Suicide of a Superpower By Patrick J. Buchanan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011. 488 pages.)

Abstract

Both a book of lamentation about the presumably collapsing American way
of life and a populist right-wing anti-establishment agenda of ethno-nationalist
xenophobia, euphemistically referred to as “ethno-pluralism,” author Patrick
Buchanan presents an alarmist message of doom and gloom about the fate of
his country. He adopts this “master frame,” which allows him and the current
he represents to mobilize anti-immigrant sentiments as well as political
protest in ways that limit vulnerabilities to accusations of racism or of being
antidemocratic (Rydgren 2004).1
Buchanan starts his book by asserting that this generation of Americans
is witnessing “one of the most stunning declines of a great power in the history
of the world” (p. 10). His thesis is that “America is disintegrating” and that
the “centrifugal forces pulling [it] apart are growing inexorably. What once
united us is dissolving. And this is true of Western civilization” (p. 7; my emphasis).
The explanation he offers for this is framed within the context of the
United States losing its Christian character, implying that non-Christians do
not belong there; the breakdown of society’s moral, cultural, and social fabric,
read as opposition to multiculturalism as well as to liberal values and policies;
and the dying of the people who created this nation, which is now being overwhelmed
by a rapidly increasing flow of immigrants and members of other
races and ethnicities. Having rung the alarm, whether true or false, Buchanan
proceeds in the following eleven chapters to make his case, addressing sensitive
issues of religion, race and ethnicity, demography, multiculturalism, expansive
government, values of equality, and foreign relations – all of which
he has something to say about in what appears to be some kind of an ideological
tract ...