End of America

Buchanan Predicting American Third World

I don't entirely disagree with Pat Buchanan when he writes:

"America is coming apart, decomposing, and...the likelihood of her survival as one nation...is improbable -- and impossible if America continues on her current course," declares Pat Buchanan. "For we are on a path to national suicide."

But I disagree with almost all of his reasons. For instance, Buchanan says that (paraphrasing) the brown people are destroying America's southwest and we'll be a third world nation by 2050. This is utter bullshit and a topic for another post.

Here's what I agree with him about:

• Free trade is shipping jobs, factories and technology to China and plunging America into permanent dependency and unpayable debt. One of every six U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished under Bush

• Pax Americana, the era of U.S. global dominance, is over.

• Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a product of hubris and of ideology, a secular religion of “democratism,” to which Bush was converted in the days following 9/11

• As U.S. wages are stagnant, corporate CEOs are raking in rising pay and benefits 400 to 500 times that of their workers

• To avert a second Cold War, the United States should “get out of Russia’s space and get out of Russia’s face,” and shut down all U.S. bases on the soil of the former Soviet Union

And I half-agree with this (I disagree with the second half):

• To end the trade deficits and save the dollar, Buchanan urges a Hamiltonian solution: a 20% Border Equity Tax on imports, with the $500 billion raised to be used to end taxation on American producers

The end of America is something I've been hinting at in my recent essays for the Huffington Post. Naomi Wolf wrote a stunning book which Buchanan ought to read immediately.