The Death of the West: Book Review

The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization
by Patrick J. Buchanan

Is Western Civilization dying? That's the claim put forth put forth in this book by Pat Buchanan, the cranky old cracka-ass cracka who hosts MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" while Joe's off strangling hookers, and who ran for President in 1992, 1996 and 2000.

It doesn't say in the book jacket (because it's a little bit old), but it's certainly possible that he ran in 2004 as well, though I don't seem to recall that and you'd think I would remember something that only happened like a year ago.

Anyway, if you look at it a certain way, he definitely has a point. White people - or, as he likes to refer to them, people of European descent - are dying out as a race. As it says on the book's back cover:

Not a single European country - save Moslem Albania - has a birth rate that will enable it to survive in its present form through this century. By 2050, only one-tenth of the world's people will be of European descent, and it will be the oldest tenth on earth, with a median age of almost fifty.

Oh no! Meanwhile, various breeds of filthy, brown furriners (Mexicans, Arabs, Indians, etc.) will see their populations multiply by a factor of 50 gozillion. Literally.

But does that actually constitute the death of Western Civilization? I don't know. I mean, I could see the argument that too much balkinization was never good for any country, but what is it going to lead to in the US? This book doesn't make much of an effort to answer that question, which on the one hand was a disappointment, but I suppose was to be expected.

You kinda have to take it on faith that this country won't be able to last in any worthwhile form without a majority white (er, European) population. In general, you get the idea that this book was written for the kind of people for whom that would only seem obvious.

Fine. So then the bulk of the book consists of him describing how the Mighty US of A ever got to this point in the first place. Again, I found this section of the book to be rather lacking. In particular, it seems like he's cherry-picking things that bother him on a personal level, but may not lie at the heart of our current crisis, if there is one.

Take for example The Pill. As far as he's concerned, this is the main reason why so many crackety-cracks are only opting to have one child, if any. At one point, he even refers to it as The Death Pill of the West. Which doesn't really stand to reason, if you think about it. After all, weren't there other effective forms of birth control before The Pill? Granted, only suckers use condoms, but still.

Other alleged reasons why white people are reproducing less frequently:

• Hate crime laws
• No prayer in public schools
• Changing Washington's Birthday to President's Day
• Rampant illegal immigration from Mexico
• The Boy Scouts being branded bigots

And so on and so forth. A comparatively scant amount of attention is paid to the various economic reasons why hardly anyone with any sense would want more than one child, if that. Which is unfortunate, since obviously (obviously) that's the main issue here.