Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Pat Buchanan: Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? -- Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"


From amazon.com

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America is disintegrating. The “one Nation under God, indivisible” of the Pledge of Allegiance is passing away. In a few decades, that America will be gone forever. In its place will arise a country unrecognizable to our parents. This is the thrust of Pat Buchanan’s Suicide of a Superpower, his most controversial and thought-provoking book to date.

Buchanan traces the disintegration to three historic changes: America’s loss of her cradle faith, Christianity; the moral, social, and cultural collapse that have followed from that loss; and the slow death of the people who created and ruled the nation. And as our nation disintegrates, our government is failing in its fundamental duties, unable to defend our borders, balance our budgets, or win our wars.

How Americans are killing the country they profess to love, and the fate that awaits us if we do not turn around, is what Suicide of a Superpower is all about. ...

Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Pat Buchanan:

“Buchanan is an honest writer who … minces nothing except an occasional opponent.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Nobody turns a sharp phrase, drops an historical reference, or makes a literary allusion as naturally as Pat Buchanan.”
—Human Events

“Buchanan is a muscular writer, fully in command of the English language he feels is under siege. He is adept at linking history, statistics, and the writings of philosophers and economists to proffer forceful arguments.”
—The Washington Post

“Mr. Buchanan … is positively fearless. He is also right.”
—Tony Blankley, The Washington Times

“His approach is that of a true conservative, offering a perspective rooted in American tradition initiated by Washington.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Suicide of a Superpower:

"Suicide of a Superpower traces the changes in governance and culture in America that foreshadow a decline of epic proportions. ... Buchanan is no stranger to controversy. Nor is he prone to exaggerate. The crises he describes are real, and he is not afraid to say they ‘may prove too much for our democracy to cope with.’"
--Jack Kenny, The New American Magazine

"A stunning Jeremiad on America’s decline, written with characteristic muscle and wit."
--Timothy Stanley, The Telegraph (UK)

"Buchanan offers an astute diagnosis of America’s problems and gives constructive suggestions to put us back on track."
--Virgil Goode (Former Congressman R-VA), The Daily Caller

"Well-written, well researched and highly persuasive."
--Tom Piatak, Chronicles Magazine ...

About the Author
PATRICK J. BUCHANAN, America’s leading populist conservative, was senior adviser to three American presidents, ran for the Republican nomination in 1992 and 1996, and was the Reform Party’s presidential candidate in 2000. The author of ten other books, Buchanan is a syndicated columnist and founding member of three of America’s foremost public affairs shows, NBC’s The McLaughlin Group and CNN’s The Capitol Gang and Crossfire. He lives in McLean, Virginia.

Washington Times

The MSNBC contributor concludes that white males will have the burden of academic excellence because according to Buchanan, they are the most intelligent.
WASHINGTON, October 23, 2011- Inferior and inadequate schools, resources, and parental support are not to blame for the score gaps between white and some minority groups, rather it is their genetic inferiority to middle class whites.  That conclusion was central to the thesis of a memo Pat Buchanan delivered to the Nixon White House when he was an aide there in 1971.
Thirty years have passed, and Buchanan, who probably has not strayed too far from that thinking, has repackaged  it and cushioned it between the pages of his latest book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?
In the forthcoming book, Buchanan warns about the steady decline in America , which he essentially says is becoming soiled with more brown people immigrating from Hispanic and Latin American countries, who combined with the existing population of African Americans are driving down American children’s test scores. He wrote:
[T]he decline in academic test scores here at home and in international competition is likely to continue, as more and more of the children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic. […] Can the test-score gap be closed? With the Hispanic illegitimacy rate at 51 percent and the black rate having risen to 71 percent, how can their children conceivably arrive at school ready to compete?
The MSNBC contributor concludes that white males will have the burden of academic excellence because according to Buchanan, they are the most intelligent.
It’s not a far reach from the words he wrote in that 1971 memo, a Seattle Times article from 1992 points out. In the memo, Buchanan penned:
“Basically, it demonstrates that heredity, rather than environment, determines intelligence - and that the more we proceed to provide everyone with a `good environment,’ surely the more heredity will become the dominant factor - in their intelligence, and thus in their success and social standing… It is almost the iron law of intelligence that is being propounded here - based on heredity.
“The importance of this article is difficult to understate. If correct, then all our efforts and expenditures not only for `compensatory education’ but to provide an `equal chance at the starting line’ are guaranteeing that we wind up with the intelligent ones coming in first. And every study we have shows blacks 15 IQ points below whites on the average.”
Statements like these have outraged educators, policy leaders, parents, and others nationwide.
Frank Bryant, an educator and founder of Washington, DC-based nonprofit Free My City (FMC) is one.  Rather than point fingers or appoint blame for  some students’ poor performance in schools Bryant and his organization are doing their part to effect how children are educated in America.  FMC group has received 4,000 pledges for its National Enlightenment Walk for Education Reform in America (NEW ERA).  FMC expects nearly 10,000 students, parents, educators, public figures, and community leaders to attend the walk, scheduled for November 12 on the National Mall.   Its purpose is to raise awareness on the importance of including student perspectives in education in reform.
“Unfortunately, the way the American public school system is structured does not prepare our children to compete with the world–for more than enough reasons,” Bryant told Politics of Raising Children. “However, contrary to Buchanan’s belief, it’s not a “browning” issue, it’s an American issue”
Bryant is well aware that it’s not genetics that govern or control how good or bad a student does, but external factors, including the quality of education, resources, and level of encouragement from educators, peers, and parental units.  He knows well because he himself was a troubled teen, who was kicked out of DC public schools and struggled in class, even though he was raised in a stable two-parent middle class household.
With the help of a special program for challenged adolescents, Bryant was able to get it together and raise his grades. He eventually attended college, went to graduate school at Georgetown University and graduated from a Harvard University executive program.  Being a testament to the notion that children can be more than the circumstances from where they are from, Bryant is paying it forward and is hoping his group’s walk will help change school curriculum nationwide, which he says is not effective in getting all children to learn.
Bryant said his group is currently working to build alliances and partnerships partner with the National Education Association and the Department of Education.
“I believe to truly reform America’s public education system, it is vital that we integrate changes based on the students’ perspective. Once students make the psychological investment in learning, it will motivate them to intrinsically succeed academically,” Bryant said.
Anyone can attempt to sell books delivering doomsday-like message based on racist pseudo-Eugenics-based theories as Buchanan.
Organizing, galvanizing and trying to make a colossal effort to effectuate real change is a genuine challenge.  Bryant seems willing and able and is doing what people like Buchanan and those who think like him ought to be doing rather than playing that old tired game of scapegoat. 
Read more Politics of Raising Children in The Communities at the Washington Times. Follow Jeneba Ghatt at @JenebaSpeaks. Her work can also be read at Jeneba Speaksand Politic365.  She also co-hosts a Blog Talk Radio show called Right of Black which tackles current events and politics from a perspective not often seen in the mainstream media.
Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/politics-raising-children/2011/oct/24/pat-buchanan-suicide-superpower-will-america-survi/#ixzz3Kl2vBdkG
Follow us: @wtcommunities on Twitter

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