Former presidential candidate and conservative author Pat Buchanan feels his views have been vindicated this election cycle, but his next prediction, if proven right, won’t be a celebratory matter as he sees the death of the western civilization on the horizon.
Buchanan ran in 1992 for the Republican party nomination on a platform opposing globalization, unfettered immigration, and the move away from social conservatism. He has been harping on these views ever since.
“What we’ve gotten is proof that we were right,” Buchanan told The Daily Caller Tuesday. While he said, “I would not say that Donald Trump is a paleoconservative,” and, “I don’t think [Trump’s] a social conservative.”
Buchanan told TheDC, “I was just astonished to see him raise the precise issues on which we ran in the 1990s… Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself.”
These three stances that Trump hits on to Buchanan’s contentment are border security, economic nationalism, and being “skeptical of these endless wars and interventions.”
“I think many folks who agree with me have welcomed Trump into the race,” Buchanan said. He added while laughing, “the very fact that the neocons seem so disconsolate is the icing on the cake.”
Buchanan is not only opposed to immigration and trade, he is also a staunch social conservative. Trump has had two divorces and has previously held pro-choice views, making it tough for some to support him. Buchanan though said, “I think Trump respects the position of the social conservatives.”
“I do think he would appoint the type of justices that would unite the Republican Party,” he said. The conservative commentator continued on to say, “I think the great emperor Constantine converted to Christianity but he may have killed one of his sons as well.”
Buchanan told TheDC, “we don’t have any perfect candidates,” but the other options besides Trump are more frightening.
“Neocons offer nothing more than more wars,” he said, before adding that their support for free trade is “almost a religious belief.”
In 2001, Buchanan released the book “The Death of the West.” He followed this book up with “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” in 2011. When asked if a Trump victory in the United States, and the success of groups such as the National Front in France could offset this demise, Buchanan was not hopeful.
“Do I think those books stand up very well? Yup,” Buchanan told TheDC. “The West is disintegrating. Its faith is dead. When the cult dies, the culture dies and when the culture dies the civilization dies, and when the civilization dies the people die, and that’s what’s happening to western civilization.”
The conservative commentator was especially grim about Europe, Buchanan said, “It’s hard for me to see how the Europeans survive whether they have the will just given the trend-lines in terms of population and in terms of immigrants pouring in.”
He told TheDC, “I’m not a great optimist about the western civilization.”
