After ploughing through 336 customer reviews, I find myself deeply saddened. The proof is right here that at least one of Buchanan's theses is correct. We are two nations. It was obvious to some of us when we saw the results of the 2000 election. America is split down the middle, and Pat Buchanan represents one half, Bill Clinton the other half. There can be no middle ground, precisely for the reasons he gives. We are in the midst of a civil war, a cold war; it has been called "the culture war." It has also been said that it is a war for the soul of America. Nowhere have I seen that thesis born out as much as in these reviews.
I am a retired teacher of history and have been a researcher all of my adult life. It was interesting to me that the positive reviews all claimed that Buchanan was telling the truth, and his documentation was superb. The negative reviews contained either a claim that it was badly written and inaccurate (no examples were provided) or simply expressed feelings of disgust and anger. One person called attention to Santayana's paraphrase of Thucydides, "Those who refuse to learn from History are condemned to repeat it." The positive reviewers often suggested that the negatives were ignorant and probably had not read the book. I disagree.
They are not ignorant. They are miseducated. They did read the book but did not understand it. Piles of books have been written about the "dumbing down" of America during the past half century and particularly about revisionist history, which I did not notice anyone mentioning. I am 80 years old and attended college in the forties. For ten years I worked as a journalist. When I went into teaching in 1955, I was appalled at how much education had changed since the war of "The Greatest Generation." We weren't the greatest generation. We were only the last generation which came of age in a moral world. Writers today contrast our world with that of the fifies. It is because they are so young. In the fifties we were already heading for disaster, but I was acquainted with no one who saw it except myself. I had available only Brave New World and 1984 to justify my view. When I predicted the amoral world of today I was told I was an "alarmist", that I was making a mountain out of a molehill.
The key to Buchanan's book is in the title, as it should be. It seemed to me that few of the reviewers, positive or negative, saw the big picture. They were either concerned with immigration or "white supremacy" or contemporary Christians. Only a few mentioned the "culture war." But that is what it is all about, the death of a civilization the like of which this earth has never known before or elsewhere. Buchanan has the disadvantage of having run for office, so on the surface it appears that he is making a political point. This is not so.
The negative reviewers all agree with Jesse Jackson leading his followers across the Stanford campus, chanting, "Hey,hey, ho, ho. Western Civ has got to go!" That's what the war is about.
Back in the sixties I read Stephen Benet's short story, "Last of the Legions" to my classes. It was about a legionaire in Britain in the last days of the Roman Empire. It is a deeply moving story, and most of the students were moved. We talked about it in comparison with what was happening to our own civilization. Most were concerned, but three girls agreed that they didn't care because "We won't be around anyway."
Here is the difference between our culture today and the civilization which started on the downward path in 1939. Before the second half of the twentieth century, everyone thought of "posterity." Hardly anyone does today, even among those who cherish our civilization. And therefore women are not having children.
One final note. In the fifties I was sure there was a conspiracy to make ignoramuses of our children, but I had no idea who were the conspirators. I am grateful to Mr. Buchanan for supplying the names. At that time I was a fan of Erich Fromm because of his book, "The Art of Love," which, it appears, was a great scam. It is all very dismaying. Only a miracle can save our beloved heritage. That makes me think about the disintegration of the Soviet Union. After thirty-five years in which a man known as Brother Andrew smuggled Bibles behind the Iron Curtain, just before the fall he was invited to a conference in which there were Russion delegates. He met a Russian official who told him that his book, God's Smuggler, had been read by every official in Moscow and that they all owned Bibles. Unbelievable? Christians would answer that nothing is impossible to God.
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Came in perfect condition. My son was very happy to get this for his birthday.
Top reviews from other countries
Mohammad Ali Malik
Excellent book written by a great author
Reviewed in Canada on July 24, 2023
Filip Stojak
'The Death of the West' is without a doubt Pat Buchanan's magnum opus.
Reviewed in Germany on March 8, 2016
Fons Jena
A must read for every human (especially socialists)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 23, 2011