Are We Still A Nation And Can We Be Without Being A People?

Pat Buchanan penned an article for Independence Day that covered a lot of the same ground that I did in my post yesterday and asked a very serious question, Is America Still A Nation?. That is a question a lot of people are asking and alongside that question we are revisiting the topic of what it means to be a people. Pat quotes the references to being one people from the Declaration, the Constitution and even from the Federalist No. 2 and specifically speaking of the words of John Jay he asks:

If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one nation and one people?

We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country. We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago ceased to profess the same religion. We are Evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.

Federalist No. 2 celebrated our unity. Today’s elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength. But is this true or a tenet of trendy ideology?

Pat then comes to the same question that so many are pondering today. In the Declaration of Independence the words used spoke of dissolving the bonds that unite us and Pat wonders "Are we approaching such a point? " of dissolving those bonds once again. I think we all know deep down that we are. People of traditional American stock, White Europeans of various sorts, increasingly have nothing in common with each other much less with minorities and not only little in common but the competing groups are openly hostile toward one another. Scratch that, only some groups are allowed to be openly hostile. The rest of us are so far relegated to online ranting and a slow, simmering burn. When the people who built this land and provided a superior way of life to so many ungrateful net takers have now been reduced to tax cattle, government controlled livestock permitted just enough sustenance to keep us showing up to work and paying taxes to fund benefits for others, it is only a matter of time before that simmering resentment explodes.

Pat Buchanan has been kind of a lonely voice for many years on the public stage. Once relegated to the wilderness for his political incorrectness, he now is back in full force. At 78 he has lived long enough to see a lot of what he warned us about coming true. If he lives another 15 years one wonders if he will survive to see the United States of America dissolve and/or collapse. It is not the outcome he hoped for but it is the outcome he was prescient enough to see coming. I guess we should have listened to him a few decades ago. I wonder what this country would be like if Pat had won the GOP nomination in 1996 and run against Clinton instead of Viagra-popping, stage falling off, self-referencing automation Bob Dole. If he had won the general election, would we be in this state? Perhaps but at least we would have had a fighter in the White House.