Deconstructing America Cultural Pluralism and Equality Paper

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Prompt: Using Pat Buchanan’s essay “Deconstructing America,” as a primary point of reference, write an essay in which you expound or refute the idea that cultural pluralism (or the melting pot model) inevitably will led to cultural separatism, and therefore increased disunity and tension in America, and possibly even the end of America. You must use three additional sources*, which you cite directly. You may use one of the other assigned essays from the “Equality” chapter of our textbook as one of your three additional sources.

Establish your own thesis that is inspired by the source identified in the prompt. Do not cite a source in your introduction so that your thesis stands out, and it does not appear you are simply echoing or repeating the source. Your thesis is the next step in the argument, be it for or against the source author's point. You are not writing an analysis or explication of the source essay of the prompt--doing so would limit your grade to no better than a C. The article identified in the prompt is no more important than the other research you will include.

Your essay must begin with an introduction that contains a clearly defined, purpose driven, and arguable thesis. The introduction should clearly identify any supporting main ideas that will support the thesis. Body paragraphs should contain minor claims (topic sentences) that advance controlling ideas and that support the thesis. All ideas should be supported with evidence. Your paper must cite examples from the stated texts in the prompt and from your outside sources*. Each example must be supported with critical thinking that explains the significance of the chosen quotation/citation as is relates to your ideas. In your conclusion make a final statement that clearly identifies why what has been shown in your essay is important.

*additional sources must come only from the following: an article located on EBSCOhost (or from a similar database), an article in a major newspaper or magazine, or a book (but not the class textbook or other course material); sources that do not meet this criteria will not count toward the minimum required sources.

*You may cite the film Do the Right Thing, however it does not count toward the minimum required additional sources.

Your paper must:

include an original title that speaks to your thesis

be a minimum of 4 full pages (approximately 1400-1500 words)

contain a minimum of 4 cited sources

be typed, double-spaced, using Times New Roman 12pt font

be formatted according to MLA

use MLA guidelines for in-text citations and Works Cited page

be written using strictly an academic, third-person point-of-view

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Home Tools psfoundationsvol... psfoundationsvol... California Prescho... F & F Maps.pdf DRDP2015 FORM... Deconstructing A... * (?) Sign In 1 16 49.4% je 592 593 5 EXPLORING CONNECTIONS DECONSTRUCTING AMERICA PATRICK J. BUCHANAN CREATED EQUAL 7. What does Matt Bors, the cartoonist on page 591, suggest about the his. torical forgetfulness of American culture? Compare the image of Indians here and in the cartoon by Mike Keefe on page 409: Which depiction, either, gives a more realistic portrait of Native Americans? Is it possible for cartoonists to avoid stereotypes and still be funny? 8. Treuer asserts that the government's forced assimilation created the de structive, diseased social fabric in which we are wrapped today" (para. 42, How do the selections by Kay Givens McGowan (p. 396 th Chapter Four) and George M. Fredrickson (p. 565) support this observation? Are the efforts of language activists enough to begin restoring the social fabric of tribal peoples? Why or why not? 9. How does Gatto's concept of "schooling" - as opposed to education 41) --apply to the Indian Boarding schools? How would Treuer define real education? One of the most influential and outspoken conservative voices in the United States, Patrick J. Buchanan (b. 1938) lives and breathes politics. He served as a senior advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and has campaigned for the presidency himself three times- as a candidate in the Republican primaries of 1992 and 1996 and as the nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. Six of his ten books have been best-sellers. The titles speak for themselves: they include The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy (1998); The Death of the West How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (2002); Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency (2004); State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (2006); and Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? (2011). Buchanan founded the American Conservative magazine, writes syndicated column on politics, and appears daily on cable TV news shows as a political analyst. The following selection is taken from his 2007 book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart. BUCHANAN • DECONSTRUCTING 'AMERICA Yet at present, the United States, is unwinding strand by strand, rather like the Soviet Union. -WILLIAM REES-MOGG 9923 EXTENDING THE CRITICAL CONTEXT 10. Visit Bedford's e-Pages for this chapter of Rereading America (bedfordst martins.com/rereading/epaget) and watch the video, More Than That, cre- ated by two classes on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The video, originally designed as a response to a 20/20 news special depicting impoverished reservation life, presents a very different view. What mes sage do the students in the video convey about their values? What percep tion of Native Americans do they appear to be reacting to? 11. To see some of the language activists Treuer mentions and-to hear more about their efforts to preserve the Ojibwe language, watch any or all segments of First Speakers Restoring the Ojibway Language, a special from Twin Cities Public Television: www.tpt.org/?a=productions&id=3, How does actually hearing the Ojibway language compare to reading about it? What other differences do you detect between the video and the essay? 12. Research the language that was originally spoken by the native inhabitants of your area. Is it a living language? What efforts, if any, are being made to preserve or restore it? 13. Watch an episode or read the transcript of an episode of We Shall Remain the five-part PBS series on Native American history. How does the series represent American Indians? How does this treatment compare to the treat ment of Native Americans in popular films like Windtalkers, Pocahontas, ar Dances with Wolves that are based on historical events? We *The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assi- late are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. -SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET IN 2007, ON THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY of the Jamestown settlement, Queen Elizabeth II arrived to commemorate the occasion. But it took some fancy footwork by Her Majesty to run the Powhatan gauntlet. Daruel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 24. (All notes are Buchanan's unless otherwise indicated 1 Stanley Monteith, "The Diabolic Plan," Reprise of Richard Lamm's Address, "A Plan to Destroy America." May 2006, RaidersNewsNetwork.com Jamestown: Founded in 1607, Jamestown, Virginia, was the first permanent English siellement in North America. (Eds. Powhatan gauntlet: The Powhatan tribe led a confederacy of more than thirty other trilek during the period of the Jamestown settlement the gauntlet refers to a tribal indtia- tion rllud in which young men submitted to an extended period of severe physical and mental discipline before emerging as mature men and recognized leaders. [Eds.] 595 594 CANDORVILLE By Darrin Bell WE GOTTA DO SOMETHING ABOUT ALL THESE ALLEGALS. CREATED EQUAL . To Pront Candorville Darrin Bell. © 2006 The Washington Post. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission BUCHANAN · DECONSTRUCTING AMERICA them from from Chief public schools. -5 For the queen had been there before, fifty years ago, for the 350th anniversary, in a less progressive era. As the Associated Press reported "the last time the queen helped Virginia mark the anniversary of its 0. lonial founding, it was an all-white affair in a state whose government was in open defiance of a 1954 Supreme Court order to desegregat. That ...in That was the time of massive resistance to integration in Virginia, And the queen was quick to recognize and embrace the change: "Since I visited Jamestown in 1957, my country has become a much more diverse society just as the Commonwealth of Virginia and the whole United States of America have also undergone a major social change Both nations are indeed more diverse. But the most recent reminder in Virginia, to which the queen alluded, was the massacre of thirty-two students and teachers at Virginia Tech by an immigrant madman. And now that London is Londonistan, Muslim imams preach ha- tred of the West in mosques, and Pakistani subway bombers find support in their madrassas. Race riots are common in the northern in dustrial cities, Crime rates have soared. In parts of London, people fed to walk. Yes, the Britain of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown verse than the Britain of Victoria and Lord Salisbury, 10 Lloyd George and Churchill. Is it also a better, lovelier, stronger, more respected ndo tion than the Britannia that ruled the waves and a fourth of the world? The prevailing orthodoxy demands that we parrot such platitudes And Her Majesty was careful to conform "Fifty years on, we are now in a position to reflect more candidly on the Jamestown legacy," said the queen, as she began to reflect less candidly on that legacy."? Here, at Jamestown, "Three great civilizations came together for the first time-western European, native American and African:"13 Well, that is certainly one way of putting it. Even Her Majesty must have smiled inwardly as she delivered this comic rendition of history. For the Jamestown settlers were not Western Europeans but English Christians. They despised French Catholics and the great event in their lives had been sinking 1 of the Spanish Amada. And the first decision taken at Jamestown was build a fort to protect Powhatan's tribe, whom they thought might massacre them, as they suspected Indians had massacred the Roanoke4 colony. Their leader, Capt . John Smith, would escape being clubbed to death by Powhatan, thanks only to the princess Pocahontas. Or so Smith liked to tell the tale. In 1622, the Indians succeeded in massa- aring a third of all the inhabitants of Jamestown. As for the Africans, they arrived in 1619 in slave ships, and were 10 not freed for 246 years. Then they were segregated for a Jamestown was no coming together of "three great civilizations." It was the beginning of centuries of imperial conquest by British Christians who drove the pagan Indians westward, repopulated their lands, and imposed their own faith, customs, laws, language, and institutions upon their New World. Jamestown was the beginning of America -and of the British the benefit of hindsight, we can see in that event (Jamestown) the origins of a gins of a singular endeavor--the building of a great nation, founded on the eternal values of democracy and equality," said the queen... A great nation did indeed arise from Jamestown, but, intending no disrespect to Her Majesty, democracy and equality had nothing to do with it. The House of Burgesses, formed in 1619, was restricted to white males, men of property. The American Revolution was not fought for equality, but to be rid of British rule. Four of the first five presidents- Washington Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe-were Virginia slave- holders. Exactly two and a half centuries after Jamestown, in 1857, came Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's Dred Scott decision declaring that Slaves were not Americans and that none of them had any of the rights of divers diversity With Empire more de .com 5"Queen Elizabeth Sees Virginia Anew' May 3, 2007, Associated Press, MSNBC Ibid. Home Tools psfoundationsvol... psfoundationsvol... California Prescho... F & F Maps.pdf DRDP2015 FORM... Deconstructing A... * (? Sign In 3 76 49.4% DC 597 596 5 state 01 CREATED EQUAL believed in the in BUCHANAN DECONSTRUCTING AMERICA Mexico- This was of American citizens. Few Americans then, certainly not Abe Lincoln, believed in social or political equality Now, if, in 1957 — 350 years after Jamestown, 100 years after Dred Scott-the of Virginia had a declared policy of massive resis. tance to racial racial integration, how can the queen claim that Jamestown or Virginia or America were always about "the eternal values of democ- racy and equality"? History contradicts the politically correct version the queen had to recite about the Jamestown settlement—and raises another question If Jamestown and Virginia were not about democracy, equality, and diversity for the 350 years between 1607 and 1957, who invented this myth that America was always about democracy, equality, and divers sity? And what was their motive? At Jamestown the queen performed a service to America of which she was surely unaware. By radically revising her views of fifty years ago, about what Jamestown was, the queen revealed the real revolu: tion that occurred between the era of Eisenhower and that of George W. Bush. It is a revolution in thought and belief about who we are as a na. In the half century since massive resistance, Virginia has indeed a radically changed society. No longer does Richmond proudly call herself the Capital of the Confederacy. Lee-Jackson Day is out Martin Luther King Day is in. The Confederate flag flies nowhere On Monument Avenue, which features the statues of Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and Jefferson Davis;" a statue of Arthur Ashe, an African American tennis player, has been added "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" was retired by the legislature as the state song ten years before the queen's return. Within days of her arrival in 2007, the Virginia legislature apologized for Virginia 2007 is ashamed of who she was in 1957. But how then can Virginia be proud of what Jamestown was in 1607? For the first Jamestown was not some multicultural village but the first outpost of an imperial nation determined to settle and conquer North America for English Christians, to wipe out or drive out Indians who got in its way, and to bring in Africans as slaves to do the labor English settlers would tion in here three-comered fort the Jamestown settlers began to build the day they arrived. But that republic and that empire did not rise because the set- tlers and those who followed believed in diversity, equality, and democ- racy, but because they rejected diversity, equality, and democracy. The English, the Virginians, the Americans were "us-or-them" people. They in the superiority of their Christian faith and English Culbare and civilization. And they transplanted thať unique faith, cul- ture, and civilization to America's fertile soil. Other faiths, cultures, and civilizations—like the ones the Indians had here, or the Africans brought, or the French had planted in Quebec, or Spanish they rejected and resisted with cannon, musket, and sword. s was our land, not anybody else's. But today America and Britain have embraced ideas about the in- nate equality of all cultures, civilizations, languages, and faiths, and about the mixing of all tribes, races, and peoples, that are not only ahistorical, they are suicidal for America the West. For all over the world, rising faiths like Islam, rising movements like the indigenous peoples' movement rolling out of Latin America to Los Angeles, rising powers like China reaching for Asian and world hegemony-ignore the kumbaya we preach, and look to what our fathers practiced when they conquered the world. What the queen said at Jamestown 2007 was that we are not the same people we were in 1957. She is right. For we now reject as repel- lent and ethnocentric the idea that the British who founded our republic and created the British Empire were not only unique but superior to other peoples and civilizations. And to show the world how resolutely We reject those old ideas, we threw open our borders in the last forty years to peoples of all creeds, cultures, countries, and civilizations, in- viding them to come and convert the old America into the The cultural, multilingual, multiethnic, multiracial nation in his First Universal Nations of Ben Wattenberg'so warblings. But if the Jamestown settlers had believed in equality and diversity, and had shared their fort with the Indians, the settlers would never have been No matter the lies we tell ourselves and teach our children, no great republic or empire--not Persia, Rome, Islam, Spain, France, Britain, Russia, China, the United States—ever arose because it embraced de- mocracy, diversity, and equality. None. The real question is not whether the values the queen celebrated at Jamestown created America--they had nothing to do with it—but whether America can survive having embraced them.... heard from again. not do. An Inconvenient Truth The point here is unpleasant to modernity but critical to recognize: The .. United States, the greatest republic since Rome, and the British Empire the greatest empire since Rome, may be said to have arisen from that 17 Robert E. Lee...and Jefferson Davis: Lee (1807-1870), Jackson (1824-1863), Stuart (1833-1864) were Confederate generals; Davis (1808-1889) served as president of the Confederate States. (Eds.) Multimedia Tour Monument Ave," Discover Richmond discoverrichmond.com The First Universal Nation: Title of a 1990 book by Ben Wattenberg which argued that the United States, due to its increasing ethnic diversity, is becoming a universal" country Eds.] Ben Wattenberg: Conservative author (b. 1933) and host of a number of PBS televi- sion saows dealing with current events. (Eds.) 598 599 5 CREATED EQUAL The Disuniting of America America is today less a nation than an encampment of suspicious and hostile tribes quarreling viciously over the spoils of politics and power We live on the same land, under the same set of laws, but we are lo longer the one people of whom John Jay21 wrote in Federalist No. 2. Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs. and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general liberty and independence.23 "This country and this people seem to have been made for each other," Jay wrote, calling his countrymen "a band of brethren. Even be fore the Constitution had been ratified, Jay regarded Americans as one united people," "one connected country," "brethren," of common blood But what held this "one united people" together-a common hele tage, history, faith, language, manners, customs, and culture-today pulls religion, BUCHANAN • DECONSTRUCTING AMERICA us apart. Are we united by language? Children in Chicago are taught in two hundred languages. Our fastest growing media are Spanish speaking Half the 9 million in Los Angeles County speak a language other than English in their homes. Today's vile talk on radio and television, in the movies, magazines, and books, would have been an embarrassment in a marine barracks fifty years ago. Are we united by faith? While 99 percent Protestant in 1789, we are now Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim: Hindu, Buddhist Taoist, Shintoist, Santeria, Sikh, New Age, voodoo, agnostic, atheist Rastafarian. The mention of the name of Jesus by the preachers Pres- chose to give invocations at his inauguration evoked cries of "insensitive, "divisive," "exclusionary." A New Republic éditorial lashed out at these "crushing Christological thuds" from the inaugurel stand. Many of the Christian churches have split asunder over abortion. female bishops, homosexual clergy, and gay marriage. In 2007, after a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs agreed to add the five-point sur of the Wiccan neo-pagan religion to the list of thirty-eight "emblems of belief" allowed on VA grave markers. The thirty-eight include "symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as... for. Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho- No-le. 24 Are we united by a common culture? To the contrary. We are in a Taging culture war in which peaceful coexistence is a myth. In the nineteenth century, America was torn apart by slavery and the tariff. Those issues were settled in a civil war that resulted in 600,000 dead. Today, America is divided over issues of race, ethnicity, language, culture, history, morality, the very things that once defined us and united us as a people and a nation. Protestants and Catholics, a hundred years ago, disagreed pas- sionately over whether beer, wine, and spirits were wicked. Today, we Americans disagree over whether annihilating 45 million unborn babies in the womb since Roe v. v. Wade is a mark of progress or a monstrous national evil causing us to echo Jefferson, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." In the 1960s, to do penance for all her sins, from Jamestown on, the 35 United States threw open its doors to peoples of all colors, continents, and creeds. And today, the America of John F. Kennedy, 89 percent White and 10 percent of African descent, an essentially biracial country united by a common culture, creed, history, and tradition, is gone. We threw it away, Today, America is twice as populous as in 1950—with 300 million people Instead of 1 to 2 million Hispanics, there are 45 million, with 102 million expected by 2050, concentrated in a Southwest that 58 per- cent of Mexicans say belongs to them. Our population is down to 67 per- cent European, and falling: 14.5 percent Hispanic and rising rapidly, 13 percent black and holding, and 4.5 percent Asian and rišßhg. By 2040. Americans of European descent will be less than half the pop- ulation, when, as President Bill Clinton told an audience of cheering Califomia students, we will all belong to minorities. White Americans are already a minority in California, New Mexico, Texas, Hawaii. llwelve to 20 million illegal aliens are in the country. We may not have believed in diversity in the old America, but we are practicing it now. But has all this diversity made us a stronger nation than we were in the time of Eisenhower and Kennedy? In October 2006, the Financial Times reported the findings of Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, on diversity in America. of the Corgive effects of ethnic diversity has been re- ident Bush Home Tools psfoundationsvol... psfoundationsvol... California Prescho... F & F Maps.pdf DRDP2015 FORM... Deconstructing A... * (? Sign In 5 16 46.5% 600 601 CREATED EQUAL U BUCHANAN • DECONSTRUCTING AMERICA His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone--from their next-door neigh- bour to the mayor. The core message... was that, 'in the presence of diversity, we hun- ker down," he said. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us. Prof. Putnamn found trụst was lowest in Los Angeles, "the most di- verse human habitation in human history...." The city Professor Putnam references, Los Angeles, was the scene of the Academy Award-winning film Crash, which portrayed a feral zonem which whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics clashed violently again and again, as they could not understand one another or communicate with one another Wrote columnist John Leo, after perusing the report, "Putnam adds a crushing footnote: his findings 'may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal. 23 With another 100 million people anticipated in the United States by 2050, most of them immigrants and their children, legal and illegal Putnam's findings are ominous. If the greater the diversity the greater the mistrust, Balkanization beckons--for all of us. Is diversity a strength? In the ideology of modernity, yes. But history teaches otherwise. For how can racial diversity be a strength when I cial diversity was behind the bloodiest war in U.S. history and has been the most polarizing issue among us ever since? Our most divisive Supreme Court decision, Dred Scott, was about race. The War Between the States about race-Reconstruction was about race. Segregation was about race. The riots in Harlem, Watts Newark, Detroit, then Washington, DC, and a hundred other cities after the assassination of Dr. King were about race. The riot in Los Angeles following the Simi Valley jury's acquittal of the cops who beat Rodne King was about race. Forced busing, affirmative action, quotas, profilling are about race. The O. J. trial, the Tawana Brawley and Duke rape case hoaxes, and the Don Imus affairs were about race. When Gunnar Myrdal wrote his classic American Dilemma, about the crisis of our democracy the subject was-race. All Americans believe slavery was evil and the denial of equal jus- tice under law was wrong. But because they were wrong, does that make what we are doing-inviting the whole world to come to America - right or wise? Today, tens of thousands of corporate and government bureaucrats monitor laws against discrimination and laws mandating integration in housing and employment. To achieve equality, Americans are sacrificing freedom. Police are ever on the lookout for hate crimes. Hardly a month passes without some controversy or crime rooted in race being forced through cable TV and talk radio onto the national agenda. How does all this make us a more united, stronger people? Among the educated and affluent young, resegregation is in vogue. 45 Columnist Leo writes that at UCLA, racially separate graduations have become the norm. "The core reason," he writes, "is the obvious one." On campus, assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism On many campuses, identity-group training be gins with separate freshman orientation programs for nonwhites, who arrive earlier and are encouraged to bond before the first Caucasian reshmen arrive. Some schools have separate orientations for gays as well. Administrations tend to foster separatism by arguing that bias is everywhere, justifying double standards that favor identity groups. Leo concludes on a note of despair, "As in so many areas national lite, the preposterous is now normal."31 Quo Vadis,32 America? Again, history teaches that multiethnic states are held together either by an authoritarian regime or a dominant ethnocultural core, or they are ever at risk of disintegration in ethnic conflict. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, artificial na- tions all, disintegrated when the dictatorships collapsed. in democracies it is an ethnocultural core that holds the country together. England created a United Kingdom of English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish, with England predominant. Now that Britain is no longer great, the core nations have begun to pull apart, to seek their old inde- pendence, as the English have begun to abandon the land they grew up in In "Vanishing England," in August 2007, columnist Cal Thomas 50 reported a startling fact: Between June 2005 and June 2006, 200,000 British citizens (the equivalent of a million Americans) left their country for good, as than half million legal immigrants and unknown thousands of illegals entered. "Britons give many reasons for leaving, but their stories share one commonality," Thomas wrote, "life in Britain has become unbearable for them." There is the lawlessness and the constant threat of Muslim terror, but also 77 John Lloyd, "Study Paints Bleak Picture of Ethnic Diversity. Oct. 8. 2006. FT.com John Leo, Bowling with Our Own, City Journal , Summer 2007. vol. 17. 10. 2. The O. J. trial...the Don Imus affair" in 1995, O. J. Simpson was found not gulis of murder after a long and highly publicized criminal trial, in 1986, a New York grand ju found that Tawana Brawley's claim that she was raped and brutalized by white men wu fabricated in 2006, another African American woman charged that she had been rapat by a group of white Duke University lacrosse players, but the charges were dropped following year, talk-radio host Don Imus was fired in 2007 after making racist comment about female African American basketball players. In each case, opinions tended to divide along racial lines. [Eds.) UCLA June 13, 2007, City John Leo, "Let the foumalon Commence...Separatist Graduations Proliferate at Spring 2007, vol. 17, no. 2. bid. Cal Thomas, "Vanishing England," Washington Times, Aug. 29, 2007, p. A17. Quo Vadis Latin phrase meaning "Where are you going" (Eds! 603 602 5 CREATED EQUAL BUCHANAN · DECONSTRUCTING AMERICA the loss of a sense of Britishness, exacerbated by the growing refusal from the public schools, this civil religion is taught in its stead. The di- of public schools to teach the history and culture of the nation to the lemma of those who conjured up this civil religion and creedal nation, next generation. What it means to be British has been watered down in liberals and neoconservatives, is that it has no roots and does not touch a plague of political correctness that has swept the country faster than the heart. Americans will not send their sons to fight and die for such hoof-and-mouth disease. Officials says they do not wish to 'offend" watery abstractions. others. ENGAGING THE TEXT Intellectuals deceive themselves if they believe the new trinity of their faith-democracy, equality, and diversity --can replace the old 1. What kind of "revolution" (para. 17) does Buchanan believe has occurred in idea of what it meant to be a Briton, what it meant to be an Englishman, the United States and Britain in the fifty years between Queen Elizabeth's In the thirteen North American colonies, the ethnocultural care two visits to Jamestown? What illustrations of social change does he offer? was British-Protestant, with a smattering of Germans whose growing How would you characterize his attitude toward these changes? numbers alarmed Ben Franklin. After the wave of Irish from 1845 10 1849, and the steady German influx, and then the great wave from 2. Why does Buchanan object to Queen Elizabeth's reference to the Jamestown Southern and Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1920, America was colony as a meeting of "three great civilizations" (para. 7)? In his view, what no longer British-Protestant, but a European-Christian nation whose is the real significance of Jamestown? institutions, language, and culture remained British. Bismarck said the 3. How does Buchanan differentiate between earlier groups of immigrants to most important fact of the twentieth century would be that the North the United States and those who have come since the 1965 Immigration Americans spoke English. Indeed, that is why we fought on Britain's Act? What effects does he believe immigrants are having on this country? Do side in two world wars. Despite our eighteenth- and nineteenth-century you agree with his assessment? Why or why not? quarrels and wars, the Brits were still "the cousins." By 1960, 88.6 percent of our nation was of European stock and 4. Buchanan suggests that a nation based on "democracy, diversity, and equal 95 percent Christian. America had never been a more united nation ity" (para. 24) is unlikely to thrive or even to survive. Debate the merits of African Americans had been assimilated into the Christian aith and ne- the logic and evidence he presents in support of his claim. tional culture if not fully into society. While Jews, perhaps 4 percent 5. According to Buchanan, laws prohibiting discrimination, hate crimes, the population, were non-Christians, their parents or grandparents had and segregated housing and employment require “sacrificing freedom" come from European Christian nations. (para. 44) in order to attain greater equality. How and for whom is free- Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the Immigratim dom restricted by such laws? Explain why you think the tradeoff is or is not Act of 1965, however, the ethnocultural core has begun to dissolve worthwhile. Secularism has displaced Christianity as the faith of the elites. The na tion has entered a post-Christian era. There is no longer a unifying cul EXPLORING CONNECTIONS ture. Rather, we are fighting a culture war. And the European ethnio core is shrinking. From near 90 percent in 1960, it is down to 67 percent 6. Which of the models of ethnic relations described by George M. Fredrickson today, and will be less than 50 percent by 2040. (p. 565) does Buchanan appear to endorse, which does he reject, and why? Here we come to the heart of the matter, How would you describe his ideal vision of America? Quo Vadis, America? Where are you going? 7. To what extent would David Treuer (p. 578) agree with Buchanan about the If we have no common faith and are divided by morality and cul history of the United States and our treatment of Native Americans? To what ture, and are separated by ethnicity and race, what holds us together extent would he agree or disagree about the significance of diversity in modern Especially in light of Putnam's report that "diversity" dilutes social America? capital," erodes community, and engenders mutual mistrust. Realizing we are divided on the things that constitute a true nas EXTENDING THE CRITICAL CONTEXT tion-blood and soil, tradition and faith, history and heroes-intellet tuals have sought to construct, in lieu of the real nation, the nation of 8. Buchanan mentions the practice, on some campuses, of holding sepa- the heart that is passing away, an artificial nation, a nation of the mind, rate orientations or graduation ceremonies for different "identity groups" an ideological nation, a creedal nation, united by a belief in the new (para. 45). If your school offers such functions, organize a group or whole trinity: diversity, democracy, and equality. As Christianity is purged class project and interview students, family members, and faculty who have attended one of these events. Pool your interview notes: do you find any consistency or patterns of response in your interviewees' comments about
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White Supremacy in Buchanan’s “Deconstructing America”
In his essay, “Deconstructing America”, Patrick Buchanan laments the impending death of
the United States of America. Multiculturalism – the state in which individuals of different ethnic,
cultural or national backgrounds come together to form a diversified whole – is the stalking culprit,
who is only waiting for the right time to strike a decisive blow against the greatest nation on the
planet. The only way to avoid this fate, according to Buchanan, would be to oppose pluralism;
opting, instead, for the undiversified ways of the past. It is through pluralism, Buchanan claims,
that nations become disintegrated, as the accumulation of diversity makes it impossible to uphold
law and order. To illustrate his point, Buchanan makes use of various historical examples to
demonstrate his point. Unfortunately, it is possible to argue that Buchanan’s analysis relies on a
deliberate misreading of history. It could be argued, too, that Buchanan’s perspectives on the ideas
of conquest and colonization, racial wars and tensions, and immigration patterns are all presented
with the distortion of a White Supremacist bias.
One of the most overt manifestations of Buchanan’s White Supremacist thought is his
imagining of the epochs of colonization and conquest. In one part of the essay, Buchanan laments
that, “we now reject as repellent and ethnocentric the idea that the British who founded our
Republic and created the British Empire were no only unique but superior to other peoples and
civilizations” (2008). Buchanan, though, offers no logical reason for why one should consider the
British empire superior to other civilizations or for the British people as being superior to other

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groups. One can assume, though, that it was the perceived might and power of the mostly-white
empire what gives it this characterization. Certainly, th...


Anonymous
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