It shouldn't surprise anyone that Pat Buchanan has written a sad, mournful column about the current state of America. It shouldn't surprise anyone that his mourning is mostly about the fact that "white people" feel their country has been stolen from them.
In fact, the only thing about Buchanan's column that is surprising is the absence of code, the naked racism, the bald-faced assertion that "America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right." These three short sentences, that end this sad tale of the demise of "traditional America's" dominance should stand as a monument to the way Barack Obama's Presidency has liberated us from Nixon-era "law and order" public discourse, a veiled way of talking about what was really on the minds of right-wing white folks - keeping the brown folk down, in the ghetto, and back in de facto segregation. The on-going social and cultural gains of African-Americans, culminating in Barack Obama's Presidency 40 years after Nixon won, in part, by creating a new vocabulary for racist public talk, is now over, and we should at least be celebratory enough to recognize that it is OK for racists in the limelight to speak openly.
Make no mistake. MSNBC will continue to feature Buchanan even though - or perhaps precisely because - he is honest enough to put his racist thoughts on paper (or over the 'net) for all the world to see. Unlike Peggy Noonan*, who misused the word "boorish" to describe President Obama, because she didn't want to use the word "uppity", Buchanan is right up front talking about how some white folk are just plain scared of the black boy in the White House who isn't a cook or a butler. Conservatives should follow Buchanan's lead and be unafraid to let the world know their dislike of Pres. Obama is rooted not in any supposed ideological radicalism he embodies, because such doesn't exist; but, rather, they dislike him precisely because he is the first African-American President. Period.
I do not mourn with Buchanan. I do celebrate the end of a too-long era when racists with a big audience couched their hatred in euphemisms. We no longer have to sit around and decode all sorts of words about "law and order", and "traditional values". We can use this column by Buchanan as a template for judging the honesty and integrity of conservative talk about Obama.
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*Isn't it fascinating that Noonan used to be a speechwriter, yet used the word "boorish" incorrectly?
