I disagree. Strongly.

I have little use for identity politics because nearly all of value in it can be addressed in terms of universal rights or citizenship rights, both of which emphasize what people have in common. That said, the first identity politics was practiced with vengeance by the descendants of the slaver South- in segregation and related laws privileging Whites. Out West similar stuff was employed against Indians.

Buchanan mainstreamed the destruction of American identity because for him American identity was White and Christian even as in reality it became more diverse racially and religiously.

Here are a few Buchanan quotes:

“When the faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, the people die. That is the progression. And as the faith that gave birth to the West is dying in the West, peoples of European descent from the steppes of Russia to the coast of California have begun to die out, as the Third World treks north to claim the estate. The last decade provided corroborating if not conclusive proof that we are in the Indian summer of our civilization.”

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“Those who believe the rise to power of an Obama rainbow coalition of peoples of color means the whites who helped to engineer it will steer it are deluding themselves. The whites may discover what it is like to ride in the back of the bus.”

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“Perhaps some of us misremember the past. But the racial, religious, cultural, social, political, and economic divides today seem greater than they seemed even in the segregation cities some of us grew up in.

“Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans.”

In reality our Founders did not found a Christian Republic, they emphasized it was a republic based on universal human rights that were silent as to particular religions. The segregated South Buchanan reveres was so because Blacks knew their place and if they stepped outside it, they often died.

Who was a member of it was in principle open to all able to live as citizens, and over the years this has gradually expanded. Ben Franklin once did not regard most Germans as White, let alone the Irish like Buchanan. Nor did many once regard Catholics like Buchanan as Christian. Our history has been a gradual expansion of the Founders’ vision to include more and more with occasional nativist reactions, but it took Buchanan to make rejecting our founding vision a mainstream issue. He is an enemy of our Founders’ vision pretending to be a conservative. Dixiecrat is a more honest term.