SUI CI D E

of a
SUPE R P OWE R

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 To the Old Right

thomas dunne books.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

suicide of a superpower. Copyright © 2011 by Patrick J. Buchanan. All rights

reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address
St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Buchanan, Patrick J. (Patrick Joseph), 1938–

Suicide of a superpower : will America survive to 2025? / Patrick J.
Buchanan.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-312-57997-5
1. United States—Civilization—21st century. 2. United States—Politics
and government—21st century. 3. United States—Social conditions—21st
century. 4. United States—Religion—21st century. 5. Christianity—
United States—21st century. I. Title.
E169.12.B7818 2011
973.932—dc23 2011024811

First Edition: October 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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 Introduction

D I S I N T E G RATI N G NATI ON
Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.1
—Kahlil Gibran, 1934
The Garden of the Prophet

I think the country is coming apart . . . 2

—George Kennan, 2000

The centrifugal forces have become dominant.3

—Lee Hamilton, 2010

W
ill the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?” was the title of a
1970 essay by Russian dissident Andrei Amalrik. Forced
into exile, Amalrik died in a car crash in Spain in 1980. Few
had taken him seriously. Yet, nine years after his death, the Soviet Em-
pire had collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated.
What has this to do with us? More than we might imagine.
As did the Soviet Union, America commands an empire of allies, bases,
and troops. America, too, is engaged in a seemingly endless war in Af-
ghanistan. America, too, is an ideological nation. America, too, is a land
of many races, tribes, cultures, creeds, and languages. America, too, has
reached imperial overstretch.
Many will reflexively reject the comparison. Where the Soviet empire
was a prison house of nations whose Marxist ideology had been imposed
by force and terror, America is a democracy whose allies have freely sought
her protection.

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 2 SUICIDE OF A SUPERPOWER

Yet the similarities should alarm us.

For ethnonationalism, the force that tore the Soviet Union apart, that
relentless drive of peoples to separate that translates into tribalism within
a country, is not only pulling our world apart, it is tearing at the seams
of American union. And the ideals that once defined us as a people—
freedom, equality, democracy—have been corrupted into concepts more
reminiscent of Marxist revolutions than of the American Revolution.
For what is a nation?
Is it not a people of a common ancestry, culture, and language who
worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history,
celebrate the same holidays, share the same music, poetry, art, literature,
held together, in Lincoln’s words, by “bonds of affection. . . . mystic chords
of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every
living heart and hearth-stone”?
If that is what a nation is, can we truly say America is still a nation?
The European and Christian core of our country is shrinking. The
birthrate of our native born has been below replacement level for decades.
By 2020, deaths among white Americans will exceed births, while mass
immigration is altering forever the face of America. The Atlantic titled its
January/February 2009 cover story “The End of White America?” News-
week’s 2009 Easter cover was “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.”
The statistics bear these stories out.
And for the United States, as for any nation, the death of its cradle
faith brings social disintegration, an end to moral community, and culture
war. Meanwhile, globalization dissolves the bonds of economic depen-
dency that held us together as a people, as the cacophony of multicultur-
alism drowns out the old culture.
Is America coming apart? This book’s answer is yes.
Our nation is disintegrating, ethnically, culturally, morally, politically.
Not only do we not love one another, as Christ’s teaching commands, we
seem to detest each other in ways as deep as Southerners detested a mer-
cantile North and Northerners detested an agrarian slaveholding South.

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 I N T R O D U C T I O N : D I S I N T E G R AT I N G N AT I O N 3

Half of America views abortion as the killing of the unborn meriting

the wrath of God. The other half regards right-to-life as a reactionary
movement and repressive ideology. In 2009, George Tiller became the
fourth abortionist to be assassinated, while James Pouillon was shot and
killed outside Owosso High School in Michigan while staging an anti-
abortion protest.4 Advocates of gay marriage see adversaries as homo-
phobic bigots; opponents see advocates as seeking to elevate unnatural
acts to the moral and legal status of sacred matrimony. Where one half
of America sees progress, the other half sees decadence. The common
moral ground on which we once stood united is gone.
Christmas and Easter, the holy days of Christendom, once united us
in joy. Now we fight over whether they may be mentioned in public
schools. Half of America regards her history as glorious; the other half
reviles it as racist. Old heroes like Columbus and Robert E. Lee may be
replaced on calendars by Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, but the
old holidays and heroes endure as the new put down only the shallowest
of roots in middle America. Mexican Americans may celebrate Cinco de
Mayo, but to most Americans that was the date of a skirmish in a war
about which they know little and care nothing, that took place in the year
of the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil: Antietam.
Our twenty-four-hour cable news networks have chosen sides in the
culture and political wars. Even our music seems designed to divide us.
Where we once had classical, pop, country and western, and jazz, now we
have countless varieties tailored to separate and exclude races, genera-
tions, and ethnic groups.
We are seceding from one another not only on matters of morality,
politics, and culture, but race. When President Obama was inaugurated,
there was talk and hope of a new “postracial America.” But three weeks
into Obama’s administration, Attorney General Eric Holder began Black
History Month by calling us a “nation of cowards” for not discussing the
subject of race more openly. Conservatives who opposed Justice Sonia
Sotomayor and stood with Sergeant James Crowley in his confrontation

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 4 SUICIDE OF A SUPERPOWER

with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. were denounced as rac-
ists. They threw the same ugly word back in the face of their accusers
and Barack Obama.
In August 2009, when crowds turned out for town hall meetings to op-
pose health care reform, Majority Leader Harry Reid called them “evil-
mongers” and Speaker Nancy Pelosi called their conduct “un-American.”5
Yet, by year’s end, Americans had a more favorable view of the Tea Party
than of the Democratic Party.
When Congressman Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at Obama during
an address to a joint session of Congress, his apology was accepted by the
president, but that did not satisfy the Congressional Black Caucus, which
demanded a roll call vote to rub Wilson’s nose in it. One Black Caucus
member, Congressman Hank Johnson, said Wilson had “instigated” racism
and must be rebuked or we will “have folks putting on white hoods and
white robes again, riding through the countryside intimidating people.”6
In “Inside the Mind of Joe Wilson,” Rich Benjamin, the author of
Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America,
said that the congressman’s outburst “exposes a virulent racism and para-
noia against undocumented workers.”7 Jimmy Carter said Wilson’s shout
had been “based on racism. . . . There is an inherent feeling among many
in this country that an African-American should not be president.”8
Carter returned to his theme the following day:

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated

animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact
that he is a black man, that he’s African-American. . . .
I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way,
and I’ve seen the rest of the country that shares the South’s at-
titude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-
Americans.9

How did Carter know what was in Joe Wilson’s heart?

How did Carter know an “overwhelming portion” of those who had

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 I N T R O D U C T I O N : D I S I N T E G R AT I N G N AT I O N 5

turned out for town hall meetings were motivated by “the fact that
[Obama] is a black man, that he’s African-American”?
That same week in September 2009, Kanye West stomped onto the
stage at the MTV Music Video Awards to grab the microphone from
country music singer Taylor Swift and tell her she did not deserve her best
female video award for “You Belong with Me.” And that the award should
have gone to Beyoncé.10
Race consciousness is rising. Indeed, the first year of the Obama pres-
idency seems to have radicalized much of white America. Ron Brown-
stein wrote of a startling survey done by the National Journal:

Whites are not only more anxious, but also more alienated.
Big majorities of whites say the past year’s turmoil has dimin-
ished their confidence in government, corporations, and the
financial industry. . . . Asked which institution they trust most
to make economic decisions in their interest, a plurality of
whites older than 30 pick “none”—a grim statement.11

By fall 2009, a majority told a USA Network polling fi rm that we

Americans are “too divided” over race and religion, while three-fourths
said we are “too divided” over politics and economics. A majority believe
our divisions have worsened in the new century. Only one in four saw
racial and religious diversity as a national strength.12
Consider but a few of the issues over which we have fought, often for
decades: prayer and the Ten Commandments in public schools, crosses in
public parks, evolution, the death penalty, abortion, assisted suicide, em-
bryonic stem cell research, affirmative action, quotas, busing, the Confed-
erate battle flag, the Duke rape case, letting Terri Schiavo die, amnesty,
torture, the war in Iraq. Now it is “death panels,” global warming, gay
marriage, socialism, history books, and whether Barack Obama is really
a citizen of the United States. If a married couple fought as bitterly as we
Americans do over such basic beliefs, the couple would have divorced
and gone their separate ways long ago.

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 6 SUICIDE OF A SUPERPOWER

The crudeness of our public debate is matched by its incivility. In

politics it is insufficient to defeat an opponent. One must demonize, dis-
grace, and destroy him. The tradition of political foes being social friends
when the sun goes down, maintained by Speaker of the House Sam
Rayburn when he invited Republicans to his “Board of Education” meet-
ings in his office after hours, is passé. Today, we criminalize politics and
go for the throat.
In January 2011, when a crazed gunman nursing a grudge against
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shot her in Tucson, killed six oth-
ers, including a nine-year-old girl and a federal judge, and wounded a
dozen more, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos instantly tweeted: “Mission
Accomplished, Sarah Palin.”13 This began a week-long campaign to in-
dict Palin and conservative commentators as moral accomplices who had
set the table for mass murder by having created a “climate of hate” in
which the killer acted. Rather than bring the nation together in mourn-
ing, the massacre drove a new wedge between us.
In February, when Governor Scott Walker proposed requiring
Wisconsin state employees to contribute more than a pittance to their
generous health and pension benefits and restricting collective bar-
gaining to wage increases no higher than the rate of inflation, the state
capitol was invaded by scores of thousands of enraged and raucous
demonstrators. Wildcat strikes by teachers followed with Democratic
state senators fleeing to Illinois to prevent a quorum from voting on
the proposal.
Yet, it is not only the rancor of our politics pulling us apart. We have
gone through such periods before: the Truman-McCarthy era, Vietnam,
and Watergate. But those turbulent periods were followed by eras of good
feeling: Eisenhower-JFK, and the Reagan decade that saw a rebirth of
national confidence crowned in 1989 by a peaceful end to a Cold War
that had lasted a half-century.
Something is different today. The America we grew up in is gone. The
unity and common purpose we had when we could together pledge alle-
giance to a flag that stood for “one nation, under God, indivisible” is gone.

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 I N T R O D U C T I O N : D I S I N T E G R AT I N G N AT I O N 7

In America today, the secession that is taking place is a secession from one
another, a secession of the heart.
“E pluribus unum”— out of many, one—was the national motto the
men of 1776 settled upon. Today, one sees the pluribus; but where is
the unum?
“What happened to the center?” asked retired congressman Lee
Hamilton, a Democrat, as he returned to Indiana. “The question at
Gettysburg”—will America remain one nation?—is “the operative ques-
tion of today.”14
President Carter echoed Hamilton:

This country has become so polarized that it’s almost

astonishing. . . . Not only with the red and blue states . . .
President Obama suffers from the most polarized situation in
Washington that we have ever seen—even maybe than the
time of Abraham Lincoln and the initiation of the war between
the states.15

Six months after his comeback victory in 2010, Governor Jerry Brown
of California was echoing his old rival Jimmy Carter: “We are at a point of
civil discord, and I would not minimize the risk to our country and our
state. . . . We are facing . . . a regime crisis. The legitimacy of our very
democratic institutions [is] in question.”16
Barack Obama did not disagree. He had begun his presidency in what
seemed a new Era of Good Feeling, when even Fred Barnes of the Weekly
Standard christened him the “bearer of moral authority as our first African-
American president.”17 By Labor Day 2010, Obama was ruefully relating
to an audience in Wisconsin, “They talk about me like a dog.”18
This, then, is the thesis of this book. America is disintegrating. The
centrifugal forces pulling us apart are growing inexorably. What once
united us is dissolving. And this is true of Western civilization. “There is
no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism,” Theodore Roose-
velt warned the Knights of Columbus in 1915. “The one absolutely certain

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 8 SUICIDE OF A SUPERPOWER

way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its con-
tinuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of
squabbling nationalities.”19
What Roosevelt warned us against, we have become.
Meanwhile, the state is failing in its most fundamental duties. It is no
longer able to defend our borders, balance our budgets, or win our wars.
As the bonds of brotherhood are corroded, a crisis of democracy im-
pends. America is running the third consecutive deficit of 10 percent of
our gross domestic product (GDP). Unfunded liabilities of the federal
government run into the scores of trillions. By Herbert Stein’s Law, if
something cannot go on forever, it will stop. By the middle of this de-
cade, if it does not roll back the welfare-warfare state, the United States
will face monetary and fiscal collapse. Already, Standard & Poor’s has
begun the process of down-grading U.S. debt and global creditors are sig-
naling that the United States may be forced to default or float its way out
of this crisis with a Weimar-style inflation that destroys the dollar. In
2010, only a debt crisis in Greece and Ireland threatening the euro sent
panicked investors running back to the dollar.
On the news of Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga in 1777, which por-
tended the loss of the North American colonies, John Sinclair wrote to
Adam Smith in despair that Britain was headed for ruin.
“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” replied Smith.20
We are severely testing Smith’s proposition.

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