By Brigitte L. Nacos
In his 2011 book “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” the one-time presidential speechwriter, presidential GOP candidate, and to this day right-extreme pundit Patrick J. Buchanan characterized the essence of a nation as “a people of common ancestry, culture, and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, share the same music, poetry, art, literature, held together, in Lincoln’s words, ’by bonds of affection…mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriotic grave, to every living heart and heath-stone.”
Given those characteristics, Buchanan lamented, “the European and Christian core of our country is shrinking” and “the death of its [America’s] cradle faith brings social disintegration, an end to moral community, and culture war.”
He left no doubt that the election of President Barack Obama represented the greatest threat to the survival of “his” idea of America. And in his prescriptions to save the European-Christian America included a moratorium on immigration and rolling back any progressive gains won in what Buchanan labeled the [liberal] culture war.
Not only pundits like Buchanan but also some well-known scholars have long warned of the evils of multiculturalism. In 2004, the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington chose as the lead in his article “The Hispanic Challenge” the following paragraph,
“The persistent flow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting Anglo-Protestant values that build the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.”
It is ironic that President Joe Biden warned the other day in his Memorial Day that “democracy itself is in peril,” using the same term as Huntington. But the peril Biden spoke of has a very different meaning than the peril Huntington meant.
Whereas Huntington and Buchanan saw multicultural challenges to what Isabel Wilkerson described in her recent book “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents” as a system of White caste dominance, Joe Biden invoked the beliefs and values of true Christianity and inclusive democracy, when he said, “Wherever Americans are, there — there is democracy: churches and synagogues and mosques, neighborhoods and coffee shops and diners, bleachers at kids’ baseball or soccer games, libraries and parks. Democracy begins and grows in the open heart and the impetus to come together for a common cause…Americans of all backgrounds, races, creeds, gender identities, sexual orientations, have long spilled their blood to defend our democracy. The diversity of our country and our arm- — and of our armed services is and always has been an incredible strength.”
Huntington, in 2004, wrote before the massive 21st century revival of White Supremacy in the U.S. that was triggered by the election of the first Black president in the country’s history. Chapter titles in Buchanan’s 2011 book, such as “The Death of Christian America,” “The End of White America;” “The Diversity Cult;” “Equality or Freedom?” revealed the ideas in the Far Right and its violent branch in the era of Tea Party activism.
Yet, it was left to Donald Trump as candidate and president to move White Supremacy’s fear of “the great replacement” into the mainstream of Trump’s GOP.
Contrary to Buchanan and Huntington’s claims that demographic changes at the expense of European Christians would result in the fall of America, the real threat to U.S. democracy comes from White Supremacists who were (and continue to be) encouraged by the former president. By refusing to accept his defeat in the 2020 election and demanding from states, congress, courts, and followers to support his undemocratic machinations to remain in office, Donald Trump provoked the violent breach of the Capitol.
January 6, 2021 was one of the darkest days in American history in that it showcased a formerly unthinkable coup attempt by an outgoing president and carried out by his followers, among them terrorists, who stormed with Trump flags into congressional buildings to prevent the certification of the November election results. “We love you,” Trump told the violent crowd.
This was reminiscent of an earlier Trump’s remark, when asked about those subscribing to the crazy QAnon conspiracy theory. “I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate," Trump said at the time.
To think of January 6 as a onetime threat that did not destroy American democracy would be a mistake.
The refusal of congressional Republicans to agree to a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6; the ongoing attempts in Arizona and other states to repeal the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Mr. Trump; and the rewriting of future voting procedures in dozens of red states at the expense of minority voters and the Democratic Party are existential threats to American democracy.
President Biden and all Democrats in elected offices must deal with the devastating consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and a bunch of other problems. But nothing, absolutely nothing is more important and more urgent than federal legislation to stop the efforts of Trump and his minions to destroy the sound electoral system and establish an illiberal version that keeps the GOP, the party now guided by conspiracy theorists, in power.
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