"Day of Reckoning".......

Book review by Dennie Hall:

Patrick J. Buchanan, often termed America’s leading populist conservative, has never been know for his optimism.

However, his latest book, “Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed are Tearing America Apart”, spews warnings that are especially chilling.

Buchanan ran for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996 and was the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. The author of several books, he is perhaps best known for “The Death of the West: Where the Right Went Wrong.”

Here’s the gist of Buchanan’s new book: US foreign policy is bankrupt. Armed forces are too small to meet the nation’s commitments. We’ve run five record trade deficits. US manufacturing is going abroad. The dollar is sinking to record lows. Aliens threaten to swamp the ethno-cultural core of the nation. A fiscal crisis looms because of the unfounded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare.

Buchanan writes that President Bush’s Iraq invasion was “the greatest strategic blunder in US history…a product of messianic ideology.”

It is no surprise that he attacks Bush; he did the same to his father. He tried to wrest the Republican nomination from George HW Bush in 1992 when Bush was seeking a second term as President.

Of free trade, Buchanan said it “is hollowing out US industry, shipping American jobs, factories, and technology to China, driving the dollar down to record lows, and plunging the United States into permanent dependency an un-payable debt.”

Offering some suggestions for strengthening the country, Buchanan would have us bring the soldiers home, impose some tariffs, police our borders, quit trying to impose our will on other countries, balance the budget, and, we might say tongue-in-cheek, elect him President.

Before being too critical of Buchanan, I must stop to think that his dire warnings remind me of Winston Churchill’s harping throughout the 1930’s that Adolph Hitler had designs on the world. It turned out that Churchill was right all along and his warnings should have been heeded.
Buchanan thinks the sky is falling. Could it be?

Excerpt from review by Dennie Hall. “Day of Reckoning” available through Thomas Dunne, $25.95
(emphasis added)