Death Of The West.(Western civilization on the wane)(Brief Article)

You may remember him. The name's Buchanan. Patrick J. Buchanan. High- level adviser to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Right-wing columnist and TV blowhard. Even fellow conservative William F. Buckley sadly concluded Buchanan trafficked in anti-Semitism. Buchanan ran for president twice as a Republican and actually beat Bob Dole in the 1996 New Hampshire primary. But who recalls that he was the Reform Party fringe candidate in 2000? That year, all of his supporters could have fit in one beer hall.

Buchanan's custom after campaigns is to retreat to his study and write books. His last one, "A Republic, Not An Empire," was an argument for neo-isolationism, asserting in passing that Britain should not have made war on Nazi Germany. I vowed then to forevermore call him "Crackpot Pat," and have had little reason to reconsider that judgment.

But Buchanan's new book, "The Death of the West," now a best seller in the United States, almost got me feeling a little sorry for the old brawler. "The death of the West is not a prediction of what is going to happen, it is a depiction of what is happening now," he writes. The chances of the inexorable and, to his mind, execrable tide of history being reversed are "not good." The book has the feel of a reactionary valedictory. It's Buchanan's way of saying that the culture war is over, and his side lost.

But before everyone to the left of him celebrates too much, let's give the man his due. Amid scores of silly, even destructive, ideas, Buchanan outlines a powerful demographic truth that helps explain why the book has struck a nerve, at least among those conservatives who currently dominate book buying in the United States. At a time post- September 11 when nation-building and globalism seem in vogue again, American conservatives are clinging harder than ever to a sense of who they are as Americans, or at least who they think they once were.

Actually, the argument that conservatism has been defeated is more than a little peculiar now, with a conservative Republican president at 80- plus percent in the polls and Buchanan's book on The New York Times best-seller list, one of five written by identifiable conservatives (none by identifiable liberals).

But the larger point is valid. "Europe has begun to die," Buchanan writes, pointing out that of the 20 nations with the lowest birthrates, 18 are in Europe. In 1960, people of European ancestry were one fourth of the world's population; in 2000, one sixth. In 2050, they will be one tenth. If present birthrates continue, Italy will lose nearly a third ...