WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- What do the Archbishop of Canterbury, Patrick J. Buchanan and Osama bin Laden have in common? All three believe America is on a path to national suicide. Bin Laden, of course, is hoping to make it happen. America's existential crisis, says the leader of the Anglican Church, was caused not only by America's actions, but also by a misguided sense of its own mission, and scorned the "chosen myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God's purpose for humanity." For bin Laden, the destruction of the "chosen myth of America" is very much at the heart of God's purpose for humanity.
For Buchanan, in his latest book "Day of Reckoning," ideologically motivated hubris and greed "are tearing America apart." It's vintage Buchanan with no holds barred. The Drudge Report's sampling nuggets:
-- "America is in an existential crisis from which the nation may not survive."
-- "The U.S. Army is breaking and is too small to meet America's global commitments."
-- "The dollar has sunk to historic lows and is being abandoned by foreign governments."
-- "The greatest invasion in history, from the Third World, is swamping the ethno-cultural core of the country, leading to Balkanization and the loss of the southwest to Mexico."
-- The culture is collapsing and the nation is being deconstructed along the lines of race and class.
At this point, bin Laden must be concluding that another Sept. 11 is no longer necessary. Al-Qaida's moles, he presumably assumes, are carrying out their orders with stealthy new weapons -- blue smoke and mirrors.
More Buchanan:
-- Pax Americana, the era of U.S. global dominance, is over. The struggle for global hegemony is now between China, a resurgent Russia and radical Islam.
-- The greatest threat to U.S. sovereignty and independence is the scheme of a global elite, aka the chattering classes, or, as the late Spiro Agnew would call them, "the nattering nabobs of negativity," to erase America's borders and merge the United States, Mexico and Canada into a North American Union.
-- Free trade is shipping jobs, factories and technology to China and plunging America into permanent dependency and unpayable debt. One of every six U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished under Bush 43.
-- "Sovereign Investment Funds," controlled by foreign regimes (China, Japan, Taiwan, the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, including Saudi Arabia) and stuffed with trillions of dollars from U.S. trade deficits, are buying up strategic assets vital to America's security.
-- As U.S. wages are stagnant, corporate chief executive officers are raking in rising pay and benefits 400 to 500 times that of their workers.
-- The Third World invasion through Mexico is a graver threat to our survival as one nation than anything happening in Afghanistan or Iraq.
-- European-Americans, 89 percent of the nation when President Kennedy took the oath, are now 66 percent and sinking. Before 2050, America is a Third World nation.
-- By 2060, America will add 167 million people and 105 million immigrants will be in the U.S.; triple today's 37 million.
-- Hispanics will be over 100 million in 2050 and concentrated in a southwest most Mexicans believe belongs to them.
Buchanan's back-from-the-brink prescriptions:
-- A new foreign-defense policy that closes most of the 1,000 bases overseas, reviews all alliances, and brings home U.S. troops.
-- A purge of neoconservative ideology and the "cakewalk crowd" from national power.
-- To avert a second Cold War, the U.S. should "get out of Russia's space and get out of Russia's face," and shut down all U.S. bases on the soil of the former Soviet Union.
-- To end the trade deficits and save the dollar, a (Alexander) Hamiltonian solution: a 20 percent Border Equity Tax on imports, with the $500 billion raised to be used to end taxation on American producers.
-- To prevent America becoming "a tangle of squabbling nationalities," an amnesty for the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens; a border fence from San Diego to Brownsville; congressional declarations that children born to illegal aliens are not citizens and English is the language of the United States.
-- "Timeout" in all immigration.
Hard to see where bin Laden would demur. He has said time and again, the United States should get out of all Muslim countries and abandon all military bases, which would give him a free hand for the Islamization of Europe.
In an interview with EMEL, a British Muslim lifestyle magazine, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, commended the Muslim practice of praying five times a day, which he says allows the remembrance of God to be "built in deeply in their daily rhythm." Compared to his ever so mild criticisms of the Muslim world, Williams delivered a volley of broadsides against America's attempts to intervene abroad by "clearing the decks" with a "quick burst of violent action" that leads to "the worst of all worlds."
The Anglican leader berated the United States for its conduct of the war on terrorism, saying America had lost the moral high ground since Sept. 11, 2001. And he urged America's next team at geopolitical bat to launch a "generous and intelligent program of aid directed to the societies that have been ravaged; a check on the economic exploitation of defeated territories; a demilitarization of (America's) presence abroad."
American leadership, said the Archbishop, has broken down. "We have only one global hegemonic. It is not accumulating territory. It is trying to accumulate influence and control. That's not working."
President Bush has 14 months left to prove the Archbishop wrong. His attempt to nail down a foreign policy legacy with the establishment of a permanent Palestinian state should tell the story. Buchanan's revolutionary elixir of life says, "Stop the World I Want to Get Off." In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville discussed American exceptionalism in "Democracy in America." There was then and there continues to be now a fundamental commitment to liberty, egalitarianism, individualism and laissez-faire values. Only laissez-faire is due for a major rethink in the context of environmental concerns and finite resources.
