Pat Buchanan knows who America really belongs to. After a litany of what he sees as white working class grievances in his latest column, Buchanan concludes: (via TPM)
America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.
There's been a lot of attention paid to that Democracy Corps report saying that the insane paranoia on the far right about President Obama has nothing to do with race, that it's not about the anxiety and social turmoil in reaction to the deterioration of America's traditional racial caste system. But as long as people like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan are making the explicit case that white Americans lose something precious with the election of a black president, I think that conclusion is not entirely credible. It's one thing to say opposition to Obama is not primarily motivated by race. It's another to say it has nothing to do with it. Clearly, for some people, it's a huge factor how they express their opposition -- even if they'd be opposing a Democratic president anyway.
Plus, even Mika Brzezinski of the "liberal" MSNBC thinks Buchanan "says what we are all thinking.” Someone should really ask her about that.
I'd love to just leave this post with snark, but I have to say one last thing. Black Americans have shed blood in every American war since the Revolution. This country, even the very Capitol building in which today's legislators now demand to see the birth certificate of the first black president, was built on the sweat and sinew of slaves. Before we were people in the eyes of the law, before we had the right to vote, before we had a black president, we were here, helping make this country as it is today. We are as American as it gets. And frankly, the time of people who think otherwise is passing. If that's the country Buchanan wants to hold onto, well, he's right, he is losing it.
Good riddance.
-- A. Serwer
