      |
|
|
 |
|
« Back to Is The West In Decline? (Part One) main page    Transcript for: Is The West In Decline? (Part One)Ben: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. Predicting doom for our Western civilization has become a cottage industry over the last century or so. Comes now Pat Buchanan’s new book, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization. The book has made the best seller list on both The New York Times and The Washington Post, not exactly home base for the so-called “Buchanan Brigades.”Pat Buchanan, a conservative commentator and former third party presidential candidate is a controversial fellow. He and I have engaged in many spirited debates over the years. In fact, the forthcoming issue of the American Enterprise magazine leads off with a pro and con argument between us on the topic of immigration. I am pleased to welcome Pat Buchanan to Think Tank. The topic before the house: Is the West in decline? This week on Think Tank. Pat, welcome. Pat: Thank you very much, Ben. Ben: I read your book very carefully. It seems to me it divides itself into four basic themes: population and demographics, the culture war, America’s role in the world, and American politics. Pat: Yes. Ben: And I’d like to go through each one of those and… Pat: Sure. Ben: because I don’t think we have similar views on that, as you know. Pat: Right. Ben: Why don’t you start out with the demographic picture? Pat: Well, there’s not a single country in the Western world that has a birthrate that will enable it to survive in its present form through the twentieth century. In the twentieth century according to UN statistics, Europe will lose a hundred and twenty-six million people, and third world countries will grow by the equivalent of thirty to forty Mexicos. And the median age in 2050 of Europe will be fifty years old. Ten percent will be over eighty. And this is a tremendous, devastating impact upon the dynamism of Europe. Ben, when you consider the oldest country in the world today is Japan, with a median age of forty-one, it appears to have lost its dynamism, or what Keynes called its “animal spirit.” So I think what’s gonna happen is, as European peoples in the United States, Australia, Russia die out, these great migrations, as I call them, are going to overwhelm the West and you cannot expect non-Western peoples to preserve Western culture and civilization. Ben: Well. Let me make a couple points because you know I’m writing a book on this topic as well, as I have in the past. Yours is called The Death of the West and mine is called Survival 101, tentatively, so there’s a different view here. Pat: You’re a survivalist. That’s outstanding. Ben: I am a survivalist and a triumphalist, to use the old language. Europe is indeed in a demographic ditch. The numbers are amazing. The total fertility rate in Europe is about 1.3 children per woman, as you point out in the book very clearly. That is well below the replacement rate required to keep a population just stable, absent immigration, over a period of time. However, even by 2050, there will still be six hundred million Europeans. By the end of the twenty-first century there’ll be five hundred million Europeans. It is a process not an event. It’s not suddenly someone throwing a switch saying, “Europe’s gone.” Pat: Well we’ve got disagreement there because some have projected by the end of the century only two hundred million. But, Ben, a country which has a median age or a continent that has a median age of fifty years old is a goner as far as any kind of influence, I think, on the world scene. Secondly, the massive numbers of immigrants that are gonna come from the African world and the Islamic world are gonna bifurcate and so change Europe that they’ll be in utter paralysis in terms of any kind of influence in the Islamic world. I think what you’re seeing is basically the mother countries are being colonized by the third world peoples that they colonized. Ben: Let’s try to do this one thing at a time. How old are you? Pat: I’m sixty-three. Ben: You’re sixty-three. You’re a pretty influential man. You’re thirteen years older than that fifty years you just cited. I’m a few years older than you. Pat: Um-hum. Ben: I like to think that because, through my television program, I’m still active, I’m still working. Why do you say that a society with a median age of fifty is de facto crippled? Pat: Ben, look when you and I get older, we don’t go out and spend a lot of money on carpets and rugs and fast cars. We don’t, the economy is… Ben: You went out and ran for President. You created a lot of jobs. You got all that money from the election commission. Pat: You know, a lot of my friends, you know what they talk about when I went to a party with my friends that grew up in northwest Washington with me? Retirement. Ben: Um-hum. Pat: They’re my age. I’m not. You’re an exception, Ben. And I’m an exception to a general rule. People our age are on golf courses in Florida. Ben: Yeah, but I talked to a Japanese demographer about this, and I don’t want to minimize this problem because it’s a very severe problem, particularly when you get to paying social security, you don’t have enough young people to pay for the older people, for the senior citizens. But he said, “Well you know it’s not such a terrible thing; you just have to redefine old.” Instead of giving social security at age sixty, or as we do at sixty-five, give it at age seventy, seventy-one. We’ve already raised it to sixty-nine. It is a real problem. It is not in itself a catastrophe. Pat: But Ben, in order to maintain the present ratio of workers, fifteen to sixty-five, they use the figure, to elderly over sixty-five, Europe, which is gonna have these 600 million European people, will have to import 1.4 billion people from Africa and the Middle East. Ben: Pat, I’ve seen those numbers. I mean, you know, that’s if you keep the identical proportion. I mean you don’t have to keep the identical proportion. The ratio would change if you raise the retirement age and the age of the workforce… Pat: Can you imagine raising the retirement age of social security in the United States, what would happen to the politician that did that? Ben: Well, Senator Dole and Senator Moynihan had a commission 1982, you must have been in the Reagan White House at that time. They cut a deal. They extended it from age sixty-five to age sixty-nine out in the distant future. It was no third rail. Nobody died. Democracies respond. But let’s mention one other thing. Well you’ve talked about Europe. There is another major piece of Western civilization. It’s the one we’re in right now. It’s the United States of America. We have almost three hundred million people because of immigration, which at times it seems in your book you detest, and you call it an immigration invasion. Pat: Right. Ben: In large measure, not entirely, because of immigration the United States is gonna grow from 300 million people to about 400 million people by the middle of this century. In other words, in another forty-five or fifty years. That’s a big strong, potent, wealthy, militarily powerful, culturally powerful nation. And to say that the West is dying when you have this sole surviving super power… Pat: It’s not gonna be a Western country. The majority of our people will be from the third world countries, from Africa, perhaps a hundred million from Latin America and from China and Asia. We will be a bifurcated country. The problem is the Mexican immigration, Ben. Not because they’re not good people and hardworking – they are. Not because folks from Mexico can’t assimilate – they can. But you cannot swallow a whole part of a nation, which is speaking Spanish, with a different culture and civilization, which is demanding open borders with another country, which wants dual citizenship. What is happening in the southwest United States is, they are recapturing that part of America culturally and socially the same way we took Texas from them and the same way incidentally China is taking the far east from Russia. Ben: Well we, okay, it’s a big book as I said. We—let’s deal with the Mexicans. Pat: Okay. Ben: …and we’re talking about the survival of Western civilization. That’s sort of the macro theme of the book. Pat: Right. Ben: Mexico and the rest of Latin America, its root, the what I think they call the padrones, the hegemonic roots of those societies, including Mexico, are two. They are the Catholic religion and the Spanish language. The Portuguese language in Brazil’s case. Now, last I heard Spain and Portugal are still part of Europe. Catholicism is a very vibrant part of Christianity. What is your problem with…and the Mexican immigration is only about a third of the—even counting illegals—is only about a third of our total immigration, what is your problem with…is it pigment? Pat: No, no, no. Let me say this. Ben: They’re of European, largely of European descent. Pat: Well, no, no, they’re of Indian descent. Ben: No. No, excuse me. Pat: Well okay. Ben: I mean, it varies from country to country. But they were settled by the… Pat: Spanish. Ben: Spanish. Pat: Yeah, but look, they’re a mixture of Spanish and Indian. But this is the point… Ben: So are Americans in the southwest. You know a lot of them claim, with great pride, my grandmother was a Choctaw, you know. Pat: Yeah, but look, what I’m saying is, well look, have American Indians themselves been assimilated fully into our society? I think you would agree they have not. Ben: I would not agree with that because of all…because of all the intermarriage. Pat: Listen, I’m saying some are, after hundreds of years, all right? Ben: Right. Pat: My point about this is color, obviously, only if someone is deeply racialist, would say color is everything. But color and ethnicity and race are certainly something. And racial groups that are different are more difficult to assimilate into a first world nation than folks, say, who came from Germany to the United States and are fully assimilated in America, so much so that nobody knows who they are, even though there are about 60 million of those folks. Ben: Look I’m trying to say that Mexican Americans, first of all they are only about a third of our immigrants. There’s almost an equal number of other Latin American immigrants in addition to Mexicans. They come from Western, basically Western civilization. They are Christians. Mexico is a member of the OECD already. It has 6,000 dollar per capita income. They have just elected the first opposition party President, Fox, the first opposition party. They are a nascent and in some ways vibrant democracy. Why are they an enemy? I don’t get it. Pat: They’re not an enemy, Ben. Ben: Well you say you call it an invasion. Pat: Well, Ben, what do you call five hundred thousand people breaking into your country every year illegally and staying in the United States, and a million and half being apprehended on the Mexican border? Let me say about Mister Fox. Ben: Okay. Pat: Mister Fox, in my judgment, is deliberately dumping his poor and unemployed on American taxpayers to educate and employ. They come in with a higher crime rate into this country than Native Americans. They consume more in taxes than they pay, these folks do. I admit they’re good folks. If I were a poor Mexican and I had that rotten a government that robbed me repeatedly with these devaluations and I had a lot of kids, I’d walk right into the United States too. But the point is, we have got to defend our country’s borders. As Ronald Reagan said, “A country that can’t defend its borders isn’t a country anymore.” Ben: Okay, I….I Pat: And if eleven million illegals doesn’t constitute an invasion, what’s your word for it? Ben: Well, I’ll tell you. First of all, it’s not eleven million, it’s eight million. I know there’s a variety of estimates. It’s eight million according to the Census Bureau. Pat: And eleven in Northeastern University. Ben: Right. Yeah, I said there are a variety—I saw that, I’ve never seen that before. There are eight million illegals on a base of three hundred million people, almost three hundred million people. So you’re talking about two or three percent of the population is illegal. And most of those, excuse me, most of those are not Mexicans. There a lot of Irish there. There a lot of Pols there who are here illegally. Pat: There’s a lot of al Qaida folks here. Ben: And there are a lot al Qaida people here and I…. Here’s a first, I agree with you about illegal immigration. I think I don’t think they really harm our economy that much, or at all, but just because it’s illegal, I think it robs people who are…there are twenty, thirty million people in the world who have applied… Pat: Who want to become Americans. Ben: …that want to become Americans and we shouldn’t let the illegals…. Pat: Now this is one area where I may agree with you, but I think it’s an irrelevant topic. People talk about economics. Ben: Right. Pat: A country is more than an economy. There’s no doubt about it. If we brought in a hundred million Chinese into California, the GDP would grow. In ten, fif—or twenty years, ninety-five percent of ‘em would be employed. They might drive down the average wage. But GDP would grow, but would it still be America in California? Ben: Yeah, but, Pat, we’re not taking in a hundred million Chinese. Pat: Yeah, but if we did? Ben: Yeah well, if we did, it would change the nature of the country, and then I would be sitting where you are and saying, “My God they’re swamping us,” probably. But just hold on a minute. In the early part of this century, 1900 to 1910, each year America took in one percent of its population as new immigrants, annually – one percent each year. Pat: Um-hum. Ben: The current rate in the 1990s is, counting illegals, one third of one percent. We, in terms of this swamping index, we were three times more swamped in 1900 to 1910 than we are today. Pat: Um-hum. Ben: So, and…and the other thing you mention is, well, they’re coming over with a flock of kids, you know, and you don’t blame them. You know, you did very good work on analyzing these, our friend Joe Chamie’s, United Nations numbers, but you know you forgot to turn the page. Turn a few pages further than that and you find that the Mexican total fertility rate, the number of children per woman, has gone in the last thirty years from seven children per woman to two point five children per woman. Pat: Um-hum. Ben: And it’s—there are many Mexican demographers who think it’s very close to replacement right now. If they kept and… will go below, if they kept their migration high and we let them in, which is another situation. Over an extended period of decades, you’d run out of Mexicans. Pat: Um-hum. Well, we took in about half of Ireland as I recall. Ben: Well, and…and… Pat: And it took, how long did it take? I mean they came in 1845 to 1850. Even by 1928 when Al Smith was nominated, they were not fully assimilated in society. There were a tremendous number of problems. That was four million folks. Ben, we have thirty-five million Hispanics in the country, where we had about two million in 1960. Ben: Well. Pat: And we are headed toward a hundred million. Now if you think that that enormous cohort can be assimilated into a first world country, I think you are taking a risk with the security and survival of your country. And I want to know why you’re taking this risk. Ben: Well I’ll tell you, one reason is I think that it’s good that the Irish came. Pat: Um-hum. Ben: I think you probably would agree with that. I think it’s good that the Jews came. I think it’s good the Italians came. I think it’s good that the Pols came and the Slavs came and the Germans came and the English came and the French came. That’s what makes America a great country. I do not feel threatened by our current rate of immigration which is, as I said, substantially lower proportionately than it used to be. And most of all, and here I think we have some common ground, American fertility rates, while higher than the European rates, are still below replacement. Without immigration, this country would stop growing. And if you were looking to prevent the death of the West, then you need numbers. And I’ll tell you one other thing about Mexican Americans, which is they serve disproportionately in the armed services of the United States, and they have disproportionately won medals for courage and valor in combat. Do you know that? Pat: Yes, I do know that and at the same, it’s also true of the Scotch-Irish. Look, there’s no doubt the Mexican-Americans have historically served in disproportionate numbers in the combat units of this country, and they’re good people. Ben, the problem is, you have 35 million, and you may have 100 million folks who come in speaking another language with a different culture. And you now have ethnic militancy, you have racial entitlements. Ben, in California right now a hundred thousand Anglos every year leave California. Their numbers are collapsing. African-Americans are leaving San Francisco. They’re the lowest number there they’ve ever been. I think California’s reaching the tipping point where it’s gonna be as much a part of Mexico as it is the United States. And that’s the breakup of our country. Ben: Well, you’ve written that, and you write it very eloquently in the book I must say. But, you know, look again, you’ll have to excuse me for going back to the data, but we do have a great institution here in the Census Bureau. One of the questions they ask is, “What language do you speak at home? What language, do you speak well?” You know, by the third generation, Latin Americans, not just Mexicans, just, I think, 96 percent speak English. And you hear complaints from Mexican grandfathers and some parents, “My kids don’t speak Spanish anymore.” I went through the same thing growing up in a Jewish neighborhood. You know, you’d hear a lot of Yiddish in the house. But the kids were playing stickball and following Joe DiMaggio and they didn’t... Pat: Okay, you and I grew up, I’m a member of the Silent Generation. And you may be as well, or maybe a little before. Ben: We weren’t so silent, but… Pat: You know, the group that was born in the ‘30s, basically. But, Ben, in this country, after the great wave of migration, what do we have? We had a forty-year period from about 1924 to 1965, a time-out, a moratorium. In that period, all the folks that did come here and did not know or understand America, but want to be Americans, first their kids were dropped into that melting pot and their kids were in the melting pot so that in the 1950s, 97 [percent] of us spoke English, we listened to the same radio programs, we’d gone through the war experience as little kids, we were melded into one nation, one people. I went to a parochial school up in northwest and I didn’t know that these guys were Polish kids or Italian kids I was playing ball with. Or even that I was Scotch Irish-and Irish, or German. It, we all, we were all Americans. We need a time-out so this can work. I don’t doubt it can work if we work together and rebuild the melting pot and take a time-out. But you want a hundred million people… Ben: No, no… Pat: And you may overwhelm it. Ben: I don’t want that. Pat: But you talk about four hundred million yourself, and there’s only three hundred million now. Ben: Well yeah, but the, it’s not a hundred million new immigrants. Pat: But you said the other groups are dying out. Ben: Well, there is fertility increased due to demographic momentum. There’s birth. There’s increased life expectancy. There’s a lot of things that go into that four hundred million number. But let me just say one thing. You know, you keep talking about the sort of irridentist feeling of Mexicans in Southern California. I’ve checked that out with some people who have some, also some pretty tough views on the Mexican-American immigration, like Peter Scarry and others. You know, the, what is that called, the A... Pat: Aztlan and la Reconquista. Ben: La Reconquista, the sort of uh… Pat: Reconquest. Ben: Reconquest. You know, that’s eleven guys in a freshman class getting together. That is not what Mexican-Americans are thinking about. They know which side of the border the prosperity is on. They are loyal citizens. They are voting in larger numbers. Pat: Ben, the Presidents of Mexican walk into our country and say, in audiences, “You are Mexicans who live north of the border.” Why doesn’t of the President of the United States say, “Get out of this country with that kind of language. These are our citizens.” Ben: Listen, Pat, I don’t have to tell you that politicians speak politically. I mean, you know, sure, that’s a good thing for President Fox to say. I didn’t like it, frankly. But it is not such an unusual thing. Let me say one other thing about the southwest, particularly Southern California, which I know something about. The idea that that is gonna go back to Mexico, becoming an American Quebec, you know, you have large populations there of Koreans, of Chinese, of Japanese, of Iranians, of Russian Jews, of Filipinos, of Poles, I mean you have every kind—Italians—you have every country in the world there. Those people did not immigrate to the United States for their kids to end up speaking Spanish or to become part of Mexico. That’s not gonna happen. Pat: Seventy-five percent of the American people agree with me, we ought to have a moratorium. Ninety-five percent want illegal immigration, not only halted, but illegals sent back. Ninety-five percent want English made the official language. Why cannot the views of the people of the United States be represented in the policies of the government of the United States? Ben: Well, again, I think you’ve sort of conflated a few numbers. Seventy-five percent of the people don’t say we should have fewer immigrants. About fifty percent of the people in America say we should have either the same or more. Now if you put the same with those against, you can build a number. But most people are not saying, “Cut immigration way back.” That is not happening. And the other thing is, you say a moratorium. And I think in your book you say two or three years. You know, I got a funny feeling. I just, I say to my…in my mind, I say, “Can I visualize Pat Buchanan getting on television and saying, ‘Now is the time to end that moratorium.’”? Ben: And, you know, I gotta tell you that is, I don’t think you would say that. Pat: What are you afraid of? If we have a moratorium are you afraid, if all these folks want higher immigration, that Buchanan would be so persuasive they would maintain the moratorium? Ben: No, what I’m afraid of is exactly what you were blessing is that you would go for forty years until… Pat: But how would I accomplish it if the people agree with you? Ben: …we reformed that and then you would have an America getting…going through what Europe is going through, which you and I both view with alarm. Pat: We are taking an incredible risk, as Professor Huntington, Samuel Huntington, argues himself. And I don’t know why we are taking it. Ben: …and you keep bringing up, and Sam Huntington keeps bringing up, how religion is this powerful uniting force of a civilization. And I happen to agree with that. So these are European descendants, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking part of Europe and largely Catholic. I, you know, I don’t get it. Pat: I think they’re predominantly Indian folk. Ben: No, that’s not it. Pat: All right, coming in from Mexico. Secondly, when they come, we can get on to the culture if you like, but when they come in they get caught up in the cultural revolution that has gone through this country for the last 35 years. They lose their faith just like anybody does that comes to this country and they take on the aspect of the counter-revolution, just like most of the kids that have grown up in the counter revolution. And their behavior, the behavior of the young is not like devout Catholic kids that grew up the way I did in the fifties. Ben: I understand. But the behavior of devout Catholic kids, and I knew a lot of them when I was growing up in the Bronx, and the Jews and the Catholics were not exactly, you know, singing “It’s a great big wonderful wide world” together at that time. But it’s those Catholics and those Protestants and those Jews from European nations that have formed what you call the other side of the culture war. This has not been ginned up by immigration, Pat. Pat: Oh, no, it’s not been ginned up. But the elite, it’s, well frankly most of the problems in the world are the responsibility of white folks, no doubt about it. We fought against white folks in every single war, including the Cold War. But it is the cultural revolution, what I call cultural Marxism. Ben: Yeah, we’re gonna, that’s Part Two, okay. Pat: Well, Cultural Marxism is the work, the product of white intellectuals. Ben: OK, we’ll have to end it there. For now. Pat Buchanan, thank you for joining us. And thank you. Pleases join us for a subsequent episode of Think Tank, when we will continue our discussion: Part Two, Is the West in decline? Don’t forget to send us your comments via e-mail. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
  Web development by Bean Creative. |