As a public figure, Buchanan is among the prominent supporters and ideologues of paleoconservatism. This direction of American political thought advocates strict adherence to the traditional values of the conservative worldview (such as federalism, limiting authoritarian state power, fiscal discipline, loyalty to religious and family foundations) and places special emphasis on protecting the national and cultural roots of Western society. In the spirit of these views, Buchanan is wary of U.S. military and political expansion into other countries. From the very beginning of the war in Iraq, he became one of its most uncompromising critics in the right-wing camp.
In the United States, Buchanan is quite well-known. In the early 1960s, at the age of 23, he began his career at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, where he became the youngest editorial writer in the history of that newspaper. In 1965, he moved to New York, where he worked at a law firm whose partners included former U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon. He soon became one of Nixon's closest aides, as Nixon was then beginning his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. After Nixon's victory in the 1968 election, Buchanan joined the presidential staff as a political advisor and speechwriter. After Nixon's resignation in 1974, Buchanan briefly remained in the White House as a special assistant to the new president, Gerald Ford, and then quickly gained fame as a political radio and television commentator. From 1985 to 1987, he served as White House Director of Communications in the administration of Ronald Reagan, and in that capacity accompanied the president to Reykjavik for a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.
After returning to political journalism, Buchanan also made a name for himself in politics. In 1992 and 1996, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination, and in 2000 he ran for president as the Reform Party candidate, receiving nearly 450,000 votes. After that, he no longer sought any elected office, devoting himself entirely to journalistic and literary work. In 2002, he participated in founding the far-right magazine American Conservative and still serves as its editor-at-large.
Buchanan has long advocated for sharply limiting the number of immigrants from third-world countries, especially from Latin America. Already in 'The Death of the West,' he wrote that the rapid growth of the proportion of people from that region in the U.S. population poses a threat to the country's future. He continues and develops this alarmist theme in his new monograph 'State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America'.
Conquest of the USA
In 1960, about 5 million people from Asia and Latin America lived in the United States, while today their number is approaching 60 million. During this time, according to various estimates, between 10% and 20% of the residents of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands have moved to the United States. In just the last five years, over 4 million illegal immigrants have arrived in the U.S., and this is despite the fact that the level of legal immigration also remains very high. The total number of illegals is unknown to anyone, but it is at least no less than 12 million, and could be as high as 20 million.
Buchanan sees in these human flows, which primarily move across the border with Mexico, a direct analogy to the barbarian invasions of Western Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, which led to the fall of the Roman Empire. He believes that these newcomers cannot even be called immigrants. People who arrived in the United States in the past consciously left their homelands to become Americans. There were times when migration waves were very high (for example, in the first decade of the 20th century, almost 9 million people arrived in the U.S. from Europe), but virtually all of them brought people who wanted to adapt to the requirements of their new homeland. Today's migrants, on the other hand, include millions of people who do not want or are unable to fully integrate into the American sociocultural environment. As a result, they create many third-world enclaves within the United States, the number of which is constantly increasing. 'They are taking up more and more space in our house, but they are not becoming members of our common family and do not even want to become one,' writes Buchanan.
Therefore, we should now speak not of immigration, but of an invasion, the largest invasion in human history. According to the author, maintaining this trend is fraught not only with the danger of Texas and California (where residents of European origin are already outnumbered by those from Latin America) and other southwestern states seceding from the U.S., but also with the risk of irreversible destruction of the country's cultural and ethnic identity as a whole.
In the first chapter, with the characteristic title 'How Civilizations Die,' Buchanan even compares George W. Bush, who advocated for the gradual legalization of most illegals and the introduction of a temporary visa system for Latin Americans coming to work in the U.S., with the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens, who in 376 allowed the Visigoths to cross the Danube and settle within the Empire. Two years later, the Goths inflicted a terrible defeat on his troops at the Battle of Adrianople, from which the Empire could not recover. And now, Buchanan writes, America has been flooded by hordes of new barbarians.
Such is the general concept of the book. It can be formulated even more succinctly: according to Buchanan, the United States is turning into a conglomerate of many races, ethnicities, languages, and cultures, thereby losing its own essence. These processes, the book's author is confident, threaten first the Balkanization of the country and then its disintegration.
Food for Thought
Buchanan fills the book with many examples confirming his hyper-pessimistic hypothesis. He is certain that current immigration strongly stimulates the growth of crime. Those numerous newcomers who cannot achieve material well-being in the US by legal means join existing ethnic criminal groups or create new ones, which are often particularly aggressive. It is no coincidence that recent immigrants make up 30% of prisoners, although their share of the total population does not exceed 12%. Millions of adult immigrants and even more so their minor children can survive only in a criminal and semi-criminal environment that poisons the entire country. Moreover, immigrants from poor countries bring many dangerous infectious diseases into the country, and treating them has to be done at society's expense. Moreover, in America, even treatment of angina is not cheap.
The author resolutely denies the thesis of the economic necessity of immigration from poor countries. Many, including President Bush, claim that newcomers take on the work that Americans themselves do not want to do. Buchanan calls such judgments propaganda mythology. About 80% of jobs in the service sector, he writes, are held by native-born Americans, and no one has proven that they would not fill other vacancies if they were available. On the other hand, since many illegal immigrants are willing to work for minimal compensation, they drive down wages for the native population. This primarily harms poorly educated Americans, who are simply unable to perform more complex duties requiring serious professional training.
Buchanan is even more troubled by the future. If current demographic trends continue, then in 2050 the descendants of Europeans will be a minority in the US. This means that by the criterion of the origin of most of its inhabitants, the United States will turn into a third-world country. But the most dangerous thing is not even that. Demographic and social statistics unequivocally state that immigrants from different countries adapt very differently to the American way of life and the demands of the American economy. If Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese successfully engage in business and provide education for their children, then Latin Americans and African Americans as a whole lag far behind them. This means that in the current and even more so in the future 'knowledge economy,' representatives of these ethnic groups will inevitably accumulate on the lower rungs of the social ladder, and in numbers that were completely unimaginable in the past.
In 1960, when the country was just beginning the fight against racial segregation, 18 million black people lived in the US (about 10% of the population), who were then the only large minority. Many of them were denied access to good education and promising professions, which became an important factor in the growth of social tension in the mid-1960s. But then how can one not fear a future in which the number of people in clearly unfavorable socioeconomic conditions significantly exceeds one hundred million and approaches 40% of the population? We are moving, writes Buchanan, toward a society that will be far more polarized than in the mid-20th century. Buchanan is certain that this situation will generate social conflicts compared to which the turbulent events of the civil rights era will seem like a complete calm.
Opponents of immigration restrictions, Buchanan continues, convince the country that all these problems can be solved by improving school education and expanding the network of colleges and universities. From Buchanan's point of view, this is pure utopia. One can open thousands of new schools and hire tens of thousands of teachers, further burdening taxpayers, but no benefit should be expected from this. Millions of immigrant children will still lag behind in their studies, forcing teachers to spend most of their time on them and lowering the overall level of education. The only way out is to drastically reduce the total number of newcomers and change their composition. America can and should accept only those it needs, not everyone who wants to come. The opportunity to settle in the US, Buchanan insists, is a privilege that must be earned and justified.
The author blames the American political and cultural elite as a whole for their unwillingness to close current immigration flows, making no distinction between Republicans and Democrats. Both, he writes, are stricken with fear of deviating from the demands of political correctness and overcoming guilt over the racism of bygone times. Moreover, politicians cannot resist the demands of entrepreneurs interested in an influx of cheap labor, and simply wealthy people who need servants. All these 'elites,' Buchanan emphasizes, live in gated communities and send their children to expensive private schools and universities. They have no concern for the crisis of public schools, deteriorating roads, rising crime, increases in local and state taxes, and many other ills befalling the American middle class due to excessive immigration.
In terms of solving the country's main problem, which Buchanan considers to be the creeping intervention of third-world inhabitants, the front line lies not between Democrats and Republicans or conservatives and liberals, but between the 'elites' and the people, privileged groups and the middle class. In confirmation, he cites the results of a 2002 survey that showed that only 14% of 'elite' representatives agreed with the statement that maintaining the current level of immigration threatens the vital interests of the US, while a significant portion of respondents supported this position by an overwhelming 60% majority.
Buchanan places a considerable share of the blame for the current situation directly on George Bush. He writes outright that the White House is not fulfilling its constitutional duty to protect the country's borders from the invasion of foreigners. In his view, Bush and many Republican legislators do not want to stand in the way of big business, which supports the "de-Americanization" of the national labor market under the banner of economic globalization and in the interests of multinational corporations. They are also afraid of the influential Latino lobby, so as not to lose votes in future elections.
Modern American elites, writes Buchanan, have dragged the country into a demographic and sociocultural experiment that cannot be justified either by the lessons of history or by common sense. This experiment rests on a purely ideological dogma which asserts that people from any culture and social background can not only assimilate into the US with equal success, but also have an equal right to acquire American residency and citizenship. Buchanan has no doubt that future generations of Americans will have to pay dearly for this adventure.
He calls for a revision of the traditional belief that the United States not only was and is, but will remain a nation of immigrants. He warns that one should not absolutize the experience of bygone times, which in changed historical circumstances can no longer serve as a reliable guide. In the past, crests of immigration waves were always interspersed with troughs, which gave time for newcomers to assimilate and allowed society to integrate them without great social costs. In particular, the mass immigration of the early last century was first interrupted by the First World War, and then nearly stopped by the Quota Law. Its first version, which Congress adopted in 1921, limited the annual immigration level to 357,000 people, and the second, approved three years later, to 160,000 (in 1929 it was reduced to 157,000; on the whole, these restrictions remained until 1965).
But it is not only about absolute numbers. With the start of this reform, the number of arrivals from a given country could not exceed 2% of the total number of its natives living in the US according to the 1890 census. Since it was conducted before the mass migration from Southern and Eastern Europe, the lion's share of arrivals from then on would automatically be made up of residents of Britain, Ireland, and Germany. But today's ultra-intensive immigration from third-world countries would leave the country no chance to assimilate newcomers even if all of them strove to do so. However, many of them do not want that themselves, and moreover (which, in Buchanan's view, is the most dangerous), the "transnational American elites" he so dislikes neither expect nor demand it from them. Today's upper crust of American society decisively rejects the former ideal of the "melting pot" and believes that America simply must become a multicultural and multilingual country.
From the beginning of the 17th century to 1958, writes Buchanan, about 42 million people arrived on American soil, almost all from Europe (the only relatively numerous groups of Asian origin were 412,000 Chinese and 338,000 Japanese). In 2006, the total number of immigrants and their children was almost the same — at least 36 million. A simple comparison of these figures, Buchanan is convinced, shows how intolerable the current demographic situation is.
A Pessimist's Prescriptions
In the last chapter of 'State of Emergency,' Buchanan gives several recommendations, the implementation of which he considers the last chance to prevent the coming 'existential crisis' of Western and, including, American civilization. This crisis, Buchanan repeats, stems not from the actions of jihadist terrorists, but from the progressive reduction in the number of bearers of Western culture even in their own countries.
First of all, one must openly and without false shame admit, the author insists, that representatives of different peoples and ethnic groups do not have equal chances of assimilating in the US. Ethnic, racial, historical, religious, and national factors seriously affect the chances of such assimilation. Therefore, one must abandon the fantasy that America is becoming or has already become the first universal, all-human nation. Either Americans will regain genuine cultural unity, or they will lose their own country — there is no third option, Buchanan is sure.
From this admission follow the specific policy steps proposed by Buchanan. The first and main one is the immediate introduction of a moratorium on mass immigration, which should remain in effect for at least ten years. During this time, the annual number of newcomers should be kept in the range of 150–250 thousand people and in no case exceed these limits. The ten-year respite should be used for national debates on how many and what kind of immigrants America needs. Under no circumstances should illegal immigrants be given chances to eventually obtain US citizenship. The program proposed by George Bush to introduce the institution of 'guest workers' must be decisively rejected. The border with Mexico must be completely sealed (if necessary, with a continuous wall) to put an end to the most numerous flows of illegals.
Buchanan admits that this problem cannot be solved by administrative and police measures alone, so he demands reducing the attractiveness of the United States for potential immigrants. To this end, he recommends taking effective measures against hiring illegal immigrants (including penalties for employers guilty of such practices, ranging from fines to imprisonment) and closing their access to all forms of state and municipal social assistance (e.g., food stamps and housing subsidies), except for emergency medical care. He also insists on revising the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees U.S. citizenship to all children born on U.S. soil, without exception.
The author demands abolishing dual citizenship, limiting the right of legal immigrants to sponsor relatives to only spouses and minor children, and introducing rules that restrict refugee flows and facilitate the deportation of illegal immigrants caught crossing the border. Finally, he proposes deporting all non-citizens involved in serious offenses. In his view, strict enforcement of all these measures will lead to a significant reduction in the flow of new illegal immigrants, and millions of those already there will voluntarily leave the country.
In conclusion, Patrick Buchanan quotes a well-known saying by Spengler: "Optimism is cowardice." "We must not hope for luck," he writes, "but take harsh measures of self-defense. Our ancestors did not apologize to anyone for what they were and what they did, because they firmly knew that they were creating and spreading the greatest civilization on the planet, which they were obliged to protect and preserve for posterity." Most Americans, he is confident, believe this today and know that they must stop the invasion of aliens. "But do our leaders have enough foresight and will to achieve this goal?" — this phrase concludes the book.