|
"International court’s attack on Israel a sign of the free world’s moral collapse"
"Pete Hegseth Is Right for the DOD"
"Why Our Constitution Secures Liberty, Not Democracy"
Woodworking and Construction Hacks
"CNN: Reporters Were Crying and Hugging in the Hallways After Learning of Matt Gaetz's AG Nomination"
"NEW: Democrat Officials Move to Steal the Senate Race in Pennsylvania, Admit to Breaking the Law"
"Pete Hegseth Is a Disruptive Choice for Secretary of Defense. That’s a Good Thing"
Katie Britt will vote with the McConnell machine
Battle for Senate leader heats up — Hit pieces coming from Thune and Cornyn.
After Trump’s Victory, There Can Be No Unity Without A Reckoning
Vivek Ramaswamy, Dark-horse Secretary of State Candidate
Megyn Kelly has a message for Democrats. Wait for the ending.
Trump to choose Tom Homan as his “Border Czar”
"Trump Shows Demography Isn’t Destiny"
"Democrats Get a Wake-Up Call about How Unpopular Their Agenda Really Is"
Live Election Map with ticker shows every winner.
Megyn Kelly Joins Trump at His Final PA Rally of 2024 and Explains Why She's Supporting Him
South Carolina Lawmaker at Trump Rally Highlights Story of 3-Year-Old Maddie Hines, Killed by Illegal Alien
GOP Demands Biden, Harris Launch Probe into Twice-Deported Illegal Alien Accused of Killing Grayson Davis
Previously-Deported Illegal Charged With Killing Arkansas Children’s Hospital Nurse in Horror DUI Crash
New Data on Migrant Crime Rates Raises Eyebrows, Alarms
Thousands of 'potentially fraudulent voter registration applications' Uncovered, Stopped in Pennsylvania
Michigan Will Count Ballot of Chinese National Charged with Voting Illegally
"It Did Occur" - Kentucky County Clerk Confirms Voting Booth 'Glitch'' Shifted Trump Votes To Kamala
Legendary Astronaut Buzz Aldrin 'wholeheartedly' Endorses Donald Trump
Liberal Icon Naomi Wolf Endorses Trump: 'He's Being More Inclusive'
(Washed Up Has Been) Singer Joni Mitchell Screams 'F*** Trump' at Hollywood Bowl
"Analysis: The Final State of the Presidential Race"
He’ll, You Pieces of Garbage
The Future of Warfare -- No more martyrdom!
"Kamala’s Inane Talking Points"
"The Harris Campaign Is Testament to the Toxicity of Woke Politics"
Easy Drywall Patch
Israel Preparing NEW Iran Strike? Iran Vows “Unimaginable” Response | Watchman Newscast
In Logansport, Indiana, Kids are Being Pushed Out of Schools After Migrants Swelled County’s Population by 30%: "Everybody else is falling behind"
Exclusive — Bernie Moreno: We Spend $110,000 Per Illegal Migrant Per Year, More than Twice What ‘the Average American Makes’
Florida County: 41 of 45 People Arrested for Looting after Hurricanes Helene and Milton are Noncitizens
Presidential race: Is a Split Ticket the only Answer?
hurricanes and heat waves are Worse
'Backbone of Iran's missile industry' destroyed by IAF strikes on Islamic Republic
Joe Rogan Experience #2219 - Donald Trump
IDF raids Hezbollah Radwan Forces underground bases, discovers massive cache of weapons
Gallant: ‘After we strike in Iran,’ the world will understand all of our training
The Atlantic Hit Piece On Trump Is A Psy-Op To Justify Post-Election Violence If Harris Loses
Six Al Jazeera journalists are Hamas, PIJ terrorists
Judge Aileen Cannon, who tossed Trump's classified docs case, on list of proposed candidates for attorney general
Iran's Assassination Program in Europe: Europe Goes Back to Sleep
Susan Olsen says Brady Bunch revival was cancelled because she’s MAGA.
Foreign Invaders crisis cost $150B in 2023, forcing some areas to cut police and fire services: report
Israel kills head of Hezbollah Intelligence.
|
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
Opinions/Editorials
See other Opinions/Editorials Articles Title: Buchanan: Is America Disintegrating?
Source:
Human Events
URL Source: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47018
Published: Oct 24, 2011
Author: Patrick J Buchanan
Post Date: 2011-10-24 13:03:44 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 946
Comments: 1
In Federalist 2, John Jay looks out at a nation of a common blood, faith, language, history, customs and culture.
"Providence," he writes, "has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion ... very similar in their manners and customs ..."
Are we still that "one united people" today? Or has America become what Klemens von Metternich called Italy: "a mere geographical expression"?
In Suicide of a Superpower, out this week, I argue that the America we grew up in is disintegrating, breaking apart along the fault lines of politics, race, ethnicity, culture and faith; that the centrifugal forces in society have now become the dominant forces.
Our politics are as poisonous as they have been in our lifetimes.
Sarah Palin was maligned as morally complicit in the murder attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Terms like "terrorists" and "hostage-takers" are routinely used on Tea Party members who one congressman said want to see blacks "hanging on a tree."
Half a century after the civil rights revolution triumphed, the terms "racist" and "racism" are in daily use. We remain, said Eric Holder in calling us a "nation of cowards," as socially segregated as ever.
"Outside the workplace, the situation is even more bleak in that there is almost no significant interaction between us. On Saturdays and Sundays, America ... does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago."
He is not altogether wrong in that. In California's prisons and among her proliferating ethnic gangs, a black-brown civil war has broken out.
Yet, by 2042, there will be 66 million black folks and 135 million Hispanics here, the latter concentrated in the states bordering Mexico.
What holds us together, then?
We are not now and will not then be "descended from common ancestors." We will consist of all the races, cultures, tribes and creeds of Earth -- a multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual stew of a nation that has never before existed, or survived. The parallels that come to mind are the Habsburg Empire that flew apart after World War I, and the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia that disintegrated after the Cold War.
No more will we all speak the same language. We will be bilingual and bi-national. Spanish radio and TV stations are already the fastest growing. In Los Angeles, half the people speak a language other than English in their own homes.
As for "professing the same religion," where 85 percent of Americans were Christians in 1990, that is down to 75 percent and plummeting. The old Christian churches -- Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran and especially Episcopalian -- are splitting, shrinking and dying.
Where three in four Catholics attended Sunday Mass in 1960, it is now one in four. One in three cradle Catholics has lost the faith. The numbers of priests and nuns are plummeting; religious orders are dying; Catholics schools are closing.
The moral consensus and moral code Christianity gave to us has collapsed. Since the great cultural-social revolution of the 1960s, there has occurred what Nietzsche called the "transvaluation of all values."
What was morally repellent -- promiscuity, homosexuality, abortion -- is now seen by perhaps half the nation as natural, normal, healthy and progressive.
Socially, too, America is breaking down.
Where out-of-wedlock births in the 1950s were rare, today, 41 percent of all American children are born out of wedlock. Among Hispanics, it is 51 percent; among blacks, 71 percent. And the correlation between the illegitimacy rate, the drug rate, the dropout rate, the crime rate and the incarceration rate is absolute.
This helps to explain the four decades of plunging test scores of American children and the quadrupling of the prison population.
And while all this is happening, the state is failing.
We cannot control our borders, win our wars or balance our budgets. In three consecutive national elections -- 2006, 2008 and 2010 -- the incumbents have been repudiated. Confidence in politics, politicians and the future of the country has never been so low in our lifetimes.
There was a time not so long ago when the nation was united on a common faith, morality, history, heroes, holidays, holy days, language and literature. Now we fight over them all.
Neocons says not to worry, the Constitution holds us together.
Does it? Do we all agree on what the First Amendment says about the freedom to pray in school and celebrate Christmas and Easter? How can we be the "one nation, under God" of the Pledge of Allegiance, or the people "endowed by their Creator" with inalienable rights, if we cannot even identify or discuss or mention that God and that Creator in the schools of America?
Do we agree on what the Ninth Amendment says about right to life? What about what the 14th Amendment says about affirmative action? What the Second Amendment says about the right to carry a concealed gun?
The new secession that is coming, Rick Perry notwithstanding, is not like the secession of 1861. It is a secession of the heart from one another.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
"This is what economic policy in the West has become--a tool of the wealthy used to enrich themselves by spreading poverty among the rest of the population." Paul Craig Roberts
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
|
