Jendrysik: Jeremiah versus Jihad
19
good thing, he believes that the war in Iraq has ended the bond. For Buchanan
Americans have seen the price of empire and are coming to reject it.
How can America reclaim its principles and purpose? Buchanan proposes a
number of steps. However, these steps are pretty much the same ones Buchanan has
been proposing since the 1980’s. He advocates ending immigration to preserve the
“Anglo-Protestant culture core of the nation,” ending American security guarantees to
foreign states and open-ended support for Israel, economic nationalism (protectionism),
and fiscal restraint (WRWW, Chapter Ten). In many ways for Buchanan 9/11 changed
everything and nothing. Dangerous trends have merely continued and the American
people have allowed them to do so.
Does Vidal see any hope? Like all modern jeremiahs he must. He like his
compatriots on the right sees two Americas and two kinds of Americans.
Those Americans who refuse to plunge blindly into the maelstrom of
European and Asiatic politics are not defeatist or neurotic. They are giving
evidence of sanity, not cowardice, of adult thinking as distinguished from
infantilism. They intend to preserve and defend the Republic. America is
not to be Rome or Britain. It is to be America (IA, 167).
The United States is now starting to divide, consciously, between
imperialists, eager for us to seize all the world’s oil resources, and anti-
imperialists who favor peace along with renewable sources of energy (IA,
172).
Those who truly love their country are those who seek to restore its old virtues and resist
the siren call of empire and mindless fear of the other. Vidal asks his readers on which
side of the divide they wish to stand. Clearly any true patriot (he assumes) will prefer the
second course.
Irresolvable Tensions
Convention