The end of the old America is tragic—but it also bears hope of renewal.
By Jack Hunter | October 20, 2011
Anyone who has met Patrick J. Buchanan in person can tell you he is generally upbeat and jovial, yet his books are rather grim: State of Emergency; The Death of the West; Day of Reckoning. In Buchanan’s defense, perhaps pessimism is the only honest outlook on politics. Perhaps it is the only proper way to look at our politics.
In his new book, Buchanan makes the case that it is—that any sober observer must admit America, in the historic sense, is over. Suicide of a Superpower delivers exactly what its title suggests, outlining how the long-dominant philosophies of liberalism, multiculturalism, egalitarianism, imperialism, and feminism, along with various other anti-Western and anti-Christian pathologies, have mortally wounded America’s traditional cultural core.
He describes what America used to be:We shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans. We spoke the same language, learned the same history, celebrated the same heroes, observed the same holy days and holidays, went to the same films, rooted for the same teams, read the same newspapers, watched the same TV shows on the same three channels, danced to the same music, ate the same foods, recited the same prayers at church, the same pledge of allegiance at school, and were taught the same truths about right and wrong, good and evil, God and country.”
And he concludes, “We were a people then. But we are not a people anymore.”