Pat Buchanan Reveals White Supremacy's Roots

Landing of Columbus, painting by John Vanderlyn

In an intriguing column on the editorial page of our August 17, 2017, Daily News-Record, Patrick Buchanan raises the question, 'If We Erase Our History, Who Are We?'

I find myself disagreeing with much of what Mr. Buchanan writes, but here he is surprisingly candid and insightful about the deep roots of American attitudes about race. He clearly makes the case that white supremacy is a centuries old mindset that is a core part of our nation's history, and Buchanan actually defends that history. 

Here's an excerpt from the column:

Looking back over the history of a Western Civilization, which we call great, were not the explorers who came out of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England all white supremacists?

They conquered in the name of the mother countries all the lands they discovered, imposed their rule upon the indigenous peoples, and vanquished and eradicated the native-born who stood in their way.

Who, during the centuries-long discovery and conquest of the New World, really believed that the lives of the indigenous peoples were of equal worth with those of the colonizers?

They believed European Man had the right to rule the world.

Beginning in the 16th century, Western imperialists ruled much of what was called the civilized world. Was not the British Empire, one of the great civilizing forces in human history, a manifestation of British racial superiority?

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So there you have it, not from some left-leaning source, but from an avid conservative nationalist, here stating that the founders were the product of long held convictions about western European supremacy. Thus our sometimes unconscious but deep seated  racial biases certainly precede our post-Civil War Jim Crow laws and the  emergence of neo-Nazi fringe groups. Rather, white supremacy may be deeply embedded in our historical DNA.
Is Buchanan right?