Is That A Serious Question? - revisited

I do not remember ever being particularly moved by anything Pat Buchanan said or wrote.  What little I do seem to remember leads me to the conclusion that the man is out to promote himself more than to further any particular philosophy.  It's not that I ignore him or turn the noise down or change the channel, as if he were a Clinton, Obama or McCain.  With Buchanan, I try to listen, but just tune out after two or three minutes, since that is how long it takes for the self-promotion to kick in.  He is very similar in that way to the likes of Ron Paul and Bill O'Reilly.  Each of these reminds me of the self-centered party goer who brings his own bottle of wine to the party, because whatever the host has is not good enough for him.

Actually (you may find this hard to believe, I suppose), the intent of this post is not to bash Mr. Buchanan per se, but to address a column by him, posted on Townhall.com, entitled Is America Coming Apart?  I did read this one through to the end because he occasionally writes something that is worth reading.  In this case, I have yet to decide what his purpose is for a piece like this.  The obvious choices would be:  he needs the money, to keep his name out there, or he was suffering from jet lag.  Otherwise, I can't see why he would expend any mental effort on such drivel because it has no meat on its bones.  In today's vernacular, it comes across as a fluff piece.

I mean, is there any question in your mind about whether America is coming apart?  Has no one been watching  the un-constitutional or treasonous actions of our congress and White House denizens over the last couple of decades, reaching alarming levels in 2006 with George Bush totally abandoning even the pretense of conservatism?  And now we are at the critical point, with the ascendancy of the socialist congress and the election of a full blown socialist engineer who,  through the hiring of dedicated communists, socialists, Marxists and general all around nut cases into powerful positions with no accountability, is subverting our Constitution.  I think the question would more accurately be "Is America Purposefully Being Driven Apart?" 

It's not that any one of his statements is necessarily wrong, but rather that the totality is just so shallow, based as it is on comparing actions by the Right and Left to arrive at - nothing!  No hint is given as to what Mr. Buchanan's personal conclusion is.  That is, undoubtedly, a nice approach when the author intends to make one think, but there is nothing of substance to chew on in this article - the facts are what the facts are.

There is one aspect to this that I feel Mr. Buchanan could have addressed to actually salvage this piece and have a chance to influence some thought, that being:  what are the implications of the success of the relative positions to our way of life?  Instead, his approach leaves one to the inference that he believes that there is moral equivalence between the opposing positions in the examples used - it's just that people have differences of opinion. 

Well, there is a major difference between the positions described.  All one has to do is to ask the question "What are the opposing positions based on?"  The answer, of course, is that the positions of one side are generally based on the Constitution and the belief that we should have the freedom to pursue the best life that we are capable of, based on our own merits and/or hard work.  The positions of the other side appear to be focused on leading us into a world that may eerily resemble that of George Orwell's  1984.  Each of us has to decide, while we can, whether that should make a difference in what we want our country to be for ourselves and our future generations.

We'll know the early fruits of our collective decision in the results of the 2010 congressional elections.  I just wish Mr. Buchanan, and a lot of other "real" conservative writers, with national audiences, would concentrate their considerable talents on the things that really matter:  things that would generate a powerful urgency in our fellow countrymen to turn out the congressional scoundrels in 2010, and give us a start back to political sanity.

Keep in mind this observation by William E. Simon:  "Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote."