I agree with Buchanan, except for the part about "neocons'. It is traditional, fundamental conservatism he attributes to "neocons".
I have long, long argued that the cultural values and strengths that are the foundation of this country, that provided the framework upon which to hang our prosperity are not a matter of race.
The anglo-saxon founders had them as inheritance from endless invasions, occupations, wars, forging, like Damascus steel, a cultural philosophy based upon individual achievement, individual rights, and a common morality protecting and nurturing these things. Forged in the fiery furnace of history.
While, theoretically, one could sit down, as Rand did, and reason such a philosophy out, you can't embed them in the habits, traits and mores of a society by reason alone. Imagine if you had to focus your concentration on each step of going from your desk to get a drink of water from the refrigerator... every time you wished to do so. Had to "reason out" the process. No; the various sub-processes have been learned through experience, so now they take care of themselves reflexively as you simply enact the desire to alleviate your thirst.
Likewise, the cultural attributes that were melded into the Founding Fathers and those first generations couldn't have been "reasoned" individually by every member of the society, for each specific activity in which they engaged. This is why, for one example, even in their expression of religious freedom, there is an unconscious veil of Christian cultural traits.
And so, as new people enter the country, people from lands that did not go through the historical events that created the founding culture, but who were intellectually and philosophically in agreement with the cultural values of the society, needed to be "indoctrinated", for want of a better word, into the cultural values which the natural born (and even the vast majority of the native born) knew "in their bones".
We call this, "assimilation". And it has been rejected by the left and by foreign looters and moochers for decades.
They do not come to embrace and join with those cultural values fundamental to the society, they come to loot the benefits those values have created.
I have long, long argued that the cultural values and strengths that are the foundation of this country, that provided the framework upon which to hang our prosperity are not a matter of race.
The anglo-saxon founders had them as inheritance from endless invasions, occupations, wars, forging, like Damascus steel, a cultural philosophy based upon individual achievement, individual rights, and a common morality protecting and nurturing these things.
Forged in the fiery furnace of history.
While, theoretically, one could sit down, as Rand did, and reason such a philosophy out, you can't embed them in the habits, traits and mores of a society by reason alone. Imagine if you had to focus your concentration on each step of going from your desk to get a drink of water from the refrigerator... every time you wished to do so. Had to "reason out" the process. No; the various sub-processes have been learned through experience, so now they take care of themselves reflexively as you simply enact the desire to alleviate your thirst.
Likewise, the cultural attributes that were melded into the Founding Fathers and those first generations couldn't have been "reasoned" individually by every member of the society, for each specific activity in which they engaged. This is why, for one example, even in their expression of religious freedom, there is an unconscious veil of Christian cultural traits.
And so, as new people enter the country, people from lands that did not go through the historical events that created the founding culture, but who were intellectually and philosophically in agreement with the cultural values of the society, needed to be "indoctrinated", for want of a better word, into the cultural values which the natural born (and even the vast majority of the native born) knew "in their bones".
We call this, "assimilation". And it has been rejected by the left and by foreign looters and moochers for decades.
They do not come to embrace and join with those cultural values fundamental to the society, they come to loot the benefits those values have created.