Buchanan’s Day of Reckoning, Part II
by J. R. Nyquist
Weekly Column Published: 04.25.2008
Print“There is no greater sorrow on earth, than the loss of one’s native land.” -- Euripides
The key to understanding Patrick Buchanan’s message is found in his patriotism, which differs from that of President Bush. Buchanan’s argument is simple: the nation’s leaders have embraced ideals at variance with American national interests. According to Buchanan,
patriotism has been overtaken by ideology which has led us astray. In fact, the current administration’s foreign policy derives more from ideology than it does from patriotism.
Quoting extensively from President Bush’s speeches, Buchanan proves that Bush worships at the altar of democracy. “Ideology is modernity’s golden calf,” says Buchanan, and democracy is the great idol itself. It is worshipped in the Temple of Egalitarianism, where many socialists and liberals find their religious calling. And today, many so-called conservatives are found worshipping there as well. The Declaration of Independence begins with the assertion that “all men are created equal.” But this is a fiction, not to be taken seriously. The Founding Fathers were not serious. Russell Kirk once pointed out, “The Declaration of 1776 is simply a declaration – and a highly successful piece of immediate political propaganda.” According to Buchanan, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address also used egalitarian sentiment “to ennoble the Union’s war to crush the South’s fight for independence….” Other presidents have relied on democratic or egalitarian slogans in wartime, such as Wilson in World War I and Roosevelt in World War II. The past use of ideological slogans to justify a nation’s cause should not obscure the real reasons wars have been fought. National survival and national interest, the bedrock of national patriotism, have nothing to do with ideology. Buchanan quotes from Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not … to destroy slavery.” The slogan of “equality for all men” should never be taken seriously.
If we look at President Bush’s Inaugural Address of 2001, we will find the root errors of his presidency. He does not realize that the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address were war propaganda. He believes these texts exemplify a messianic legacy passed down to him. According to Bush, America’s story is “of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old….” For President Bush, America is an ideological construct, and the grandest element in this construction is that “everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born.” This is not the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. This is not the Constitution of the United States. And it certainly is not grounds for waging a global war. “Our democratic faith,” Bush claims, “is more than the creed of our country.” Yet democracy is not a creed at all, but an element in a larger system of checks and balances. President Bush has committed a fundamental error of political philosophy. And he has done much worse: “America has never been united by blood or birth or soil,” he said. “We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens.” It is one thing to pronounce such high-sounding words, to be momentarily carried away by them. It is another thing to build policy upon them.
For Pat Buchanan America is not a creedal nation. It is blood, soil and tradition. For him, freedom is not some metaphysical notion. It is an inheritance from forefathers. Buchanan believes that the advent of ideology in America, coinciding with the collapse of traditional American folkways, has had a devastating effect. “Ideology has one foot grounded in reality,” he writes, “but the other is ever on quicksand.” Ideology leads men to ignore evidence that contradicts established dogma. “They stay steadfast in the faith even when failure is apparent.” In the face of ideology and its disintegrative effects, Buchanan advocates a solid grounding in Christian faith, English culture and civilization. He denies “the innate equality of all cultures, civilizations, languages, and faiths….” If America expects to survive it must discover its national roots. It must not be ashamed to embrace those roots, to the exclusion of other traditions.
Buchanan is not an egalitarian, and he is not especially sensitive to minority interests. His politically incorrect statements are reminiscent of John Adams, who spurned the democratic mob. Adams once stated, “That all men are born to equal rights is clear.” It is not clear, he added, “that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life….” Such a doctrine, he said, “is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by … Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French Revolution.” Buchanan goes further, asserting that all cultures are not created equal; and therefore, American culture should be defended. It is a bold statement, diametrically opposed to the prevailing multiculturalism and moral relativism of the hour.
It seems, however, that egalitarian ideology must run its course. John Adams once wrote: “Democracy [in the egalitarian sense] … wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” We should not be naïve about the damage done by egalitarian leveling. When Buchanan says we are headed for a “day of reckoning,” he is not mistaken. Egalitarianism is far from harmless. It has ravaged the interior landscape of modern life. And judging by the degree of inward destruction, the nations should tremble. What is bound to happen, in an age of mass destruction weapons, is terrible indeed.
Today’s American patriotism has been replaced, to a lamentable extent, by egalitarian ideology. And this is a great tragedy. Egalitarianism is nihilism – in morality and politics. It erodes our economy as thoroughly as it erodes our morality. Universal equality cannot be the fundamental basis for civilized order. Edmund Burke said that happiness could be found “in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of a laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality, which it never can remove; and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in a humble state, as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy.” George W. Bush is currently engaged in a futile attempt to plant democracy in the bosom of a despotic Arab culture. In the process, he is disorganizing and destabilizing the very country he proposes to save. Furthermore, his ideology neglects America’s national limitations.
Buchanan is an American nationalist. I may not agree with his policy prescriptions; but one thing I must agree with: that enlightened patriotism should be the basis of national policy. Internationalism and the cult of globalization should not take precedent. Men are tribal animals, and there is no such thing as a “citizen of the world.” Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with nations. These are the building blocks of civilization – for good or ill. Consequently, there will always be wars and ethnic conflicts. There is no way to engineer permanent peace. Global order is an empty slogan while national independence and national survival are imperatives. In the United States my generation grew up pledging allegiance to the flag, and to the Republic for which it stands – not to “global order” or “Arab democracy.” In a fundamental sense, Buchanan is calling us to our allegiance. He warns that if America “is an ideological nation grounded no deeper than in the sandy soil of abstract ideas, she will not survive.” He rightly asserts that a true nation “is held together not by any political creed but by patriotism.”
Copyright © 2008 Jeffrey R. Nyquist
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