John Buchanan understands the true spirit of our nation and puts his finger smack on all the ways we've strayed away from that spirit. This is the first social studies volume every high school kid should read. This book is so right on it hurts. Get this book; read it; then go out there and save your nation — these United States — from those greedy insiders who have high jacked it for their own evil gains.
Phi Beta Iota: The Occupy movement in the USA that has emerged in Sep-Oct 2011 is a manifestation of the ideas in this book, and the urgent needs identified but not assimilated in 2005 and earlier.
Chuck Spinney Sends: The attached article, “Generals Open New Front in Washington,” by Pat Buchanan describes how the time honored practice of Versailles Groupthink is now closing in to circumscribe President Obama's strategic options in Afghanistan and Pakistan, much as it did to Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam.
Note how the “strategic” options for Afghanistan are boiling down to a consensus view of an either/or decision. Either a large escalation of US ground forces or an escalation of destabilizing Predator attacks, particularly in Pakistan, or a compromise on some combination of the two. In all cases, there will be a large increase in the size of the Afghan Army. That questionable enterprise is taken as a given by the emerging consensus view. If Buchanan is right about this either/or choice … Obama is being set up big time by advisors, because, as near as I can tell, Obama has no access to outside or dissenting views. There is no third or fourth way, because there is no one in the role of George Ball to just say no (who LBJ ignored much to his chagrin), and there is no one on Capital Hill with political or military smarts or the stature to shape a third, more practical alternative.Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney and Pat Buchanan on Groupthinking Apparat Moves to Finish Off Obama”
Quite fortuitously, the Strategic Studies Institute has placed in the public domain a superb monograph by Justic Kelly and Mike Brennan on ALIEN: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy (september 2009).
We were all right then, we are still right now, but unless General James Jones, USMC gets himself a deputy that is grounded in strategy & integrity, this Administration is toast, in part because there is NO DIFFERENCE among the apparatchiks that trade places within the two-party system. They ae ALL out of touch with strategy, and hence reality.
Amazon ate my earlier review, probably because they did not like all the links I included to make the point that while Patrick Buchanan is dead on target as an individual minds, there is a *huge* convergence of public opinion from left to right that boils down to this: government is broken, from war criminals in the White House to doormats in Congress abdicating their Article 1 responsibility to balance the power of the Executive.
I regret the loss of my detailed review, here are just a few of the notes from the flyleaf:
+ Insufficient focus on Cheney, but does correctly evaluate Wolfowitz as a madman.
+ Tars Bush's ideology as a “false God”as “modernity's Golden Calf.”
+ Respect Gore Vidal in citing “perpectual war for perpetual peace.”
+ Opens book with excellent discussion of the cost of lost wars and the mismantling of artificial nations (there are 177 failed states today,up from 148 in 2006 and 75 is 2005.
+ This may be the most credible and thoughtful author on the subject of treason in modern times. He explicitly accuses corporate chiefs who favor globalization and “transnationalism” with being traitors to the Republic.
+ He states that Islamic militarism is not a threat to America. I agree.
+ Pages 153-154 provide a brilliant articulation of seven reasons why China is not a threat to the US.
+ I note: “This is the epitaph for the village idiot.”
Patrick Buchanan is much more serious, much more relevant, than either Newt Gingrich or the current illiterate President of the United States (illegally, through two stolen elections), George “Bring It On” Bush.
He opens the books with quotes from Teddy Roosevelt and from Wilson that set the context perfectly: you cannot have a Nation if there is, as Alexander Hamilton warned us, a tyranny of minorities that do not buy into the proposition of citizenship and loyalty to the flag.
The author is clearly very well read and historically grounded. He noted that Nations dye when they have dying populations, disintegrating cultures, and unresisted invasions.
His most important point, across the book, is that the Mexicans are invading deliberately and in massive force, and the federal government is failing to fulfill its constitutional responsibility for protecting states from invasion. He specifically suggests, and I agree, that Bush Junior is impeachable for failing to protect (and indeed inciting) illegal immigration.
According to the author:
1) We have gone from 5 to 57 million Asians and Hispanics;
2) There is moral rot in both parties;
3) 1 in 12 of the illegal aliens is a proven criminal
4) Aliens are 12% of the population and 30% of the incarcerated;
5) US allows foreign governments, e.g. China, to refuse returns;
6) Local police are hand-cuffed and not allowed to arrest and depot illegal aliens;
7) Illegal immigrants are a major vector for disease and potential pandemics.
8) Mexico, at 6 to 1, is the primary offender, and 58% of Mexicans believe that the US Southwest belongs to them and they are simply taking it back (to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo line);
9) CORPORATIONS are demanding the importation of poverty by supporting illegal immigration; CORPORATIONS are passing on to the individual taxpayer the social, cultural, and economic costs of accepting millions of poor, uneducated illegal aliens.
10) The churches and the film industry have become propagandists for illegal immigration.
11) America has lost its Christian characters, and is now a mélange of disloyal self-serving religions of all kinds, including Wahabbism which has since the 1990's had imams preaching the murder of Americans from pulpits on American soil, to individuals NOMINALLY U.S. citizens.
12) The emergence of the Minutemen (now spreading across America, not just at the border) is reflective of the fact that illegal immigration is the “crisis of the age.”
12) Babies born in America should NOT be automatically accorded American citizenship unless one of their parents is American; nor should dual citizenship be allowed. RIGHT ON!!!!
This is a tremendous book. I respect the author very much, and believe that he merits the full support and attention of every loyal American that believes that one should speak the language of America–English–and honor the flag of America. The illegal immigrants that displayed the Mexican flag during the recent demonstrations should all be deported.
America has lost its integrity. We need a new leadership team that can protect our borders, protect our middle class, protect our economy, and protect our culture. George Bush is a much greater threat to America than Bin Laden, because he is busy selling America out to the Saudis for oil, to the Mexicans for migrant labor, and to the Colombians for drug profits.
Pat Buchanan is a bright shining light, and this book is a very important contribution to the dialog needed to save the Republic.
Buchanan–and Nader–More Mainstream than Bush-Kerry!,
September 12, 2004
Patrick J. Buchanan
Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.
The most shocking aspect of this book, in a positive “eye-opening” sense, is that Pat Buchanan seems to be more in touch with what I as a moderate Republican believe, than anyone associated with the current Bush-Cheney Administration. Although he has some extremist views that I do not agree with, notably a desire to set back attempts to achieve racial equality, on balance his focus on avoiding elective wars, on eliminating the deficit, on reducing the size of government, on restoring state rights, and on putting the Supreme Court back in its place, all strike me as more “representative” than the views of the neo-conservatives, whom he attacks with eloquence and force.
There are some gems in the book that most people will enjoy because they are not being discussed. Chief among these is that the 2004 election is about the Supreme Court, and who gets to nominate as many as five new Justices. Fully enjoyable is the author's blistering critique of the Court, and the moral cowardice of the Congress in allowing the Court to take on powers of legislative review never envisioned by the founders. The author's quote of Lincoln is especially compelling on this point.
The author is also compelling in his discussion of the role that a common faith must play in keeping democracy alive. As the US foolishly strives to demand “secular democracy” in Iraq, something of an impossibility, the author is moving and thoughtful in showing that the decline of faith (and of the family) has harmed US democracy and its prospects.
Over-all the book is a litany of ills associated with an extremist Republican party run amok, funding Chinese weapons development at the same time that it exports jobs, funds the debt of loser nations while running up our own debt, etc. The author provides several lists of poor policy decisions that provide food for thought. Most troubling is the degree to which the USA is hostage to others for 72% of its medicines, 70% of its computer equipment, etc.
This is one of the few books I have encountered that covers both economic issues–the author is blistering on how “free” trade is not free, with fullsome detail on how we need *fair* trade–and national security issues. The author clearly understands that we are not winning the war on terrorism, only minor battles, and–in a phrase that especially moved me–that you cannot defeat a faith without a faith of your own. “To defeat a faith you need a faith.” I would refer the readers to Doug Johnston's Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik as well as Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People.
Over-all, this book caused me to reflect on the reality that the two so-called “mainstream” political parties are no longer representative of America. Pat Buchanan is right–the moderate Republican Party with conservative values that I thought I was a member of has been hijacked and corrupted. At the same time, the same can be said for the Democratic Party, whose traditional values are now more ably represented by Ralph Nader. In brief, Americans are in limbo, lacking collective associations that truly represent their needs and concerns, and America is in need of a realignment of its grass-roots political organizations.
Super book, essential reading for anyone concerned about why the 2004 election is not a choice at all, only a pretense.
Estranged moderate Republican that I am, I grow more and more respectful of Patrick Buchanan. He saw this all coming. Little did we know.
Hard Truth–Left, Right, or Independent, It Is The Truth
May 29, 2002
Patrick Buchanan
Patrick Buchanan has impressed me enormously with this book. For one thing, he has his facts right. The English-speaking peoples, as Churchill called them, and the Caucasian peoples, as our Russian colleagues as well as Europe might be inclined to describe them, are not replenishing their populations. Immigrants have been a blessing to this country (my mother, for instance), but in the absence of a judicious combination of repopulation, immigrant integration, and sustained civic duty by the larger population, we become hollow and fragmented.
Most interestingly to me, Patrick Buchanan and Lee Kuan Yew, former Premier of Singapore, perhaps the most intelligent man in Asia, are in total–and I do mean total–agreement on the vital importance of the family as the foundation of civilization and continuity. I grew up in Singapore, and have extremely deep feelings of respect for Lee Kuan Yew, and what I see here is two men, as far apart as the earth and philosophy might separate them, who agree on the one core value apart from religion (it does not matter which religion, only that one respect within a religion): FAMILY. Family is the root of cultural continuity and civil sustainability, and if we allow the traditional nuclear family to enter into minority non-replenishment status, we are in fact destroying the Nation.
Patrick Buchanan speaks of how we are no longer one nation under God–or one nation, period. There is a great deal to what he says. For one thing, Mexico has reclaimed American territory all the way up to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty line, and the at least one major Republican family seems to be an active element in support of Mexico's illegal as well as legal immigration subversion of America. For another, and Joel Garreau did this in his book by this title, very intelligently, America is geographically, culturally, and economically really NINE nations in terms of geophysical and cultural separation.
The author also alludes to the growing separation between the federal government, which is agreeing to supra-national deals that hurt the states and the population at large–or refusing to sign off on deals (e.g. the Kyoto Treaty) that would actually benefit future generations. One is left with the feeling that we have three different Americas–the federal bureaucracy, the state-level authorities, and the people, and somewhere in here our methods of governance are failing to reconcile the behavior of the first two with the values of the third–in part because the people are all over the lot in terms of values, and we have lost our social cohesion.
Bottom line: he may never be President, but Patrick Buchanan speaks to the core of American values, and he must always be respected and listened to at the high table of American politics.
Gets to the very crux of our nation's ills.,September 27, 2009
