{"id":45651,"date":"2013-06-27T04:40:37","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T03:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/national-unity\/45651\/"},"modified":"2013-06-27T04:40:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T03:40:37","slug":"national-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/national-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"National Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n


\n Pat Buchanan on National Unity<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n


\n by Ryan McMaken<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Recently
\n by Ryan McMaken: Edward
\n Snowden: Master\u00a0of\u00a0Realpolitik<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

Pat Buchanan
\n is again sounding the alarm about how immigration to the United
\n States is leading to \u201cbalkanization\u201d and will result
\n in the United States being split into \u201ctwo countries.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In an
\n interview<\/a> with talk radio host Andrea Tantaros, Buchanan complained
\n that new immigrants are not being sufficiently assimilated, and
\n Buchanan and Tantaros agreed that people aren\u2019t being taught
\n the right kind<\/i> of American history:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf
\n you indoctrinate or teach kids different views about their country
\n and how it began,\u201d Buchanan said, \u201cwhat you get is a
\n growing disintegration of the country, a fragmentation into different
\n parts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Apparently,
\n Buchanan\u2019s position is that we need to \u201cindoctrinate
\n or teach\u201d kids all the same views about the country and how
\n it began. This should be done in the name of unity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buchanan
\n received some support in this thesis of his from Barack Obama
\n last week when Obama complained<\/a>
\n that different groups in Irish society send their children to
\n different schools:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

In other
\n words, if we\u2019re not all culturally united and believing the
\n same thing. That\u2019s a bad thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s
\n hard to see a significant difference between Buchanan\u2019s lament
\n about too much variety in instruction producing disunity, and
\n Obama\u2019s condemnation of diverse schooling for encouraging
\n \u201cdivision.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This should
\n not surprise us. Pat Buchanan, while he often has many insightful
\n observations about the state of political affairs in the country,
\n is nonetheless a lifelong beltway political operative, politician,
\n and a Nixon acolyte.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a
\n man who believes that the modern nation-state should micromanage
\n demographics and cultural affairs, invade
\n foreign countries<\/a> that don\u2019t do what The U.S. government
\n says, and that the nation-state itself serves a hugely beneficial
\n role in human society. In his 2001 book The
\n Death of the West<\/a><\/i> (which I reviewed here<\/a>),
\n Buchanan approvingly quotes Jacque Barzun\u2019s claim that the
\n nation-state is \u201cthe greatest political creation of the west,\u201d
\n and that most of cultural crises in the Western world today stem
\n from insufficient loyalty to states. Buchanan then goes on to
\n criticize secession and various kinds of political decentralization.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buchanan
\n points to the 1960s as his benchmark for the high point of American
\n \u201cunity.\u201d Buchanan notes that the 1960s came as a high
\n point for the legitimacy of the American state. Following the
\n New Deal, years of WWII propaganda, and the Cold War, Americans
\n were primed by 1960 to provide the American state with virtually
\n unquestioning allegiance and loyalty. The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
\n version of history was the only<\/i> version of history being
\n taught in public schools, and even in most private schools. For
\n middle-class white people, like Pat Buchanan growing up in northern
\n Virginia in the 1950s, it probably did<\/i> seem like the United
\n States was culturally united.<\/span><\/p>\n

But even
\n in the 1960s, Americans were not quite as unified as Buchanan
\n imagines. It was during 1960 after all, that Americans were openly
\n debating if a Catholic should be elected president, lest he enthrone
\n the Pope on Capitol Hill. Where was that \u201cone religion in
\n common\u201d Buchanan likes to refer to?<\/span><\/p>\n

This cultural
\n unity, to the extent that that it did exist in the 1960s, and
\n which Buchanan so fondly remembers, was an aberration in America
\n history, and depended on relentless pro-government propaganda
\n through media, schools, and even religious institutions during
\n the mid-twentieth century. The central government, through the
\n FCC, essentially controlled broadcasting, and through its funding
\n and regulation of educational institutions, created a uniform
\n political ideology among formally-educated people which outlined
\n the acceptable parameters of political debate and ideology.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 19th
\n century, before mass media and widespread public schooling and
\n public universities, one\u2019s ideology was shaped by one\u2019s
\n wealth, race, ethnicity, religion and private formal instruction.
\n Regional experiences and local institutions could produce wide
\n variations in what ideologies dominated locally from place to
\n place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Political
\n institutions by necessity were varied and local in the face of
\n deep ethnic, economic and ideological divisions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Golden
\n Age came at last (for people like Buchanan and Obama), when the
\n federal government became skilled at using nation-wide media and
\n public schooling as a means to \u201cteach\u201d the citizenry
\n to be loyal to the local nation-state and to accept its laws,
\n edicts, abuses, and lies. What the people learned in school was
\n then reinforced in the evening news.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus Americans
\n began to think that loyalty to the American state was better than
\n loyalty to one\u2019s local government, or community, or family,
\n or religious group. The old divisions were downplayed, eliminated,
\n and ridiculed.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was
\n no way to fight it, as there was no other easy means of obtaining
\n information outside of the approved channels. Knowledge was controlled
\n by the regulated media and by the approved educational institutions.
\n Everything else was firmly within crackpot territory, according
\n to those with respectable opinions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, however,
\n with the proliferation of homeschooling in all its forms, the
\n web, and the rise of alternative media, the days of \u201cunity\u201d
\n are thankfully coming to an end.<\/span><\/p>\n

While I\u2019m
\n not one who believes that the internet will by itself cause libertarianism
\n to sweep the globe, it does appear that the variety of information
\n offered by the web and by the home education movement will lead
\n to division and dissent and variety where it has not existed in
\n decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buchanan
\n looks upon this with horror. For the nationalists, widespread
\n unity, uniformity and obedience are to be desired for that is
\n what allows a vast nation-state like the United States to function.
\n The suppression of cultural minorities by the cultural majority,
\n along lines desired by the cultural elites, made the American
\n leviathan state of the 20th and 21st century possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

The conservative
\n culture warriors who now complain about secularist left-wing control
\n of schools and other cultural institutions are only suffering
\n at the hands of a beast they created. The forces of conservatism
\n created the public schools to teach watered-down American Protestantism,
\n to beat the foreign languages out of students, and to above all,
\n \u201cassimilate.\u201d They got their assimilation machine, but
\n now the shoe is on the other foot, and when we look at the speech
\n codes, and the P.C. wars and propaganda coming out of the public
\n schools, we should all thank the right-wing guardians of American
\n culture who made it all possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

That age
\n of assimilation, however, whether to right-wing or left wing ideals,
\n is coming to an end. The future is likely to look much different.
\n The future will bring cultural division, and with it, political
\n division, just as Buchanan predicts.<\/span><\/p>\n

It had always
\n been unnatural for the American central government to hammer into
\n one polity the people of New Mexico and the people of Massachusetts,
\n for example. To tell 300 million people of such diverse origin
\n that they\u2019re all part of one giant nation-state, was always
\n nonsensical except in only the loosest confederation. Centralization
\n made assimilation to a centrally-determined ideal necessary, and
\n by 1960, we got it. And it made Pat Buchanan happy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The future
\n divisions that come, on the other hand, will simply be a matter
\n of recognizing the cultural, economic, and ideological divisions
\n which had always been there, but had been covered over by state
\n \u201ceducation.\u201d Immigration will contribute to this, but
\n that factor is by no means the only one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately,
\n there is a great downside to this as well. In the wake of political
\n disintegration, the American nation-state will leave behind a
\n huge government apparatus: the remnants of a federally-funded
\n and militarized police forces, its subsidized agricultural systems,
\n its military bases, and a political culture devoted to seizing
\n power and control whenever possible. The destruction of the family
\n as a central economic institution, and the hobbling of the market
\n itself will all lead to impoverishment and a desire by different
\n and disgruntled groups to control the machinery of power that
\n the centralized nation-state will leave as it recedes.<\/span><\/p>\n

With this
\n will come conflict, unrest, and violence along economic, ethnic
\n and racial lines. It will just be part of the legacy of the American
\n nation-state which the nationalists still trumpet as our savior.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buchanan
\n thinks the best thing to do is to keep up the fa\u00c3\u00a7ade; to paper
\n over the deep divisions with flag-waving American history classes
\n for the indoctrination of the young into embracing \u201cunity.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s
\n an idea for an age long past, and the time has come to abandon
\n that failed experiment that is the centralized American state.
\n But, as usual, we\u2019ll be left with cleaning up the messes
\n the state will leave behind.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Copyright
\n \u00a9 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or
\n in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.<\/span><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Lew Rockwell<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pat Buchanan on National Unity by Ryan McMaken Recently by Ryan McMaken: Edward Snowden: Master\u00a0of\u00a0Realpolitik Pat Buchanan is again sounding the alarm about how immigration to the United States is leading to \u201cbalkanization\u201d and will result in the United States being split into \u201ctwo countries.\u201d In an interview with talk radio host Andrea Tantaros, Buchanan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}