Snarkastic

[Guest Smack] Pat Buchanan: Unforgivably Ignorant or Aggressively Bigoted? (Why Choose?)

Turning the floor over tonight to my better half and BFF Livia, who has some words. When Livvy has words, you should listen.

I think white men were 100% of the people who wrote the constitution, 100% of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country basically built by white folks. --Pat Buchanan

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it...All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach. --Adolf Hitler

After reading yesterday's remarks by conservative commentator and unemployed politician Pat Buchanan, I walked aimlessly around my apartment for about ten minutes, sputtering incoherently and glaring incredulously at things. It's pretty rare that I find something so utterly appalling that I am at a loss for words, but this staggers me. Buchanan manages to simultaneously evoke a false sense of nationalistic pride while undermining these same values he purports to be fighting for. He bellows that he loves America -- but then stands in direct contrast to those most American values of liberty and equality. To me, this kind of thinking is more dangerous and frightening than 9/11; it's the ideology of terrorism, not the act itself, that is truly powerful. The widening rift between Democrats and Republicans (which the television pundits of both parties are directly responsible for) is causing a disturbing new sense of American extremism which, if allowed to grow unchecked, will leave this country weakened and open to destruction. Don't take my word for it; open a history book and look up Germany in 1933. Hitler didn't invent prejudice; he simply created an environment where it was acceptable for people to embrace their deepest, ugliest bigotries. Pat Buchanan is not Hitler, but this blinding racial propaganda cannot be allowed to fester in the minds and hearts of America's youth.

I think it's best if we take his unbelievably brazen assertions of white supremacy point by point. First, he asserts that white men were 100% of the people who wrote the Constitution. Please notice that he specifies that white men are the only Americans of any consequence here. Women presumably have no place at all in the history of this nation, so much so that he takes it for granted that we all already know this. Moving on: Were the 55 delegates present at the Philadelphia Convention white men? Well, yes, they were. Although slave labor represented roughly 1/5th of the American population at the time, we all remember from history class that they were considered to be subhuman. Famously, James Wilson and Roger Sherman drafted the "Three-Fifths Compromise" that allowed only 3/5 of slaves to be considered part of the US population; this was popularly (and correctly) understood as the Continental Congress saying that slaves were only 3/5 of a person. No, it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that politicians in 1787 weren't exactly queuing up to have a 'subhuman' representative in the elite halls of the Continental Congress.

This failure to do the right thing (along with Jefferson's capitulation while drafting the Declaration, which we'll get to in a moment) is considered by historians and anyone with a shred of common sense to be the first major failure of the government of the United States of America. For a group of people that had just liberated themselves from the mighty hand of tyranny, they sure were pretty quick to gloss over that sticky little issue of who exactly got to be free. I'm not saying the Continental Congress were a bunch of assholes (though Edward Rutledge definitely was one), but they weren't perfect, either, and they shouldn't be canonized because we have some mythical sentiment for men in powdered wigs waving quill pens about. Just because they were right to fight for our liberty doesn't mean they were right in everything else they did.

It's interesting that the only part of the Constitution Buchanan seems interested in is the part where a bunch of wealthy white men stood around endorsing it. He certainly makes no mention of what the Constitution actually said then, and especially not what it says now. For example, he conveniently seems to have forgotten the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, the Fifteenth Amendment, which stated "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude", and the Nineteenth Amendment, which legalized women's suffrage. In other words, he's not interested in the way America has grown and developed since the good ol' days of 1787; he'd rather we all focus on how great it used to be when only white men who owned property had any say in anything.

The case is much the same with his remarks about the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Buchanan professes a love for this iconic text, yet stands in direct contrast to its purpose and tone. I hate to be trite, but this line has become cliched for all the right reasons: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". It's right there, people: all men are created equal, with certain unalienable rights. Notably, the Declaration does not abolish slavery. This is not an oversight, but was considered by many delegates to be an unfortunate necessity. Jefferson's original submission of the Declaration of Independence included an article condemning King George for introducing the colonies to slavery and demanding abolition:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of a CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

Jefferson's Declaration was intended to truly establish equality for all men -- not just for those who were white. Edward Rutledge, historically acknowledged racist, refused South Carolina's support for such a declaration. Without South Carolina, the Declaration would not be adopted, and so the passage was stricken, to the lasting detriment of the Congress' reputation.

Since Buchanan idolizes these Founding Fathers, let's hear what a few of them had to say on the subject of black slavery and discrimination:

Benjamin Franklin: "It is an atrocious debasement of human nature...a source of serious evils."
John Jay: "The honour of the states, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused."
John Adams: "Slavery is a foul contagion to the human character, an evil of colossal magnitude."
James Madison: "The most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."
James Otis: "The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white and black."
George Washington: "There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it."

Hey, look at that. Even though they're the same white men who Buchanan admires for having the gumption to sign and support the Declaration, he chooses to ignore their sentiments on the perils of prejudice. Odd. It's almost as though he's picking and choosing which aspects of our country's founding document to support, isn't it?

Now we come to perhaps the most disturbing of Buchanan's intolerant assertions: that all soldiers who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg were white men. Before we can even begin to parse the specifics of this astounding bit of propaganda, it must be noted that Buchanan completely ignores the entire purpose of the war in which these two battles were fought: the divisive issue of slavery. Many people like to say that the reason the Civil War was fought was for money, not ideals. Well, duh. That statement applies to pretty much every war that's ever taken place. There's a simplistic truth in that, but the monetary issue at stake in 1865 was inextricably linked with human rights. The Civil War might have taken place because of money, but it was money gained from the slave trade, an issue that both incited Southerners to fight for their economic way of life and stirred Northerners to stamp out the hideous violation against man and God. Buchanan notes that a lot of people died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg without mentioning what a lot of them died for: equality.

Perhaps he thought by stating that the Declaration and Constitution were penned by 100% white men would lull you into a false sense of trust, therefore accepting everything else he said without question. The claim that 100% of Gettysburg and Vicksburg casualties were white men is a bald-faced lie as stunning in its audacity as it is appalling in its revisionist bigotry. In 1792, a Federal law was passed that barred black men from serving in the US Army (conveniently, this took place after black soldiers had fought in the Revolutionary War to ensure that the government could later legally oppress them). However, the Emancipation Proclamation cleared the way for these men to fight and die for their country and their hoped-for freedom. According to the US Archives, "Roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war -- 30,000 of infection or disease." This is in addition to the 10,000 Hispanic soldiers that fought, most notably David Farragut, the Naval War hero who famously said "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead."

Well, that's strange! I thought Pat Buchanan said everyone who died was white! I guess 40,000 black men just don't count as people, right, Pat? Oh, and let's not forget the 16 black soldiers and 2 Hispanic officers who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their valor. How many Medals of Honor does Pat Buchanan have again?

Let's not forget that the above quote only references the Union Army; some 50,000 black soldiers fought for the Confederacy as well. Many of them were killed at Gettysburg. Also, in the words of the irritating but brilliant Abigail Adams, "Remember the ladies"; there were several hundred women, black and white, who marched and fought with both armies. Presumably, most history teachers are too busy talking about hoop skirts to mention this.

Finally, we have the mindboggling claim that "close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy were white". Well, that's probably because the US Army was still forcibly segregated in the 1940's. If you were black and in the Navy, you had better like being in the kitchen, because you were going to be a cook no matter how good a sailor you were. 900,000 black soldiers fought in World War II, but their contributions were marginalized, because 1940s America wasn't exactly immune from the same prejudices then bringing death and despair to their European counterparts. The 1,500 man 320th battalion was solely comprised of black soldiers. They fought at Omaha Beach and the Battle of the Bulge. Plenty of them died on the beach at Normandy next to their white brothers. Collectively, these "buffalo soldiers" won 2 Medals of Honor, 2 Distinguished Service Crosses, 1 Distinguished Service Medal, 208 Silver Stars, 16 Legions of Merit, 6 Soldier's Medals, 1,166 Bronze Stars, and 1,891 Purple Hearts. The Tuskegee Airmen, America's first all-black air unit, also served with honor and great distinction. Around 300,000 Hispanic soldiers also fought in WWII, perhaps most notably at the Bataan death march. The 442nd, composed of Japanese American soldiers, fought bravely overseas while many of their families were being shipped to internment camps in the United States. They fought two wars: one against the enemies in the European/Pacific theaters, and one against the bigotry waiting for them back at home. People like Pat Buchanan would like you to generalize and simplify these facts, because they think it will be easier on your poor, small little brains, but the truth is infinitely more fascinating, complicated, and sad.

The essence of what Pat Buchanan is saying is that white people are somehow more American than everyone else. In this country, we don't decide citizenship based on some sliding scale of race, gender, sexual preference, age, religion, or how long you've been here. All Americans are equal, or we're supposed to be. It doesn't matter if you've been here since the Mayflower or if you got off a boat at Ellis Island. It doesn't matter if your ancestor was a Cherokee chief or if you immigrated here 2 years ago from Tikrit. If you're an American citizen, your rights are, and of a right ought to be, the same as everyone else's. That's our founding principle.

Obviously, I think Pat Buchanan is a bigoted white supremacist who flirts with the edge of Neo-Nazism. I think every word that comes out of his mouth is either supremely deluded or aggressively ignorant. However, as Noam Chomsky correctly observed, "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all". Pat Buchanan has the right to open his mouth and spew whatever kind of vitriolic trash he wants to -- and I have the right to contradict him. You have the right to defend your own ideals and principles. He shouldn't be silenced, and neither should you. Whatever you do, though, don't ignore him. People like Pat Buchanan aren't going away, and the most dangerous thing for our country is to allow his voice to be the only one that is heard.

I have no doubt that Pat Buchanan thinks he loves this country -- but his idea of America is quite different from reality. He can embrace the origin myth of kindly Puritans coming in and cooking turkeys for the Native Americans, the moonlight and magnolias of benevolent slave owners watching over their cherished Mammys, and all the other lies as much as he wants. The truth is that America is a lot more complicated than that, and just like loving a person, you have to take the good with the bad. America is Sacajawea helping Lewis & Clark, and it's also the Trail of Tears. It's Martin Luther King Jr's life, and it's his death. It's Rosie the Riveter, and it's Japanese internment camps. This is not a Democratic or Republican value; it's not liberal or conservative. It's American.

"This has been a country basically built by white folks." My, that is a stirring bit of patriotic rhetoric from a man who got out of going to Vietnam by claiming he had arthritis at the age of 22. I guess it's easier to honor a bunch of dead white American heroes than to actually be one yourself.

Posted by Nastinchka at July 17, 2009 08:28 PM