Buchanan’s Day of Reckoning, Part IV
by J. R. Nyquist
Weekly Column Published: 05.09.2008
Print“No group in recent history has more aggressively seized power in the name of its racial superiority than Western whites. The race illustrated for all time – through colonialism, slavery, white racism, Nazism – the extraordinary evil that follows when great power is joined to an atavistic sense of superiority and destiny. This is why today’s whites the world over, cannot openly have a racial identity.” – Shelby Steele
The problem with Steele’s scholarly rebuke of Western whites is, first and foremost, the suggestion that their racial identity is uniquely evil. This is because, as he says, white Europeans joined “great power to an atavistic sense of superiority and destiny.” But does Steele allow that other races, attaining the same global power and sense of destiny, may also prove dangerous? Here is her error, and the racism of her anti-racist position. If we’re going to say that all races are equal, then all are equally susceptible to the temptations of power and the delusions of destiny.
It is possible that a global power vacuum now exists in the so-called “underdeveloped world.” China has been moving into Africa, taking over the big-brother role of Europe’s imperialists. Is this a benign development? Only if you believe that the white race is uniquely evil. If non-whites are capable of atrocities (like those committed by Japan during World War II) then the ascendancy of China at the expense of Europe is nothing to celebrate. Besides, the European has become aware of his own wickedness. He is ashamed of his own history. If there is any “atavistic sense of destiny” remaining in Europe, it has been eclipsed by a desire for peace, prosperity and comfort. The formerly warlike and conquering spirit of Europe has had the stuffing kicked out of it by two world wars. And here is the point of departure for Patrick Buchanan’s next book. In the past Buchanan has written about “the death of the West.” He reminds us that Europeans have been retreating for two generations. This retreat began with the defeat of Nazi Germany and the collapse of the British Empire. Buchanan’s analysis of this retreat appears in bold-faced print on the cover of his next book: Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. It was after Hitler’s defeat that the British gave up India; the French were chased out of Indochina and Algeria; the Belgians quit the Congo; the Dutch let go of Indonesia; the Portuguese gave up Mozambique and Angola; that Rhodesia became Zimbabwe; that South Africa now suffers the political ascendancy of the ANC. The white man’s “atavistic sense of superiority and destiny” has given way to collective guilt and a remarkably low birth rate.
Here we come to what Patrick Buchanan calls “the heart of the matter.” According to Buchanan, “In democracies it is an ethnocultural core that holds the country together.” America’s core, he claims, is European. And, since all things European are in retreat – this applies to America as well. It is not simply the case, in his argument, that America is racially divided. “There is no longer a unifying culture,” he explains. “Rather, we are fighting a culture war. And the European core is shrinking.” According to Buchanan, ethnic identity is a rising concern. He calls this “the return of tribalism.” In a book titled State of Emergency Buchanan quotes Sam Francis, who was fired from the Washington Times in 1995 for asserting that the civilization of Europeans “could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people….” Francis was cast into the outer darkness of American letters as a white racist. Buchanan has remarkably avoided this fate. Instead of blundering into the ugly language of white separatism, Buchanan slyly throws up the following question: “And what is wrong with preferring your own?”
In Day of Reckoning Buchanan writes: “By 1960, 88.6 percent of our nation was of European stock and 95 percent Christian. America had never been a more united nation. African Americans had been assimilated into the Christian faith and national culture….” But then a disastrous change overtook us. The cultural revolution of the 1960s disrupted the “proper” forces of assimilation and integration. The Immigration Act of 1965 began to dissolve “the ethnocultural core” of America. At the same time, secularism displaced Christianity as the “faith of the elites.” Buchanan concludes that America is now hopelessly divided. “If we have no common faith,” he notes, “and are divided by morality and culture, and are separated by ethnicity and race, what holds us together?”
Buchanan suggests that America is no longer a “true nation” of “blood and soil, tradition and faith, history and heroes.” He suggests, instead, that America has become an artificial construct, “a nation of the mind, an ideological nation, a creedal nation, united by a belief in the new trinity: diversity, democracy, and equality.” Here he echoes Burke, whose conservative thinking emphasized the importance of natural feelings as the foundation of political institutions. If men are tribal, as Buchanan asserts, then political institutions must be based on an ethnic core. “The dilemma of those who conjured up this civil religion and creedal nation … is that it has no roots and does not touch the heart.”
I would beg to differ with Buchanan on this point. The aftermath of 9/11 was a revelation. I should quote, at this juncture, the words of an Italian writer who was living in Manhattan when the towers of the World Trade Center fell. Oriana Fallaci wrote to a friend, “When you came here, last week, I saw you amazed by the heroic efficiency and by the admirable unity with which Americans have faced this apocalypse.” She wrote that America is “a country that has a lot to teach us.” According to Fallaci, America has an “admirable capacity to unite” with “almost martial compactness.” She saw blacks and whites hugging each other, Democrats and Republicans singing “God Bless America” together. America’s power of unity comes from patriotism, she explained. “The fact is,” Fallaci sighed, “that America is a very special country, my dear. A country to really envy, yes, a country to really be jealous of. And for reasons which have nothing to do with her richness, her immense power, her military supremacy. Do you know why? Because America is a nation that arose from a need of the soul, the need for a Patria, and from the most sublime idea ever conceived in the West; the idea of Liberty married to the idea of Equality.”
This is a delicate point, because liberty and equality are not fully compatible, except in the sense of equality before the law. Is she saying that the deep feeling of Americans derives from ideology, from a specific creed? Perhaps she misunderstands in the same way Buchanan misunderstands. America is a place where certain things can happen. It is a place of freedom and opportunity. It is a space where political magic happens. It is a place where human dignity is a genuine concern of the culture and the people. Whatever errors of ideology we have made, we make them innocently. There is tremendous good will in America. The dissolution of the so-called ethnic core doesn’t necessarily spell America’s doom. There is more to this place than ethnicity. America has built its own ethnicity and sense of identity. Switzerland is arguably the most successful country in Europe. It is ethnically divided by religion, language and culture. It succeeds because of political ingenuity. This it shares with America.
It is obvious that serious ethnic divisions can lead to violence. America’s current immigration policy is probably dangerous, as Buchanan claims. It is also obvious that ethnic differences can be creatively managed. The real divide, I think, is ideological. Once you interject ideology into the mix, the racial divide can become very problematic. Buchanan was astute in quoting the words of theologian Harold O.J. Brown: “The structure of American society is being demolished brick by brick.” Serious decomposition and deconstruction is underway. Brown is describing a moral and spiritual process, not a racial process.
Buchanan would like to take America back, at least to 1965. But we cannot go back. Conservatism cannot be an exercise in collective time travel. We have to work with the present situation, and we have to use our ingenuity. America, after all, is a magical political space.
Copyright © 2008 Jeffrey R. Nyquist
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