"At the opening of the twentieth century there were five great western empires-the British, French, Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian and two emerging great powers: Japan and the United States. By Century's end, all of the empires had disappeared. How did they perish? By war-all of them." (page3)

     This is how Pat Buchanan begins the first chapter of his book, A Republic, Not An Empire. The book is Buchanan's way of redefining himself from the perception of absolute right radical to a moderate position, at least on the subject of foreign affairs, while he attempts to make the long march across the political spectrum to broaden his appeal to the so called Reagan Democrats and even some on the left who are ready for even the slightest rollback of the present insane foreign policy which has been practiced by both Republicans and Democrats for as long as we can remember. As with most right wing criticism of the United States Government, the opening statement is a substantiated, though watered down version of New Left Pacifistic criticism from the mid and late 1960's. Unlike most right wing criticism Buchanan appears to be far more sincere. And it is his sincerity that makes the book tolerable, and yes, at times even interesting, enough so that it begs a response.
     While reading it I was also reading parts of Noam Chomsky's Year 501, and there were times when the two books merged into one another so thoroughly that I wasn't certain which book I was reading. The combined effect left me with the impression that democracy may be open to the same criticism Tolstoy, Kierkgaard and Nietzsche leveled at Christianity, that it is a mere front for the will to power, like an olive oil company is a front for the mafia, only even more insidious. I have to admit, I did not come away from Buchanan feeling that any of his "great men," Washington, Lincoln, Reagan or anyone else really rose up to the level of greatness. They all came across as puny opportunists who had very poor inner lives and overcompensated for it by giving to much attention to the differing myths of America. In fact I began to see that America, at least as so called terrorists and so called patriots see it, probably does not exist. Everyone, is and has been for centuries, fighting over a phantom. In this respect, Chomsky too, makes the same mistake; documenting the effects of a cause that rests upon an illusion, and by so doing giving more solid credence to that illusion. America as "the evil empire," and America as "the greatest nation in history" are equally extreme polar versions of the same illusion, hyperbole being thought of as fact. Though cases could be made for either position by piling up one sided evidence, though entire libraries could be filled with these cases, it would not make it any more true. I suppose Chomsky would argue that once 260 million people have all bought into an illusion, for all intent and purposes that illusion has become a reality. And I suppose Buchanan would tell me that 60,000 people who call themselves Taliban actually constitutes an actual Taliban; but how does one ever get down to the essential reality of life if we are inclined to treat other people's illusions as if they were real? It is much like the question of God. An inward turning may reveal that Jesus, Krishna, Allah etc. are phenomenal expressions of some elemental wholeness, but are we to believe that because a billion people take the expression as the reality that we need to now accept it as real? No wonder we can't make much progress in solving even the simplest problems once we have accepted these infinite amount of illusions as real and then put them all together and given it the name of "reality."
     Yet this is exactly what so called "realists" have done, accepted not only their own projections onto the external world as real, but also the millions upon millions of projections of others, all stirred and mixed together, and then shot back at us by a media that further distorts it all by the very nature of its own limitations.
     When Buchanan's book first came out a year or so ago, I remember how the media trashed it. Both the conservative as well as the liberal reviews panned in on the World War II chapter and found the book unacceptable. On the heels of Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, Buchanan's book making a case that there was no need for the United States to have gotten involved in the war at all, took away from the egotistical, feel good,  self aggrandizing mood. The media in fact spoke about nothing else in the book except this chapter, a chapter that argued that Russia and England had already stopped the Nazi advance and that Japan was pushed into the war by the U.S. oil embargo which forced them to go for the oil in the Dutch East Indies. He says the embargo was already a declaration of "economic war against an oil-starved nation," a nation simply looking out for its "national interests," which was empire building in Asia. To Buchanan this all makes sense because he has just prior to this, for over 285 pages been making the case that America's own empire building was perfectly justified. Only he does not call the continental encroachment empire building, but uses the more traditional term "manifest destiny," insisting that they are not the same thing.
     In fact Buchanan almost pulls it off. His depiction of American history, bolstered by quotes from historians, presidents, and other major political figures separates American history  into a more or less isolationist camp identified with George Washington and a later empire stage begun by McKinley and advanced by Woodrow Wilson, which Buchanan claims led us down the wrong road, and from which we need to return. This hair splitting even seems sensible to a point, if only because it is not quite as mad as the present policy which is in a new war each time you blink. And again Buchanan echoes the late sixties leftists near the end of the chapter when after explaining precisely how FDR pushed Japan into beginning a war the American people wanted nothing to do with just to get their consent, he writes:

"Posterity has, by and large thanked him (Roosevelt) for it. But if the decisions on war and peace are not to be entrusted to the American people and their elected representatives, what has become of our constitutional republic? If the people are so 'notoriously shot-sighted' that they cannot  'see danger until it is at their throats,' what is the argument for democracy?" (p 296)

     This is what I mean when I speak of Buchanan's sincerity. That he does not think his own question through to its conclusion is unfortunate, for to answer it would mean to actually cross the entire political spectrum, leave his conservative constituency completely behind, and to join forces with the non-violent left and with whatever is left that is non-violent Christian. 
     Only twenty or so pages later he is attempting to justify the war in Vietnam on the grounds that if we had only went into Laos and Cambodia at the war's start we could have won quickly and never had to deal with the protesting masses at home. This is not much different than Roosevelt's policy, winning the war before running it by the public for its approval, and it ultimately exposes the fallacy of Buchanan's whole argument, that there is no room for morality in foreign policy, there is only room for the national interest. Once you accept national interest as your guiding principle it opens the door to just about anything. If in the nineteenth century taking a continent from ocean to ocean was necessary to the national interest, then by the twenty first century, where technological progress has made the world infinitely smaller, how can there be anything short of the next solar system that is not in your national interest?
     It is not that I don't appreciate the effort Buchanan has made here. He recognizes that it is war and over extension that is the primary problem. He recognizes that when it comes to building an empire there is really no place for a Democratic Republic. These are not realizations that are easy to come by for many people who think of themselves as Americans.
     The question I have is why not go the whole distance Pat? Why not realize that the taking of the continent in the 19th Century was already a compromise of the Republic and its principles? Tolstoy asked similar questions and answered them with real visionary splendor.

  "This is the same with all religions, not just Christianity, but Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, Confucianism. The very precise definition of the law of love, revealed by Christ nineteen hundred years ago, is recognized today by morally sensitive people of all faiths, no longer as a result of following Christ, but through spontaneous awareness. This (love) is the only means of salvation." (From The Law of Love and The Law of Violence)

      It is not the national interest that's important at all but the conscience of each individual. Not the American dream of collecting as many useless possessions one can imagine, but the dream of liberty, true liberty which is to free the mind from the umbilical cord of one's own making. The national interest is the great lie, the first rationalization made by the power mad, a cloak for the drive toward conquest and empire. It is an age old story Pat, the attempt to convince people to find answers in the words of their leaders rather than in the depths of their own hearts and souls. Leaders are usually leaders because they serve the gods of exteriority. Occasionally a man comes along such as Gorbachev who like St. Paul must of been thrown from his horse and achieved some part clarity. Reagan did not win the cold war Pat. Gorbachev came to his senses and begun to dismantle the empire. It's what America should be doing too, breaking itself up into independent Republics. You're right Pat, about the globalization trend. An even more centralized government that is even less responsive to people than Washington already is will solve nothing. The nonviolent leftists (the counter culture) of the late 60's were adamant about the need for decentralization. With no help from their elders who had already lost contact with any sense of true community they attempted blindly to build their own small cubit of sanity. In most cases they failed miserably, but it was the right direction to go in. "Decentralization" was another word the right stole from them and then perverted to mean a return to states rights which was nothing more than a rationalization for slavery in the beginning and for segregation a hundred years later. And these were predicated on the illusion that some people are not created equal to others. 
     It is not the utopian belief in equality Pat that is the problem, it is the illusion of inequality, which is what's apparent to those who look out at the world instead of within. As soon as any person turns inward to his or her individual conscience the illusions begin falling away. And as they fall, equality is no longer an abstraction, or even a faith based belief, but an experienced truth. There can be no doubt that when Jefferson wrote it he was overwhelmed by emotion, seeing so clearly into the heart of humanity and the world that his words resonated with the human divinity when others first read it. Later on in the declaration, after he had come down from his high and become a politician again, he listed some minor rationalizations, but very few read that far anyway, and its temporal aspect is almost irrelevant to us today. Yet the part about equality remains absolute and still resonates with its divine spark. And all the great religions of the world tell us that even equality is but a mere island to stop at on a much longer journey into the divine, that there is a great love to witness to and to be part of. Utopia is not a future society Pat, or even the hope of a future society. Utopia is the reality we encounter on the next island in the stream after the Island known as Equality. And these islands are as real as any in the Caribbean Pat, or in the South Pacific. Without them the human race would destroy itself in a week. We would all become Osama Bin Laden's and George W. Bush's. We would never forgive any wrong done to us, and no one else would forgive us, and the whole world would be like the Hatfields and the McCoy's all the time. And life would no longer be of any importance. Only killing your enemy or your neighbor would matter, or your husband or wife, or your children or your parents. No one would be exempt because it's impossible if you're near anyone long enough that they will not do something that troubles your honor. Only forgiveness and love brings any peace to the world Pat, not some rational assessment of what's in your interest. What's in your interest is peace and forgiveness, compassion, love, peace and forgiveness. Freedom and liberty is what one has at that moment one forgives a transgression. Until one forgives the transgression one is attached and enslaved to a memory, to something that no longer exists, to an illusion. Freedom has little to do with acquisitions and property ownership, or even with speech, and certainly little to do with the right to haul weapons around and use them because you or I have projected our fears onto some other person or group.  This is all quite simple to understand. The Constitution was never meant to become a sacred document that would require a person's allegiance. It was simply a contract attempting to make government conform to humanity. One is not free to speak because the Constitution says we are. A human being is free to speak in concurrence to how much freedom he or she allows him or herself, whatever government says. One is not free to practice religion because the Constitution says one is. If there is no interior experience of the spiritual then there is no religious freedom, whatever the laws are concerning such things. And being enslaved to one's property is no freedom either Pat. It is as Thoreau said in his remark about the misfortune of some of his neighbors to have inherited farms. And as for carrying guns, whatever the government says, for or against, there will be no liberty until the single human being realizes that love is the only defense that is at our disposal.  From Tolstoy again:

     "It is said that one swallow does not make a summer, but can it be that because one swallow does not make a summer another swallow, sensing and anticipating summer, must not fly? If every blade of grass waited similarly summer would never occur. And it is the same with establishing the kingdom of God: we must not think about whether we are the first or the thousandth swallow."

     In this book Pat Buchanan has little to say about his domestic agenda, but he does mention his Catholicism in passing, and he has long been known to think of Christianity as a central part of his cultural politics. Neither the Declaration of Independence not Christianity has any reality to them until the above statement is taken to heart. We must give up the folly of Empire, even in Buchanan's limited sense, and come to understand that our social contract means nothing if it is not first and foremost an aid in filling the summer with swallows. 
10/17/01

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