June 4^th

Pat Buchanan is in an uproar today because of what he calls a “Cultural Cleansing of Christian Males.” In most situations this would perhaps apply to ISIL lining up Coptic Christians and beheading them. Pat’s hyperbole refers to nothing so dramatic; it refers to the removal of a statue of one Father De Smet from the grounds of St. Louis University, the removal of Father Junipero Serro’s statue from the Capital grounds, and the suggestion that Andrew Jackson’s picture be replaced on the twenty dollar bill. This, according to Pat Buchanan, represents the cultural cleansing of Christian males.

Why would Native Americans possibly be unwilling to accept the apparently benign God of their not at all benign conquerors? Pat Buchanan seems unfamiliar with the string of larcenous treaties forced on Native Americans and then broken by their Christian conquerors. There is no point listing even a small portion; it numbers in the hundreds. Now we have laws in place to protect the naïve from extortion. In the 1800s Christians were not supposed to need civil laws to keep them from taking advantage of these “simple savages.” Had there been laws the more sophisticated savages would have found ways to circumvent them; Christian principles be damned! When gold was discovered on Native American lands any treaty protecting that land from exploitation was immediately abrogated; what use had Indians for gold? Pat apparently doesn’t understand why Native Americans and their supporters are not impressed by the civilizing effects of his Mother Church and the statues of her agents.

Then we have his eruption against the very thought of putting a woman’s picture on our currency; never mind that a woman’s portrait was already on our dollar coin. The Susan B. Anthony dollar was followed by the Sacagawea dollar. But maybe a woman’s picture could appear on some higher circulation currency; the twenty dollar bill now has Andrew Jackson’s portrait. Buchanan’s response is that, “Jackson, it is said, was responsible, for the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokees in the Trail of Tears.” “It is said” really? There were about 150 thousand Native Americans living peacefully in territory white settlers wanted. The Supreme Court said at the time the white settlers had no claim to those lands. That didn’t stop Jackson who simply ignored the court and forced the Cherokees out at gun point and on a thousand mile trek to Oklahoma. Thousands died on that march, which had a lot in common with the Bataan death march. Hooray for General Jackson, right Buchanan?

Of course Buchanan is affronted at the very thought of a woman’s portrait replacing any of the current worthy’s on our currency. He blandly asks if, “Any of these women (referring to the candidates) really compete in historic achievement with what those great men accomplished?” Probably not, and given that women couldn’t even vote until 1920, that fact is hardly surprising.