Saturday, May 18, 2013
IQ: Pat Buchanan
by Bob Campbell
Arch conservative commentator and three-time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan argues in his new book that declining birth rates in Christian European countries, combined with exploding birth rates in Latin America, Africa and Asia, mean doom for the West. By 2050, he says, the United States will be a third-world country.
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Katherine Fatica
Disabled
West Side
What's your ancestry? All I know is that my grandfather came from Canada.
Do you buy Buchanan's theory about an "immigration invasion"? That's an argument that Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan would be comfortable with. All our ancestors were immigrants. The Irish were considered scum when they first came over, but we highly value their heritage, now. Immigration has made this country better, not worse.
What's your experience with diversity? I grew up a white minority in a black neighborhood. It made me understand cooperation.
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Jean Ferguson
AmeriCorp Vista Volunteer
Hillside
What's your ancestry? Swiss-German on both sides of the family, though my dad was born in Canada.
Is Buchanan right that open-door immigration dooms us? We've always somehow assumed that we deserve world dominance. It's a new experience for white Anglo Saxons to be in the minority. It's especially threatening to people who presume U.S. superiority and demand world dominance.
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Dean Frankmore 
Pharmacist
Manitou Springs
What's your ancestry? I'm Italian. A hundred years ago, my ancestors were part of that immigrant horde. But other cultures have wisdom, too.
Will immigration turn the U.S. into a third-world country? Buchanan is afraid because he thinks only his views are correct, and his views won't be the majority.
What would the U.S. be like under a Buchanan presidency? Ugly, homogenous and white-bread.
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Denver Hager
Physician assistant
Divide
What's your ancestry? German and about one-eighth Native American.
Is an immigration invasion dooming America? Diversity has enriched the "white, Christian, European" culture that Buchanan wants to keep pure. In fact, "white, Christian Europeans" were themselves an immigrant horde at one time.
What's wrong with his argument? During 20 years in the military, I saw what ideas like "ethnic cleansing" bring about. Many of the Muslim children I saw in Bosnia were blue-eyed, blonde-haired and freckled, and many of the Christian children were dark-skinned and swarthy.
