Geoff Wisner

The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization

by Patrick J. Buchanan. St. Martin's Press, 2002. 308 pages.

The main idea of The Death of the West is well summarized in its title and subtitle. America and Europe lost their moral compass in the '60s, Buchanan believes, when many people began to believe that Vietnam and apartheid were more important moral issues than, say, drug use and homosexuality. Since then we've been wallowing in self-indulgence and consumerism.

Perhaps the most important result of this is that we have fewer children. Meanwhile women in the developing world are having children at a furious rate, and will soon overwhelm our borders and destroy our Western countries -- or at least turn them into multiethnic, multilingual societies, which for Buchanan amounts to the same thing. Buchanan is a fan of the good old nation-state and sees threats to it from two directions: breakup into smaller territories due to ethnic strife, as in the former Yugoslavia, and consolidation into "socialist superstates," as in the European Union.

What should we do to save ourselves? The main thing, says Buchanan, is for American and European women -- the white women, anyway -- to end their selfish preoccupation with careers and Cuisinarts and have as many children as possible. Despite his attempts to run for president as a Republican, Buchanan is not really a Republican at heart -- if he ever was. While he believes that the Democratic Party has sold out to the feminists, he thinks the Republicans have sold out to the corporations (no argument there). He is not a conservative but a reactionary: that is, he sees little that is worth conserving in present-day America but would plainly like to return to an era of more traditional values. What kind of values? Well, when he's discussing the kind of society he approves of, his benchmarks are a) the 1950s and b) the Old Testament.

The Death of the West is well written, and to his credit Buchanan gives plenty of room to voices on the left. How he does it is another matter. Sometimes he highlights the most extreme statements he can find (such as Susan Sontag's long-retracted remark that white people are the cancer of the world). Sometimes he caricatures or oversimplifies the positions of his opponents. (People don't support Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, for instance, because they're members of minorities -- plenty of other members of minorities are rotting in jail with no fuss made on their behalf -- but because there's considerable doubt about their guilt.)

At other times he makes no attempt to disprove what his opponents say but simply argues that it's better for society not to believe it. Was Columbus a murderous slaver? Well, maybe, but we should make sure that students are protected from this information: not just elementary school students, apparently, but high school and college students as well.

In the same vein, he does not dispute the contention that women may be happier when they are not under heavy social pressure to marry early, have numerous children, maintain a traditional '50s-style home, and sacrifice career and other interests. His point is that the pursuit of happiness is not a good thing, as the founding fathers believed, but the mark of a decadent society.

The Death of the West would be a fairly quick read except for the mental arguments you may find yourself having along the way. For instance:

"Why should sadness or melancholy ... have crept into the heart of Americans?" Buchanan asks on page 1, referring to the Clinton years. "Were these not ... the best of times in America, with the lowest unemployment and inflation in thirty years, crime rates falling, and incomes soaring?" Well, I don't know about you, but I feel a lot more melancholy now than I did then.

"Suddenly, we awoke to the realization that among our millions of foreign-born ... tens of thousands are loyal to regimes with which we could be at war" (p. 2). Uh-huh. So we should worry about harboring people from countries with which we might be at war at some point in the future.

"Millions have begun to feel like strangers in their own land.... They see old holidays disappear and old heroes degraded.... They watch as books they cherished disappear from the schools they attended, to be replaced by authors and titles they never heard of" (p. 5). Isn't it part of a good education and a developing culture to be exposed to authors and titles you never heard of? Should students continue reading Edith Wharton and Joseph Hergesheimer (once considered a great American writer) generation after generation, and not Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, or V.S. Naipaul?

"From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, the great Western nations colonized most of the world.... The reels of history are now running in reverse." But why did the Western nations succeed in colonizing the rest of the world? Not because they had the biggest population. Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel argues that it's because Western societies developed agriculture and technology -- including weapons technology -- earlier, due to a physical environment that included more plants suitable for cultivation and more animals suitable for domestication. (Despite attempts to do so, the zebra cannot be domesticated.)

"Seeing Americans bow to its will, the Supreme Court became supremely confident in its coup," Buchanan writes on page 189. What's this? Does even Buchanan believe that the Supreme Court went too far when it installed George W. Bush as president despite the results of the popular vote and some very dubious electoral maneuvers in Florida? No, wait. The coup he's talking about dates back fifty years, when the Supreme Court started enforcing the separation of church and state by, for instance, banning religious instruction in public schools. Buchanan believes that despite being packed with Reagan and Bush appointees, the Supreme Court is actually too liberal.

"Jacques Barzun suggests that the sixties generation simply picked up where the twenties generation left off. The era of sex, booze, and jazz led naturally to the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll." The difference, says Buchanan, is that although the twenties generation elected Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover in Republican landslides, the sixties generation "hated America." So why was Richard Nixon elected in 1968 and again in 1972?

"White males are the victims of quotas, affirmative action, set-asides, and reverse discrimination" (p. 222). Having been a white male for over forty years, I've yet to see any evidence of this. On the other hand, I've seen plenty of examples of discrimination against women, immigrants, and people of color.

"For two decades, Republicans have touted the 'supply-side' benefits of cuts in marginal tax rates. They have been proven right" (p. 233). Really? Why wasn't I notified?

Buchanan also believes that the Frankfurt School of political thinkers had a major role in undermining American culture. You know, the Frankfurt School: Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse...?

I could go on ... but here's one final note.

What would happen if Buchanan had his way: if we shut down the borders, instilled our children with a good dose of old-fashioned flag-waving patriotism, and convinced white women to have enormous families once again? What would Buchanan's ideal America look like -- a place where "strong faith and big families go hand in hand"?

"Among white Americans today," he writes, "it is no surprise where the highest birthrate may be found -- in Utah." And that, my friends, is why Utah represents what is best in America, why it leads the country in economic productivity and technological innovation, and why tourists from around the world flock to Salt Lake City to enjoy its architectural monuments, its sophisticated cuisine, its world-class art museums, and its dynamic theater and literary scene.



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Geoff Wisner The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization by Patrick J. Buchanan. St. Martin's Press, 2002. 308 pages. The main idea of The Death of the West is well summarized in its title and subtitle. America and Europe lost their moral compass in the '60s, Buchanan believes, when many people began to believe that Vietnam and apartheid were more important moral issues than, say, drug use and homosexuality. Since then we've been wallowing in self-indulgence and consumerism. Perhaps the most important result of this is that we have fewer children. Meanwhile women in the developing world are having children at a furious rate, and will soon overwhelm our borders and destroy our Western countries -- or at least turn them into multiethnic, multilingual societies, which for Buchanan amounts to the same thing. Buchanan is a fan of the good old nation-state and sees threats to it from two directions: breakup into smaller territories due to ethnic strife, as in the former Yugoslavia, and consolidation into "socialist superstates," as in the European Union. What should we do to save ourselves? The main thing, says Buchanan, is for American and European women -- the white women, anyway -- to end their selfish preoccupation with careers and Cuisinarts and have as many children as possible. Despite his attempts to run for president as a Republican, Buchanan is not really a Republican at heart -- if he ever was. While he believes that the Democratic Party has sold out to the feminists, he thinks the Republicans have sold out to the corporations (no argument there). He is not a conservative but a reactionary: that is, he sees little that is worth conserving in present-day America but would plainly like to return to an era of more traditional values. What kind of values? Well, when he's discussing the kind of society he approves of, his benchmarks are a) the 1950s and b) the Old Testament. The Death of the West is well written, and to his credit Buchanan gives plenty of room to voices on the left. How he does it is another matter. Sometimes he highlights the most extreme statements he can find (such as Susan Sontag's long-retracted remark that white people are the cancer of the world). Sometimes he caricatures or oversimplifies the positions of his opponents. (People don't support Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, for instance, because they're members of minorities -- plenty of other members of minorities are rotting in jail with no fuss made on their behalf -- but because there's considerable doubt about their guilt.) At other times he makes no attempt to disprove what his opponents say but simply argues that it's better for society not to believe it. Was Columbus a murderous slaver? Well, maybe, but we should make sure that students are protected from this information: not just elementary school students, apparently, but high school and college students as well. In the same vein, he does not dispute the contention that women may be happier when they are not under heavy social pressure to marry early, have numerous children, maintain a traditional '50s-style home, and sacrifice career and other interests. His point is that the pursuit of happiness is not a good thing, as the founding fathers believed, but the mark of a decadent society. The Death of the West would be a fairly quick read except for the mental arguments you may find yourself having along the way. For instance: "Why should sadness or melancholy ... have crept into the heart of Americans?" Buchanan asks on page 1, referring to the Clinton years. "Were these not ... the best of times in America, with the lowest unemployment and inflation in thirty years, crime rates falling, and incomes soaring?" Well, I don't know about you, but I feel a lot more melancholy now than I did then. "Suddenly, we awoke to the realization that among our millions of foreign-born ... tens of thousands are loyal to regimes with which we could be at war" (p. 2). Uh-huh. So we should worry about harboring people from countries with which we might be at war at some point in the future. "Millions have begun to feel like strangers in their own land.... They see old holidays disappear and old heroes degraded.... They watch as books they cherished disappear from the schools they attended, to be replaced by authors and titles they never heard of" (p. 5). Isn't it part of a good education and a developing culture to be exposed to authors and titles you never heard of? Should students continue reading Edith Wharton and Joseph Hergesheimer (once considered a great American writer) generation after generation, and not Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, or V.S. Naipaul? "From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, the great Western nations colonized most of the world.... The reels of history are now running in reverse." But why did the Western nations succeed in colonizing the rest of the world? Not because they had the biggest population. Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel argues that it's because Western societies developed agriculture and technology -- including weapons technology -- earlier, due to a physical environment that included more plants suitable for cultivation and more animals suitable for domestication. (Despite attempts to do so, the zebra cannot be domesticated.) "Seeing Americans bow to its will, the Supreme Court became supremely confident in its coup," Buchanan writes on page 189. What's this? Does even Buchanan believe that the Supreme Court went too far when it installed George W. Bush as president despite the results of the popular vote and some very dubious electoral maneuvers in Florida? No, wait. The coup he's talking about dates back fifty years, when the Supreme Court started enforcing the separation of church and state by, for instance, banning religious instruction in public schools. Buchanan believes that despite being packed with Reagan and Bush appointees, the Supreme Court is actually too liberal. "Jacques Barzun suggests that the sixties generation simply picked up where the twenties generation left off. The era of sex, booze, and jazz led naturally to the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll." The difference, says Buchanan, is that although the twenties generation elected Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover in Republican landslides, the sixties generation "hated America." So why was Richard Nixon elected in 1968 and again in 1972? "White males are the victims of quotas, affirmative action, set-asides, and reverse discrimination" (p. 222). Having been a white male for over forty years, I've yet to see any evidence of this. On the other hand, I've seen plenty of examples of discrimination against women, immigrants, and people of color. "For two decades, Republicans have touted the 'supply-side' benefits of cuts in marginal tax rates. They have been proven right" (p. 233). Really? Why wasn't I notified? Buchanan also believes that the Frankfurt School of political thinkers had a major role in undermining American culture. You know, the Frankfurt School: Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse...? I could go on ... but here's one final note. What would happen if Buchanan had his way: if we shut down the borders, instilled our children with a good dose of old-fashioned flag-waving patriotism, and convinced white women to have enormous families once again? What would Buchanan's ideal America look like -- a place where "strong faith and big families go hand in hand"? "Among white Americans today," he writes, "it is no surprise where the highest birthrate may be found -- in Utah." And that, my friends, is why Utah represents what is best in America, why it leads the country in economic productivity and technological innovation, and why tourists from around the world flock to Salt Lake City to enjoy its architectural monuments, its sophisticated cuisine, its world-class art museums, and its dynamic theater and literary scene.