Pat Buchanan Asks the Question: Is the USA becoming a “Failed State”?

By Wayne Allensworth

From Pat Buchanan’s latest article:

“America is unable to win the wars she chooses to fight. She cannot or will not control and defend her borders from a mass migrant invasion. She cannot halt an outbreak of criminality and killing in her great cities. She has not run a trade surplus in four decades. Her dependency upon foreign producers is unprecedented. And her budget deficits continue to break records every year—as does her soaring national debt.

Is that not the description of a failed or failing state?”

Mr. Buchanan won’t get any argument from yours truly on that point, but there is something else to consider, and that’s the obvious evaporation of trust in our society. A “low trust” society, one like Mexico, South Africa, or the Middle Eastern states, is one that is wracked by dysfunction.

As our society becomes alarmingly “diverse”–ethnically, racially, religiously, linguistically, ideologically–the polyglot masses will not trust each another. With so much “diversity,” there is no longer a common core that holds this country together. Dr. Putnam reluctantly conceded that point some time ago.

As Charles Murray might say, it’s time to face reality. We will have to face that reality with courage and a sense of realism about what is possible and what isn’t.

Wayne Allensworth is a Corresponding Editor of Chronicles magazine. He is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood.