Well, then the thrust of the definition would center around GDP and form of government. From an IR perspective, it’s reasonable to make distinctions and find common ground around GDP and form-of-government lines, but those distinctions are always transitory. I mean, Spain has only been an advanced industrial democracy for 30 years, tops.
He mentions Venezuela in his book a little bit, but of course, it was written in 1996, before Chavez came to power.
It doesn’t though. He centers it around culture, although I don’t know that I can adequately defend his thesis, because I don’t know that I fully understand it. It’s a complete departure from his previous work, in the book he doesn’t fully develop it, and he didn’t really develop the thesis afterwards.
would you at least agree with the “3rd world” part? 
Anyway, even if you decide that Mexico is “Western civilization”, how does this change the thrust of his argument? E.g. if in an alternate universe Buchanan were to write a book claiming that a mass migration of Western civilization Germans into Western civilization nation of France was a “threat to Western civilization” would you dismiss it out of hand on semantic grounds? Can’t you have a threat to the West from things happening between Westerners?
That being said, I do think that Buchanan is using code words. Saying “threat to the West” is more PC than saying “threat to the wellbeing of American whites taken collectively”. Caring about “culture” nowadays is more PC than caring about ethnicity, at least for white people.
It’s not that far-fetched. Wiki shows Human Development Index > 90 = Western World. NATO and OECD membership loosely work. If you want to get a little more strict, Western = Romance or Germanic language and Civilization = Rich. See North-South Divide. Pat Buchanan’s still an idiot, but it’s a somewhat useful distinction that’s often made.
Depends which definition of 3rd world you are using.
This is silly. Under the scenario you’ve outlined above, the threat is to “French Civilization.” If you want to use the term “Western Civilization” in that scenario, feel free, but nobody will know what you are talking about.
Since Buchanan is a Hitler apologist, I doubt he’s constrained by any notion of PC sensitivity.
I believe the term dates from the Cold War and refers to all countries in neither the Western nor Communist blocs. So it would include all of LA except for Cuba.
I agree that’s where the term originates, but that’s not the only way that term is used, and the above definition doesn’t make sense within the framework of the discussion we’ve been having.
Buchanan’s right, albeit in a twisted way.
Our version of WC supports regressive govts in LA, not vice versa. In other words, they’re open to our exploitation as other than us. I don’t doubt that much of Muslim emigration has been inspired by WC’s mission to spread peace, democracy and freedom thruout the Middle East and elsewhere.
BrightNShiny,
it’s up to Buchanan to argue, persuasively or not, that a hypothetical migration of Germans into France in an alternative universe is or is not a threat to the collective Western culture. Maybe in that alternate universe as a direct result of this migration people all over the West are turning to cannibalism and the worshipping of Flying Spaghetti Monster. And that alternate Buchanan is arguing that instead of battling the cannibals the smart thing to do is to proactively address the “root causes” of the problem to achieve the change we can believe in.
Again, my point is you are criticizing him on semantic grounds because of a preconception what can and cannot be considered a legitimate “threat” to “Western civilization”. But if Buchanan feels that something constitutes such a threat, he is free to write books claiming that to be the case. You are free to disagree with his assessments, but it would be nice if you were to disagree with them on substance (i.e. point out which parts of his analysis are wrong) rather than on the general wording.
Incidentally, I am sure that Buchanan (along with many other Americans) believes that widespread divorce in America is a threat to “Western civilization”. Well, are you going to say now “how can having a Western dude move out from apartment he shares with a Western lady hurt the civilization as a whole? Bullshit!” Or are you going to actually go read what da man got to say and evaluate from there?
To point out only the most glaring flaw in the details of this argument, worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is part of Western culture. The whole Pastafarian movement is solidly rooted in Western traditions of secular and anticlerical satire, along with materialist skepticism about the premises of theism, that go back to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and beyond.
That’s ridiculous: you’re requiring that we accept Buchanan’s premise at face value and restrict ourselves to arguing about whether his predictions are accurate. But the whole point is that Buchanan doesn’t get to be the one who decides what counts as “Western civilization” and what constitutes “threatening” it.
If he uses those terms in ways that other people consider inapplicable or incorrect or biased, they’re going to call him on it, just as I called you on your misrepresentation of Pastafarianism. The problem is not just that your “predictions” of a mass Pastafarian movement occurring as a result of Germany’s invading France are far-fetched and inaccurate (as I know you meant them to be, because you were making a humorous hypothetical). More importantly, the problem is that your very premise about what counts or doesn’t count as “Western civilization” is flawed and ill-informed.
In addition to what Kimstu said above, I don’t believe this is an appropriate comparison. Buchanan seems to be arguing along clash-of-civilization lines rather than internal threat-to-civilization lines.
GDP tells you how rich is your country it doesn’t tell you anything about it’s culture, political structure or heritage.
If GDP is the answer to the question then Argentina belonged to the Western Civilization at least till the 1960 while Spain didn’t (which is ourtrageous).
If by western civilization you are speaking of the civilization that was born in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire and that combined the heritage of the classical world with the one from the christian religion then, I have no doubt that Latin America belongs to it.
Anyway, I think the discussion is pointless we Latin Americans (I speak for argentinians) believe that we are part of this civilization.
Keep in mind that Samuel Huntingdon is a crazy person - essentially an advocate for a race war.
Well, he’s a dead person now, but I don’t think that’s fair. Huntington was probably, right up with Robert Putnam, one of the most influential and groundbreaking American political scientists of the second half of the 20th century. All of his books were controversial, and I think “Who Are We” was probably his worst book. I have to say that I think the argument he lays out in the book is wrongheaded and starts with some really questionable assumptions. But even that book, for all that I don’t like it, doesn’t advocate for race war. It does the reverse, actually, saying that there’s going to be the development of a nativist movement unless America does a better job assimilating the growing Hispanic immigrant population and getting rid of our ideas of multiculturalism and bilingualism.
I don’t see any evidence in any of his books or public statements that Huntington was racist.
I was talking about The Clash of Civilizations, not Who We Are- an international race war, not a domestic one. His basic point was that “the Chinese and the Muslims are coming to get us”, with the unspoken subscript that we’d better get them first.
Clash of Civilizations is about culture, not race, and I don’t know that he’s entirely wrong about “the Chinese and Muslims coming to get us.”
They’re the same thing as far as he’s concerned. Hence the crazy part.
The ones immigrating into Western countries are not. (There might be a few al-Qaeda sleeper agents among them, but they’re negligible demographically.) And, while Huntington might not be about race, you can’t say that of Buchanan, nor of most American anti-immigrant paleocons.
But again, in Clash of Civilizations, he’s not talking about immigration. He talks about Immigration in “Who Are We”, but Really All Not That Bright isn’t talking about that book.
And he doesn’t consider race and civilization to be the same thing. Have either of you actually read his book?