The Pulpit Bully

Books | Review of: Day of Reckoning

By NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT
December 4, 2007

Pat Buchanan likes to use a lot of Latin. Asking "Quo vadis, America?" is more impressive, he believes, than, "In which direction is America heading?" The same with "Radix omnium malorum est amor pecuniae." (The love of money is the root of all evil.) The grander the language, he suggests, the more convincing it may seem. It is an old casuist's trick, dressing the banal in unnecessary erudition the better to bamboozle the ill-educated reader.

Mr. Buchanan also summons up great figures in history in defense of his arguments. You can meet them in his new "Day of Reckoning" (Thomas Dunne Books, 294 pages, $25.95), which explores the many forces he believes are undermining American sovereignty, many unlikely voices, and not always on the side you might expect: He quotes Adam Smith, praised for being "a patriot first, a free trader second," and letters from Milton Friedman, who roundly rebukes Mr. Buchanan for abandoning the ideas of free trade. Karl Marx — whom you might have thought had outlived his usefulness to American conservatives — is also called in as a friendly witness.

This topsy-turvy approach is the modus vivendi of professional contrarians like Mr. Buchanan, the former Nixon and Reagan speechwriter turned double-dip presidential candidate turned rolling news pundit. Bold statements in colorful language are guaranteed to attract attention. And if the arguments are counterintuitive or plain off the wall, so much the better.

This, Mr. Buchanan's latest collection of radical thoughts on the state we are in and how we can alter course, is not for the narrow- minded, the predisposed, or the party loyalist. Nor, it should be said, is it for those who know too much about history, or political philosophy, or economics. The joy of reading Mr. Buchanan's simple prescriptions and proscriptions to solve thorny problems is to have your prejudices strained, your logic upturned, and your patience tested.

Mr. Buchanan bills himself as a "traditional conservative populist," which means a member of the Republican tribe, skeptical of ideologies of any sort, who believes that the old white America of the '50s is losing out to a "Third World invasion," has been inexorably and permanently divided by the "culture wars" of the 1960s, is lured into unnecessary military adventures in the name of "democracy," and has been seduced into penury by what he calls "free trade evangelists."

Like watching a prestidigitator up close, the trick is as much to see what is not being shown as what is. So Mr. Buchanan piles endless opprobrium upon the sins of "racial diversity," which he argues has replaced racism with misguided and often counterproductive tokenism, but he fails to address why an America which is not overwhelmingly white and Christian troubles him.

The same is true of the state of Israel. In all his rambling around the world's trouble spots, and in his lengthy suggestion of how to deal with the mullahs in Iran – negotiate with them — he does not ponder the prospect of an Iranian nuclear missile landing on Tel Aviv. Instead he invokes, surely disingenuously, Israel's draconian immigration policies as those America should follow to curb its own tide of illegals. "Israel is unapologetic about preserving its ethnic and religious character," he argues, so why not America?

The ideas come so thick and fast, and the sources and quotes he calls upon so perfectly fit his thesis, that they demand an incessant "But. . . but . . .but. . ." in the reader's mind. If public policy is so easy to get right, as Mr. Buchanan suggests, it is certainly strange that no president has tried to put his ideas into effect sooner.

Next year we can expect what might be called a "Lou Dobbs election," with immigration a pressing concern. As Mr. Buchanan would be quick to tell you, long before Mr. Dobbs, there was Mr. Buchanan. So how would he fix the broken borders, the existence of 20 million illegals, and the influx of 300,000 more of them every year?

By a 10-point plan. (Mr. Buchanan loves lists and sentences starting "Thirdly, …") In brief, he would: build a wall along the whole of the Mexican border between San Diego and Brownsville, Texas; stop or reduce to a trickle all legal — yes, legal — immigration; ensure the "rigorous enforcement of immigration laws against employers"; end federal and state benefits to illegals, and declare English as America's "official language." Follow this 10-step program and, he assures us, "millions of illegals will go home quietly as they did in 1954."

Oddly for a conservative, he would also "strip the Supreme Court of any right of review of the law" about English as America's only official tongue. As we see when he comes to dissing the Founding Fathers, Mr. Buchanan has little compunction about discarding ideas Jefferson and Hamilton believed about the Constitution, the nation state, and the economy.

The main thrust of "Day of Reckoning," however, is that America is on the point of losing its status as the strongest empire the world has ever seen by inappropriately adopting the role of the world's policeman, and by allowing foreigners to buy our businesses at a bargain price and undercut our workers through globalized free trade.

He calls upon Franklin Roosevelt, no less, to endorse his position that retreating behind secure borders and imposing high import duties is the only way for America to remain great. He advocates "America First" but not isolationism, which may seem a contradiction. But then, paradox is Mr. Buchanan's stock in trade.

nwapshott@nysun.com

The Pulpit Bully

Books | Review of: Day of Reckoning

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