I know that the leftier of my friends and readers eschew any sort of nationalism as the mindless stupidity of flag waving knuckledraggers. I know that many of you may equate it with militarism, jingoism, racism, imperialism, and a whole host of other ills. I certainly can’t dismiss any of that. There are worthy criticisms to be made of this country’s actions in each of those areas. But I can’t be one of those folks who looks at any weakening of the U.S. as some sort of good in and of itself. First, I just think that’s tragically simplistic. Second, unless I see a decrease in U.S. power coming with the increase in some sort of benevolent or altruistic power as a result, cheering the U.S.’s demise strikes me as a little bit evil.
Consequently, I have a surprisingly complicated relationship with Pat Buchanan. I think the guy’s a bigot. I think he’s a theocratic, misogynistic, far right catholic possible fascist of the type we’ve seen wreak havoc elsewhere in this hemisphere throughout the 20th century.
He’s also the only notable public figure talking about how the neo-liberal ideologues are selling America down the river. It’s a message that the public really should hear. It’s a message they’ve utterly rejected when it comes from folks who they otherwise see as looking down at other forms of nationalism–generally minority working class left-liberal politicians.
I usually read Buchanan and find myself nodding along until he says something scary, crazy, and kind of fascist. Sometimes, the whole article is scary, crazy, and kind of fascist. On rare occasions, though, I get the treat of just nodding along the whole way at the message. Sure, even then, his language is often overblown or too jingoistic for my taste, but the main message is sound. Such is the case in this article from mid December.
I think he hits on a fundamental and rarely discussed aspect of the reality of modern day America as his conclusion to the aforementioned article when he writes:
If they are right, we are Cassandras. If they are wrong, they are fools who sold out the greatest country in all history for a mess of potage.
I think that Pat’s complete disdain for Marxism prevents him from seeing an essential part of the picture. Some of our elites are naive. They probably genuinely believe that this will all work out to the advantage of America and her people. A portion of our elites, though, are post-nationalists. Much like the liberal and neo-liberal elites of the colonial and post-colonial third world over the last century, they identify with the international capitalist class far more than they do with their country and countrymen. My personal exposure to this kind of person comes primarily in the form of the ivy league educated elites of Latin America, who live in the revolving doors between their governments and the local subsidiaries of American, British, and Canadian corporations. For those people, this is class war pure and simple. It doesn’t really matter if their intent is derived from a desire to wage class war or a belief that the process is inevitable and that they need to do what’s necessary to come out on the right end of it.
These are the people who are turning America into a third world country.
