Their Country

Pat Buchanan must have decided that his public profile was getting a little low, so he launched a cry for attention in the form of an outrageous essay on "Traditional Americans" at WorldNetDaily.

Buchanan is useful because he is rational enough to have what one might call a political position and has sufficient grasp of the language to explain it, while being simultaneously crazy enough to empathize with nutjob protesters who think Obama it trying to turn America into North Korea.

He says things like,

In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.

They, of course, are conservative white men, or, as Buchanan prefers to call them, "traditional Americans." You can think this passage is a silly amalgam of unrelated half-truths, but it is, I think, what millions of Americans believe. If you can't get your mind around this viewpoint, you can't understand American politics, and you will have hard time competing for the votes of the very many people who are at least a little sympathetic to this rant.

To me the most glaring folly of Buchanan's view is the way he puts corporate bigwigs and assembly line workers into the same category (traditional Americans), ignoring the obvious difference in their interests. He writes the labor movement out of his American history. But he is dead on about the ever-falling status of conservative white men in America. The line from this essay that has gotten the most attention is,

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

This falls into the category of "offensive but nonetheless true." America did used to belong to conservative white men, and theyare are losing influence. A majority of white men voted for Bob Dole over Bill Clinton and John McCain over Barack Obama, but it didn't matter. They no longer get to decide, as they did for 175 years, who will lead the country. Japanese-Americans and Indian-Americans are richer than whites are, because they have more fully embraced the new technologies that now generate so much of our wealth. I think we are on the verge of recognizing gay marriage and otherwise accepting gay people as full citizens, despite the fulminations of conservative leaders and the distaste of "traditional Americans."

None of which is to say that conservative white men don't still have enormous influence in America, and don't rank in the general scheme of things above lots of other groups. But their day is passing. Of course they don't like it. Who does like being outvoted, or being told that his beliefs are old-fashioned and no longer relevant?

But, hey, too bad.

The world changes, and those who cling to the past get left behind. If there are old things you think are important, work to preserve them, and live them in your own way. But leave the rest of us alone to enjoy the wondrous prospect of a future that is more equal, more free, and more open to the ideas and actions of all people, traditional or otherwise.