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Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart

Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
By Patrick J. Buchanan

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America is coming apart at the seams.  Forces foreign and domestic seek an end to U.S. sovereignty and independence.  Before us looms the prospect of an America breaking up along the lines of race, ethnicity, class and culture.  In Day of Reckoning, Pat Buchanan reveals the true existential crisis of the nation and shows how President Bush’s post-9/11 conversion to an ideology of “democratism” led us to the precipice of strategic disaster abroad and savage division at home.

 
Ideology, writes Buchanan, is a Golden Calf, a false god, a secular religion that seeks vainly, like Marxism, to create a paradise on earth. 

 
While free enterprise is good, the worship of a “free trade” that is destroying the dollar, de-industrializing America, and ending our economic independence, is cult madness.  While America must stand for freedom and self-determination, the use of U.S. troops to police the planet or serve as advance guard of some “world democratic revolution” is, as Iraq shows, imperial folly that will bring ruin to the republic. While America should speak out for human rights, the idea that we get in Russia’s face and hand out moral report cards to every nation on earth is moral arrogance.  While we have benefited from immigration and the melting pot worked with millions of Europeans, the idea we can import endless millions of aliens, legal and illegal, from every culture, clime, creed, and continent on earth, and still remain a country, is absurd. 

 
To save America the first imperative is to remove from power the ideologues of both parties who have nearly killed our country. 

 
In his final chapter, Buchanan lays out ideas to prevent the end of America.  He calls for a bottom-up review of all of America’s Cold War commitments, a ten-point program to secure America’s borders, ideas to halt the erosion of our national sovereignty and restore our manufacturing preeminence and economic independence, and a formula for finding the way to a cold peace in the culture wars. 

 
Buchanan offers a radical but necessary program, for neither party is addressing the real crisis of America -- whether we survive as one nation and people, or disintegrate into what Theodore Roosevelt called a “tangle of squabbling nationalities” and not a nation at all.
 
IN THIS EYE-OPENING BOOK, PAT BUCHANAN REVEALS THE PERILOUS PATH OUR NATION HAS TAKEN:

- Pax Americana -- the era of U.S. global dominance -- is over.

- A struggle for world hegemony among the United States, China, a resurgent Russia and radical Islam has begun.

- Torn apart by a culture war, America has begun to Balkanize and break down along class, cultural, ethnic, and racial lines.

- Free trade is hollowing out U.S. industry, destroying the dollar, and plunging the country into permanent dependency and unpayable debt.

- One of every six U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished under Bush.

- The Third World invasion through Mexico is a graver threat to U.S. survival than anything happening in Afghanistan or Iraq. 

…IS OUR DAY OF RECKONING JUST AHEAD?

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #37362 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-11-27
  • Released on: 2007-11-27
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 304 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
PATRICK J. BUCHANAN, America’s leading traditional conservative, was a senior adviser to three American presidents, ran twice for the Republican presidential nomination, in 1992 and 1996, and was the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. The author of eight other books, including the bestsellers Right from the Beginning; A Republic, Not an Empire; The Death of the West; Where the Right Went Wrong; and State of Emergency, he is a syndicated columnist and a 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.

Customer Reviews

Insightful beyond the daily news5
Pat Buchanan has condensed United States history and our economy from World War II to the present time, used language we all understand, opened our eyes and cleared our minds to allow for reality to set in.

It is a make sense book. Mr. Buchanan has used his years in politics and studying American history to wake up the reader. Do you know why the U.S. has become the policeman of the world? Do you know why our one time national industries are now owned by foreign concerns? Do you know how and why our country has been falling apart for years since WWII?

If you know these answers, buy the book anyway. You will still learn something new. If you don't know the answers, buy the book. You will understand how un-united we have been as a result of greed and the superman attitude we have taken over the years. The American public has been told for decades by politicians that we are following a path for the betterment of our lives and the world. Wow, have we been duped.

The book is a good read for one that deals with history and the economy.

Alarmist? We'd Better Hope So.5
Pat Buchanan's is a rare voice, one that refuses to tote a party line, and instead seeks to grapple with some rather irrefutable facts. While I plan to do further reading from other perspectives on those aspects of the book I found most interesting or difficult to swallow, I thought it was a very lucid presentation.

As with most of his recent books, he criticizes our government (and those in a position to influence it) for maintaining various trappings of empire, ones that he believes will mean the end of the United States as the leader of the free world if they are not abandoned in short order. Thankfully, there's far less speculation about neocons and their motives than in "Where the Right Went Wrong". I would also read this book before "Death of the West", which is a little more overwrought.

Whatever you think of Buchanan (and especially if you think he's just a cranky racist, which I believe is flatly false), this book is well worth reading, and soon. I believe he has the facts squarely on his side in this case. Even if he's wrong on half his points, he's still prescribing necessary medicine.

Entertaining, but misses the mark1
Pat Buchanan is a smart man, that much is clear. His recollection of history may be immense, but his perspective is off the mark. Buchanan talks a lot about not getting involved in the affairs of other nations, often pointing out that George Washington advised against such things in his Farewell Address. Indeed, it is true that America has become much more interventionist than in previous eras, but the reason is simple: globalization has changed the game.

The threat of nuclear and biological weapons used by Islamic terrorists against the United States, weapons that could annihilate an entire metropolis and potentially ruin the American economy, is something men like Washington could not have foreseen. The bottom line is this: the business of other nations has become America's business. The old kings of Europe weren't that much of a threat to America as much as Bin Laden is, and that's the point Buchanan misses. The fact that Bin Laden's lackeys could reach America in a few days is something Washington never had to deal with.

I find it ironic that throughout his book, Buchanan points out how America is too imperialistic and trying too hard to spread democracy everywhere. Looking at America's so called "imperialism", one realizes that America doesn't have any colonies and doesn't actually own all that much outside of less than a 1000 military bases around the world (in countries like Germany, Japan, and Britain no less - do you think this can be called imperialistic?). Even more ironic is this: Bush is bluffing about spreading democracy. As Buchanan points out, the Gettysburg address was nothing more than wartime propaganda, as is Bush's intent to destroy anyone that is not democratic. In reality, Bush is simply fighting in Iraq to prevent good ole' Saddam from harboring terrorism even further, it had nothing to do with democracy or freedom. Being that countries like Iran would love nothing more than to sell a bit of nuclear materials to guys like Bin Laden, it is not unreasonable to intervene there either. America has to become interventionist or we'll lose an American city and then some. Buchanan wants to stick to the politics of the early days of the Republic, and it simply won't work.

Unfortunately, democrats, libertarians, and the rest of the reform parties don't understand that we need to preemptively strike terrorism before they hit us. They think Islamic jihadists hate America because of our presence in the Middle East. Really, it's about the West controlling the world when Islamic jihadists think they should. They simply hate the West: they see us as decadent sinners whose lives have no value. Why do you think countries like Britain and Spain received their fair share of the jihad? Why do you think France has a little problem with their Muslim population? These countries do very little to keep a presence in the Middle East. Yet still, they were hit indiscriminately. Buchanan just doesn't get it: just like Hitler didn't stop at Poland and wouldn't have stopped with the Soviet Union, these jihadists wouldn't stop in the Middle East. If they could, they'd bomb anything they could in France, Britain, Spain, and any other "infidel" country to achieve their vision of a Muslim world.