for much of anything. If you want to start an argument, quote Michael Savage, Pat Robertson, or Pat Buchanan in a conversation in mixed company. Here is Pat arguing with Al Sharpton: (incidentally, if you want some big laughs, google "Al Sharpton F.B.I informant") The last big Buchanan controversy involved his sounding far too sympathetic to Anders Breivik, the mass-shooter in Norway, with regards to the influx of Muslims into Europe. His alleged Hitler fetish isn't particularly evident in his new book. He mentions Hitler only briefly, noting that while Hitler disdained Christianity, he regarded religiosity necessary for the survival of a nation. Pat Buchanan likes Christianity, and sees the decline of it's influence in an increasingly secularized America as instrumental in the nation's decline. He notes that "Republican courtship of the Jewish vote has failed" and being that he doesn't like liberalism, he is in that sense anti-semitic. Buchanan is very quick to point out the role of Jewish feminists in the pro-choice movement, for example. Buchanan doesn't get into holocaust denial or Jewish conspiracy theories in this particular book. What he does is spends pages and pages lamenting what he sees as the fall of western civilization and in particular, the United States, and he blames liberalism, multiculturalism, and secularism. That's more or less all he's doing in this particular work. Many are likely to feel the book is racist, however, he seems as concerned about things like the decline in U.S church attendance as any particular race issue. If you're looking to this book for hardcore hate speech you're going to be very disappointed. However, here's a nice little Buchanan quote to throw out at the Q and A segment of a Judith Butler lecture-"The contention that men and women are equal is found in feminist ideology and not human nature." Don't get me wrong though. I don't believe that this book is irrelevant at all. I think this book should be widely read. Buchanan gathered together way too much valuable statistical information for this book to be ignored. There is a section on the issue of food stamps where Buchanan likens dependency on government assistance to narcotics dependancy. Ironically though, Buchanan mentions the issue of food stamps being used to purchase junk food, but he somehow missed the problem that drug tests are not required to receive food stamps, and people trade food stamps for drugs, alcohol or money to gamble with. The actual problems with the food stamp program is likely much worse then Pat Buchanan claims it is. That our government doesn't do drug testing on people receiving food stamps and gaining government assistance is insanity to me. Reading Buchanan has convinced me without question that Ivy League schools have discriminatory admissions practices against Evangelicals and Mormons. I'm sure that is absolutely true and that is also insanity to me. That's the kind of point Buchanan brings up that should be taken absolutely seriously. He'll disavow you of the belief that Europe is without a far right or serious immigration issues. There are some very intriguing details about the expulsions of Gypsies in recent years from what are generally perceived to be progressive European nations like France. France is not the progressive utopia of tolerance that leftists and people that call themselves "artists" think it is. 18,000 is a lot of Gypsies. That's the kind of information that Buchanan is very good at digging up. He's not a dumb man. It's just that concepts of equality that many people have he does not.