http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/010604G.shtml
The Numbers Game
By Jim Motavalli
E/The Environmental Magazine
January/February 2004
Myths, Truths and Half-Truths About Human Population Growth and
the Environment.
Theres a minefield in the American environmental movement, and
its name is population. Because negotiating that minefield is so
dangerous, many environmental groups and leaders have stopped
trying to cross it. But to ignore population as a central issue
while talking freely about sprawl, air and water pollution, loss of
biodiversity, agricultural land and animal habitat, global warming
and many other crucial environmental issues is to deny reality.
Population andin particularimmigration are never easy topics. At
least in the U.S., population growth is closely tied to
immigration. If you subtracted post-1990 immigration, the U.S.
would have a population around 310 million in 2050; with current
immigration, the Census Bureau says it could be 438 million. The
population could double by 2100, with two-thirds of that growth
attributed to immigration.
Some of the consequences of our rapid growth: With U.S.
population growing by three million a year, we lose two acres of
farmland every minute, according to the American Farmland Trust.
Traffic congestion costs drivers $78 billion a year, says the Road
Information Project. A serious water shortage is developing
nationwide, with aquifers once considered inexhaustible drying up.
Syndicated columnist Lou Dobbs argues that immigration-fueled
population growth is putting a heavy burden on our abundant natural
resources, and that at the present rate the U.S. wont be exporting
food at all by 2025.
Some of these problems feed on each other. Population growth
increases U.S. greenhouse gas production, which in turn makes
existing crises more acute. For instance, one study suggests that
most of the entire western United Statesalready severely
water-challengedcould experience a 40 to 76 percent drop in
precipitation levels because of climate change.
The U.S. experience is reflected internationally. From 6.3
billion people on the planet today, the United Nations projects 8.9
billion in 2050. (And thats just the middle of three possibilities;
on the high end, the population could grow to 10.6 billion, while
7.4 billion is on the low end.) If fertility were to remain
constantwhich is not likelythe UN projects that the population of
the world could actually double by 2050, to 12.8 billion.
We need a new understanding of the effects of population growth,
because much of what passes for accepted wisdom on the subject is
either wrong or only partly right. In many cases these commonly
held notions grew out of political expediencytheyre what we want to
believeso its all the more necessary to subject them to an
objective review. So heres a look at some myths, half-truths and
truths, with all the shading in between:
MYTH
World population, far from being a problem, is actually shrinking
because of the global birth dearth.
There is indeed a population shortfall trend developing in
Western Europe, Russia and Japan (see The Birth Dearth, Currents,
September/October 2003). In Ireland, for instance, families have an
average of 1.8 children today, slightly below replacement level.
Couples in Italy, Germany and Spain have just 1.2 to 1.3 children
each. The average fertility rate in Europe is 1.45. Both Russia and
Japan are at 1.3.
But its simply not true, as the conservative Center for
Bio-Ethical Reform writes, that the problem today is not
overpopulation; its under-population. The reason that isolated
birth dearths dont produce lower numbers is the very rapid
population increase in the worlds least-developed countries. The
population of the most heavily industrialized regions of the world
grows at an annual rate of just .25 percent, reports the UN,
compared to a rate of 1.46 percentsix times fasterin the
less-developed countries.
We are currently adding 77 million people to the globe annually,
with 21 percent of that increase coming from India, 12 percent from
China and five percent from Pakistan. Three countries, Bangladesh,
Nigeria andsurprise!the United States each contribute four percent
of the worlds annual growth. Half of the projected increase will
occur in just eight countries, seven of them in Africa and Asia.
Population grows rapidly in the U.S., despite a near zero-growth
fertility rate of 2.05 in 2002, because of the impact of immigrants
and their descendants (who tend to have large families, according
to the Census Bureau). Because of this, American population is
growing as fast as in some of the more populous Third World
countries.
The bottom line is that population in 30 developed countries
(excluding the U.S.) will likely not grow much at all through 2050,
but in the U.S. and the Third World it will rise steadily, to 7.7
billion or more.
HALF-TRUTH
Sprawl and the rapid decline in open space are caused by bad
development policies and our love of the automobile.
Obviously, the car is a major culprit in the sprawl phenomenon.
America now has more automobiles than it has drivers, and the auto
industry (in close consultation with the highway lobby) has been
influencing, if not controlling, development policy since the end
of World War II. Cheap mortgages courtesy of the GI Bill made
suburbia possible. Each new subdivision claims open space.
The rush to the suburbs was also spurred by the urban riots of
the 1960s, which emptied out inner cities. But population growth,
plain and simple, is the 900-pound gorilla that gets ignored when
sprawl is discussed.
The U.S. had 150 million people in 1950, when the suburbs were
new. By 2000, just 50 years later, we had 275 million. Each year,
says the organization Population-Environment Balance (PEB), we
convert to human use an area the size of Delaware, including
400,000 acres of arable land.
We can, and should, get serious about smart growth, greenbelts,
New Urbanism, redevelopment infill and land-use planning. But we
cant solve the sprawl problem by simply moving people to
high-density cities, even smartly managed urban centers like
Portland, Oregon. Ecological footprint studies show that cities use
the resources and waste disposal capacity of an area many times
their size in the surrounding countryside. Thats why New Yorks
garbage barge became famous.
Immigration exacerbates sprawl because it is a primary
contributor to population growth: A study by Californians for
Population Stabilization (CAPS) concluded that immigration was
responsible directly and indirectly for 98 percent of Californias
soaring population. The common perception is that immigration does
not exacerbate sprawl, because new immigrants move to urban areas.
But half the countrys immigrants now live in suburbs, and only 24
percent of immigrant homebuyers settle in central cities.
Although some formerly industrial rust belt cities spread out
even as they are losing population, the general rule is that sprawl
accompanies population growth. On average, according to the Center
for Immigration Studies report Outsmarting Smart Growth, states
that grew in population by more than 30 percent between 1982 and
1997 sprawled 46 percent. States that grew by 10 percent or less
sprawled only 26 percent. Add 10,000 people to a states population
and youll lose, on average, 1,600 acres of land to development.
BOTH TRUE & FALSE
Population isnt the problem; its high western consumption rates
and waste.
There is certainly a very solid basis for this argument.
According to the TV documentary Affluenza, Even though Americans
comprise only five percent of the worlds population, in 1996 we
used nearly a third of its resources and produced almost half of
its hazardous waste. The average North American consumes five times
as much as an average Mexican, 10 times as much as an average
Chinese and 30 times as much as the average person in India. Its
obvious that reducing our sky-high western consumption rates would
be a big help.
Without a doubt, high consumption rates and rapid population
growth work together to degrade the environment, and both need to
be addressed globally. Unfortunately, however, reducing consumption
is very difficult to achieve on a national basis, and international
momentum is toward emulating high American levels of it, not
modeling Third World frugality. As William Ryerson pointed out in
his 16 Myths About Population Growth, published by the Carrying
Capacity Network, developing countries want cars, televisions and
other signs of western prosperity. China, which is rapidly
expanding its highway network and encouraging private car
ownership, will likely surpass the U.S. as a global warming gas
emitter by 2015.
The overall news is not good. The UNs panel on climate change
projects that by 2025 developing countries could be emitting four
times as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as they do today. Whats true of
CO2 is also true of other measures of consumption. The rapid Third
World switch to a meat-based diet is one measure of the trend.
DOGMA
Efforts to reduce fertility and population size in the Third
World are anti-woman.
The most prominent spokesperson for this viewpoint is probably
Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population and Development Program
at Hampshire College and a co-founder of the Committee on Women,
Population and the Environment (CWPE). Population stabilization
(which she calls neo-Malthusianism) is powerful in the U.S. because
it resonates so well with domestic racism and sexism, she wrote in
1999. Images of over-breeding single women of color on welfare and
bare-breasted, always pregnant Third World women are two sides of
the same nasty coin. And both groups, it is believed, are excellent
candidates for social engineering. Insert Norplant, tie their
tubes, put them to work in fast-food chains or sweat shops, and
give them a little micro-credit and education if youre feeling
generous.
Hartmann says in a message to E that its virtually impossible to
detach the immigration debate from race. Her group, CWPE, rejects
the notion that population size and growth are primarily
responsible for environmental degradation. This notion is created
and spread by an alliance between the mainstream media,
environmental organizations and population control advocates,
especially in the United States.
Asked by New Statesman how she reconciles her pro-choice,
anti-population control views, Hartmann responded, A lot of people
find this hard to understand. But for me, family planning is about
human rights and womens healthnot population control. It is about
freeing women to have the number of children they want, not blaming
them for a whole host of social problems. She believes that family
planning should be detached from population control, and its
primary goal should be to meet womens needs first.
While China has a coercive policy that legally restricts births
and presents human rights challenges, Hartmann goes further and
concludes that even voluntary programs are oppressive to women. But
there is considerable evidence that women (and their children) are
primary victims of overpopulation and, when asked, seek out family
planning aid. According to the National Audubon Societys Patrick
Burns, Women started the family planning movement, lead the family
planning movement, and buy almost all the contraception in the
entire world. Why? Women want to have control over their lives and
determine the number, timing and spacing of their children. William
Ryerson of the Population Media Center adds, Women who live in
societies where they have power over their own lives tend to use
family planning much more frequently than in countries where they
are relatively powerless.
Although Hartmann and CWPE support womens right to safe,
voluntary birth control and abortion, they strongly oppose
demographically driven population policies. In other words, theyre
in favor of making contraception widely available, but against
tying it to any national plan to address population growth. They
decry not only Chinas coercive program, but also, because its
stated aim is reducing population size, Irans commendable
grassroots effort to make birth control widely available, which has
cut the growth rate in half. (The policy encourages women to wait
three to four years between pregnancies, discourages childbearing
for women younger than 18 or older than 35, and encourages
three-child limits, which would certainly appear to be
demographically driven.)
Hartmann has energetically attacked what she sees as a nefarious
cabal promoting anti-immigrant and anti-population growth attitudes
in the U.S. (the greening of hate, she calls it), but in fact the
media treats the subject gingerly, if at all. Population activist
Virginia Abernethy, a PEB board member and Vanderbilt University
professor, offers this rejoinder, In an interview with New
Scientist [Feb. 2003], Betsy Hartmann attacks so many eminent
scientists without good reasonthat perhaps we should feel honored
by all the attention.
HALF-TRUTH
Education will greatly contribute to the reduction of fertility
rates.
Education usually does produce smaller families, but there are
exceptions. Tanzania had achieved 90 percent female literacy by the
early 1990s, but parents in 2002 had an average of 5.3 children,
more than double the replacement rate. A study by Charles Westoff
of Princeton Universitys Office of Population Research found a
strong relationship between education and family size in some
countries, and a weak or non-existent connection in others.
Studies done for the Demographic and Health Surveys in the 1990s
indicated that half of the women identified as having an unmet need
for contraception would not use it even if it were available.
Specific education about family planning could make a difference in
this number, since lack of knowledge was the most frequently cited
reason for not using birth control in a Kenyan survey. Its
interesting to note that soap operas presenting birth control in a
positive light led to increased contraceptive use a
d changed
attitudes in India, Kenya and Mexico.
Obviously, cultural beliefs are not necessarily altered by
educational attainment, and they play a big part in attitudes
toward birth control. Religion might also be expected to play a
large part, but its plain that family planning is firmly embraced
in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and in the Catholic countries of
Europe, which have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world.
But no matter how their congregants actually behave, some religious
denominations, including Catholicism, some Islamic orders and the
Southern Baptist Convention, continue to be strident voices against
family planning. The ban on artificial birth control is total and
absolute, wrote the popular magazine The Catholic Answer.
HALF-TRUTH
Population growth does not lead to hunger and starvation; its an
equitable distribution problem.
While it is undeniably true that the world currently produces
enough food for our burgeoning population, and that it is uneven
distribution that produces hunger, the long-term production outlook
is ominous. Worldwatch reports that the growth in agricultural
production has slowed steadily since the 1960s as populations soar,
crops approach their biological maximum yield, arable land is lost
and global fisheries crash. Genetic engineering, seen by some as a
panacea for increasing yields, could actually backfire and make the
situation even more desperate, reports Innovest Strategic Value
Advisors.
While the raw numbers on global malnutrition are declining, in
countries such as Haiti rapid population growth has led to an
ongoing human rights crisis. Nearly 70 percent of all Haitians
depend on subsistence agriculture in one of the most devastated
environments on Earth, where only 30 percent of the land is
suitable for cultivation. In Haiti (fertility rate 4.3 in 2002), a
substantial share of poverty is also traceable to rapid population
growth pressing upon limited endowments of soils and clean water,
says an American University report entitled Deforestation in Haiti.
It adds, Deforestation and population growth, coupled with years of
repression and colonial intervention has caused the uprooting of
hundreds of thousands of Haitians.
Haiti has the fourth most undernourished people on Earth, says
the World Bank, and only 40 percent of its eight million people
have access to fresh water. Haiti, then, has a population problem
coupled with a political problem. International aid plus the
dedicated work of foreign support groups such as Partners in Health
are not able to compensate for a devastated environment supporting
too many people.
Arguments that equitable distribution would feed the world, while
possibly true, would have more weight if the world was actually
moving in that direction. In fact, Tracy Kidder reports in The
Nation that development aid to Haiti has actually declined by
two-thirds since 1995.
Mia MacDonald of Worldwatch notes that a billion people are
likely to be added to the Indian subcontinent in the next 50 years,
at the same time the region faces a huge freshwater crisis. One has
to wonder whether it makes sense to spend scores of billions of
dollars to revamp irrigation systems and build new dams, when so
little money is invested in tackling the root of the problemhuman
population growth, she writes. Pakistan is likely to double its
population, to 332 million, by 2050. The $11 billion it is spending
on the Kalabagh Dam could double Pakistans investment in family
planning for the next 50 years.
MYTH
Contraceptive use is widely accepted, and U.S. aid is increasing
availability.
As the Population Resource Center notes, The amount of
[population] growth in the developing world will depend largely on
womens access to education and health care, especially family
planning services. Since most population growth is in these
countries, this is where the worlds attention should be focused.
Family planning aid can lead to dramatic reductions in population
growth, but unforeseen obstacles can also prevent that from
happening. In Kenya, where the Catholic Church has led public
condom burnings, there is 90 percent access to contraceptives but
only a third of the population is using them, according to Kenyas
own figures. A 1991 study indicated that only half the women
characterized as having an unmet need would use condoms if they
were available.
The 1994 UN conference on population and development defined
access to reproductive and sexual health services as a human right.
Unfortunately, that right is not being met. Although 60 percent of
married women worldwide use contraception, only 10 percent of
married women in sub-Saharan Africa do. The current unmet need for
contraception averages 70 percent in Asia and Latin America. Around
the world, 123 million women do not have adequate access to family
planning.
The country most able to help is AWOL. The U.S. has traditionally
been the largest source of family planning assistance, but under
President Bush it has drastically changed course for political
reasons. In the face of unprecedented demand, the Bush
administration (which continues to simplistically link birth
control with abortion) has cut funding dramatically for
international family planning aid, and consistently attempts to
eliminate all aid for the agency best able to guide global
population policy, the United Nations Population Fund.
The Bush administrations policy will undoubtedly mean more
abortions, not fewer. Widespread family planning availability tends
to reduce abortion rates, as has been well-documented in several
recent studies, says Robert Engelman, vice president for research
at Population Action International (PAI). Family planningand good
reproductive healthcan only contribute to making all pregnancies
wanted pregnancies and reducing abortion rates, adds MacDonald.
According to the coalition Saving Womens Lives, the consensus
reached during the 1990s at various UN conferences was that global
spending for family planning should total $17 billion by 2000, and
$18.5 billion by 2005. Thats the goal. In reality, in 2000 donor
countries actually provided only half of the $5.7 billion they
pledged.
QUANDARY
Population growth can only be addressed globally. Its selfish to
worry about immigration levels in the U.S.
Its unambiguously true that population growth is a global problem
needing global solutions, but these are in woefully short supply.
Groups such as Population Connection (formerly Zero Population
Growth) speak vaguely about solving global poverty to ease
emigration pressures but are short on specifics. Although we
definitely do need global solutions, the late Garrett Hardin
pointed out that population policy is actually set on the national
level, and it is therefore at the whim of localized cultural and
religious norms.
Americans must address the full consequences of high immigration
numbers in the U.S. As Lester Brown of Earth Policy Institute has
argued, high emigration may offer countries a safety valve,
allowing them to continue with high fertility rates. This situation
can reverse itself, as in Ireland, where historically high
fertility and record high emigration have been replaced with
below-replacement level fertility and immigration surpassing
emigration.
Another important fact is that immigrants quickly adopt the high
consumption patterns of their host country, putting larger strains
on natural resources. As the Journal of Housing Research notes, The
aggregate housing consumption of immigrants will rise substantially
in the next 15 years as past waves of immigrants move up the
housing consumption ladder. Energy use provides another dramatic
example. Negative Population Growth reports that per-capita energy
consumption barely rose between 1970 and 1990 because of
energy-efficiency gains and conservation, but total U.S. energy use
rose 36 percentbecause of the larger, immigration-driven U.S.
population.
FALSE
Calls to reduce immigration are inherently racist.
Immigration is never an easy topic. Strictly speaking,
immigration by itself may not lead to higher world populationit
just moves people around. Immigrants have always been among the
most scapegoated people in America. In 1855, the Chicago Tribune
thundered, Who does not know that the most depraved, debased,
worthless and irredeemable drunkards and sots which curse the
community are Irish Catholics? Such sentiments were common even in
the shadow of Ellis Island, as Martin Scorseses film Gangs of New
York makes clear.
The fear of alien hordes is still used to stir people up today.
Alabamas Auburn Plainsman recently opined, It is time to close the
borders, because continued mass immigration will only persist to
erode what is left of the West in America. If it continues,
logically it follows that in a few generations Western civilization
will be extirpated from America.
The key to this kind of demonizing is creating a dividing line
between immigrants and real Americans. According to nativist writer
Sam Francis, immigrants just work here, or hang out, on welfare,
dealing drugs, or doing whatever they do. But their real loyalties
lie elsewhere, namely in the countries they came from. Americans
for Immigration Control further warns, Fewer than 15 percent of our
immigrants come from Europe and share the heritage that made
America strong. Groups like the American Patrol offer convenient
one-click service for reporting illegal aliens.
Chris Simcox and his so-called Civil Homeland Defense Corps have
actually patrolled the Mexican border looking for illegal
immigrants to humanely repatriate. We cannot let [the Mexicans]
export their failures, Glenn Spencer of the Arizona-based American
Border Patrol told the Los Angeles Times. They are a threat to our
entire culture. Commentator and former presidential candidate Pat
Buchanan pronounced, The Third Worldization of California is now
far advanced.
Fear of being lumped in with groups like this has led many
mainstream environmental organizations to avoid the population
issue, and particularly immigration. But the fact remains that
human population growth is a root cause of environmental
degradation, and the U.S. population (fertility rate 2.05) would
hardly be growing at all were it not for immigration. But the
ethnicity and race of these immigrants doesnt matter at allits the
numbers, plain and simple.
The loss of immigrants of European origin is used as a code
phrase to avoid saying the obvious: that the new immigrants are
primarily people of color. Writer Peter Brimelow, author of Alien
Nation, says, The U.S. population is going to be vastly larger,
much more non-white and much less skilled than would otherwise be
the case. Its not clear why the non-white part is important.
But its absurd to postulate some kind of non-white conspiracy to
take over America, as the alarmists do. It cant even be
extrapolated that current black and Hispanic-American populations
automatically support high immigration numbers. A commission
created in 1990 by the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan (D-TX), a
celebrated civil rights activist, recommended that immigration be
capped at 550,000, half its current amount. A Gallup poll in June
of 2003 found that 44 percent of African-Americans think
immigration should be decreased. A Wall Street Journal poll in 2000
discovered that 42 percent of Hispanics consider U.S. immigration
too open. The Hispanic USA Research Group found in 1993 that 89
percent of Hispanics strongly support an immediate moratorium on
immigration.
Some of these attitudes stem from minority-based racism. Asian
Week, a newsletter published by a Chinese-American organization,
editorialized that even illegal Chinese immigration is good for
society, while Latino immigrants are a burden even if they come
here legally.
The major worry among all these respondents is job displacement.
Barbara Jordan, in congressional testimony, said a major commission
goal was to reduce the magnet that jobs currently present for
illegal immigration. A case in point is the hotel industry. In Los
Angeles, for instance, a study shows that unionized native-born
black janitors in the hotel industry have overwhelmingly been
replaced by non-union laborers from Mexico and El Salvador, while
pay dropped from $12 an hour to $3.35 an hour. According to the
study, Immigrants and Labor Standards: The Case of California
Janitors, published in Labor Market Interdependence, most of the
displaced workers failed to find new employment.
During the recent Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, union leader
John Wilhelm thundered, No human being is illegal. But does the
presence of seven million illegal immigrants in the U.S. really
support the poor and minority communities that are the top priority
of the progressive coalition? Immigration hurts first and worst our
own poor, many of whom are minorities and established immigrants,
says Michelle A. Fehler, coordinator of Population-Environment
Balance. Interestingly, some of immigrations biggest supporters are
business leaders who want to keep wages low.
Immigration supporters have been very successful in closing off
discussion by playing the race card. Theresa Hayter, the British
author of the book Open Borders, has stated, Immigration controls
are explicable only by racism, but the reality is far more complex
than that blanket assertion.
Patrick Burns, director of the population and habitat program at
the National Audubon Society, points out that a tight American
labor market would probably benefit everyone all over the world,
because wages would rise in the U.S. and jobs now here would be
exported to countries, including India, Mexico and Vietnam, that
desperately need to put people to work.
Its one of the most polarizing issues of our time, so its not
surprising that population discussions usually end in shouting
matches. But if we dont soon get a handle on this critical issue it
may be too late, for the planet and for ourselves.
-------
Jim Motavalli is editor of E. Christina Zarrella provided
invaluable research assistance for this article.
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| Title: Re: The Numbers Game |
06 Jan 2004 10:38:43 AM |
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entire culture. Commentator and former presidential candidate Pat
Buchanan pronounced, The Third Worldization of California is now
far advanced.
The issues that Pat Buchanan has raised since 1989 (immigration, race,
welfare, protectionism, elitism, Israel) are legitimate. The problem
is - to employ that old aphorism - the messenger, not the message.
Here is a letter to the editor I submitted yesterday to COMMENTARY
magazine, an ecumenical, conservative Jewish publication based in New
York City:
---
Peter A. Schneider (Letters, December 2003) is correct that Pat
Buchanan is "America's leading anti-Semitic columnist" - that is,
America's leading mainstream anti-Semitic columnist if one accepts the
definition of "mainstream" as universally recognized and generally (if
grudgingly) accepted by the inside-the-Beltway crowd.
But there is something much scarier about Buchanan, something that is
illustrated when one goes on the Web and links to any search engine
("Google" is a good choice) and types in Buchanan's name in the entry
field. A surprising number of items from radical Islamic Web sites
including Al-Jazeera will invariably come up; these sites contain
either reposts of Buchanan columns or pro-Buchanan, anti-Bush,
anti-Ariel Sharon screeds from extreme Muslim commentators.
For instance, in the December 15, 2003 issue of The American
Conservative, Buchanan suggested that the U.S. should undermine Ariel
Sharon's coalition government in Israel. We did the same thing in
Afghanistan and Iraq, Buchanan argued in his own convoluted way; why
not our closest ally - and the only true democracy - in the Middle
East?
Now it goes without saying that this is inflammatory, indendiary, and
perhaps treasonous. Yet it was repeated dozens of times in the radical
Middle East online press, which seemed to give it an undeserved seal
of approval. In the process, lives may have been endangered in Israel
and the occupied territories.
Joshua Muravchik is also correct that Buchanan has been
"marginalized." But does that make him less dangerous if, to
paraphrase President Bush, Buchanan has taken the side of the
terrorists against America and Israel?
Given that Buchanan still has some influence in Washington, D.C., I
certainly hope this is not the case. Ever the optimist, I feel
Buchanan is merely practicing his bizarre, incomprehensible, pre-World
War II paleoconservatism; his anti-Israel, anti-Sharon, anti-Bush,
pro-Arab slant may very well be the post-9/11 mutation of the
so-called "Old Right." I think Buchanan is too smart, and too
patriotic, to root for al-Qaida, or Hamas, or Hizbollah, or Islamic
Jihad. I am 99 percent sure of this. It's that remaining one percent
that worries me. And, given that MSNBC has cancelled Buchanan's daily
political panel show, "Buchanan and Press," it seems that I wasn't the
only person pondering these very disturbing questions.
Despite the marginalization of Pat Buchanan, these questions need to
be raised again and again, to forestall the emergence of a Buchanan
successor on the extreme Right - a demagogue who, unlike Buchanan,
might be able to marshall a significant portion of the conservative
American electorate.
And that would be a terrible tragedy.
---
This sort of rhetoric makes Buchanan supporters red-faced with anger.
"How dare you call Pat Buchanan a terrorist!" they shriek. No, I'm not
doing that at all. I merely raise the possibility that Buchanan's
loyalties might - just might - be dangerously skewed.
Yes, I truly wish Pat Buchanan would retire to some all-white country
(New Zealand? Finland? Norway? Sweden?). What good has he done since
he first decided to run for President in December 1991? What great
conservative voting bloc had he cobbled together? What were his
qualifications? How many elections had he participated in - much less
won - prior to his foray into national politics?
Answers: None; none; none; none.
In May 1992, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer branded
Buchanan's political platform "jacket-and-tie Dukism." How true that
was! Why else would Buchanan accuse the former cross-burner and KKK
Grand Wizard of "intellectual property theft"? By saying that,
Buchanan was complimenting Duke, in an end-around, convoluted sort of
way.
And today, just like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Buchanan
claims there's a cabal of Jews running the current Bush
Administration.
MSNBC got wise and *****-canned Buchanan last November; obviously, they
were thinking along the same lines, as I state in my letter.
And finally, let's not forget that the one "conservative" who's been
behind Buchanan faithfully and unswervingly is Rush Limbaugh. Yep, the
ol' pill popper and doctor shopper himself!
How does that old aphorism go? "You're known by the company you keep?"
BUSH IN 2004!
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