Buchanan was absolutely right, White people did build this country. However, the reason they built this country is because the Blacks in America were brought against their will and enslaved, preventing them from building up the nation or their own personal fortunes. Even after Blacks were freed, they were kept from bettering themselves or the country by institutional discrimination. It seems to me that affirmative action is meant to compensate for this history. If you have a White and a Black applicant for a school or job, and the White applicant is better, he may only be better because he received resources from his ancestors that enabled him to succeed. Affirmative action is discrimination, but its justified, ethical discrimination designed to compensate for the injustices of the past.
This leaves a question: why should Hispanics receive affirmative action? Unlike Blacks, they were not brought here against their will, they (or their ancestors) chose to leave their original country and start from scratch here. The disadvantage of their history is of their own choosing. Why then should they receive compensation for it?

Time for Olbermann to name Buchanan Worst Person in the World.

Eric, some hispanics never left their original country. It was appropriated. Others(like sotomayor) have never left their original country. As for white men building the country, how does one build a house with whip in one hand and a smith and wesson in the other? When someone is "absolutely" right but there are caveats, his "rightness" may not be so absolute.

Red beat me to it on one big point about Hispanics. Of course some of them did "come back" to this country after they were illegally deported in spite of being US citizens.

I seem to recall that the railroads in the West were built with largely Chinese labor because the Pat Buchanans of the time weren't sober enough to make a reliable work force.

Buchanan's bizarre anti-Hispanic bigotry probably needs to be put in the context of the anxieties of some Catholics about demographic changes in the church. Not a left-right or pre- post- Vatican II thing, since William F Buckley, like my rather less conservative parents seems to have had little anxiety about Hispanic Catholics, and plenty of nice suburban liberal Catholics turn into mini-Buchanans at the thought of a Hispanic filling a responsible role in a parish.

Yes, the fact that Florida, New Mexico, Texas and California were *originally* spanish properties and that the property of their inhabitants was expropriated by the US when it took over is all but dissapeared from modern american education.

There's a *&^%$ god damned written record, in the form of land grants and baptismal records, for that history.

But look, Buchanan's perspective is just straight up old white male hysteria. It flies in the face of reality and that is why it is so full throttled. It is necessary for Buchanan to keep insisting, at the top of his voice, that white people are losing out in this country precisely because its so obvious that they aren't. If Buchanan and his ilk don't man the barricades the younger generation is going to grow up thinking it *doesn't make a difference* to them if they work alongside, or even under, african americans or hispanics or other non whites.

aimai

Maybe Mr. Ricci could could open up his fire hose on Mr. Buchanan to dramatize the "discrimination."

I think Rachel was being rather generous to Pat. If she had wanted to let him shoot himself in the foot more, she could have provided him with more ammo by asking him to clarify how he defined white. Given his anti-semitic leanings, I'm sure he would have revealed even more twisted views about his reverence for the white people who built this country if he was given the opportunity.