Author's Note: Rodney Jay C. Salinas is President of the Rainmaker Political Group LLC, publishers of PoliticalCircus.com, an online source for political news and information for the Asian Pacific American community.

I guess failed presidential candidate and conservative kook, Pat Buchanan, has run out of money again because he's written yet another book. As if Americans weren't already sick and tired of his bigoted rants, Buchanan has just released his latest volume entitled The Death of the West: How Mass Immigration, Depopulation & A Dying Faith Are Killing Our Culture and Country (New York: Dunne Books, 2001).

At first glance, one might mistake his book for a Western novel - a story about cowboys and the expansion to the West perhaps. But that would be wrong. On an interview on NBC's morning news program, Today, Buchanan talked about his latest creation with anchor Matt Lauer.

In his book, Buchanan argues that Western culture is on the brink of extinction, which is caused by several factors. One of the main factors is immigration. According to Buchanan, the rising rate of immigration of non-whites will soon outpace the number of white, European Americans in the United States. Coupled with a low birth rate among whites, this threat is even more imminent, argues Buchanan.

In the few minutes I was able to watch Buchanan on television, it quickly became evident to me that when he used the word "West" or "Western," he was referring strictly to whites - specifically Christians. He touched on all the great accomplishments of the Western world and how its destruction would lead to some sort of purgatory filled with colored people - a state he describes in his book as the "Third World America."

What won't Buchanan say or do to sell more books? It is clear that he is using this ever-sensitive moment in American history, when distrust of immigrants and xenophobia are at its highest in the post-September 11 era, to sell a record number of his books.

To be fair, Buchanan has never hidden his conservatism. He is a proud Roman Catholic who hates gays and Jews and worries about the erosion of "American" culture. In his new book, he says, "had the killers of Matthew Shepard chosen a sixteen-year-old girl rather than a twenty-one-year-old gay man, her rape-murder would have been to me an even greater evil." Better that he show his true colors than hide them like so many others do, I say.

But what Buchanan fails to understand, time and time again, is that the very faults that he finds in the American system of immigration is precisely what makes America great in the first place. I suspect that if he had his way, America would revert back to the days of the 13 colonies, where only privileged white males would be afforded a voice in government and industry and the only people of color who dared step foot on American soil became slaves. I suspect that he would rather we close all the borders to the United States and limit entry only to those who look just like him.

During his interview with Lauer, Buchanan even used the A-word. No, not asylum (where he should be locked up), but assimilation. Yup, if he had his way, people of color, like me, would bleach their skin, dye their hair and embrace the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Well, excuse me, Mr. Buchanan, but the last time I checked we have not yet abandoned the founding principals of American freedom. As much as he is entitled to opinion, I am entitled to live my life and embrace whatever culture or religion I want to, even if it's not his own.

But seldom does a man like Pat Buchanan write such a book without an ulterior motive. In writing his book, what would he have Americans do? Is he urging legislators to close the borders to non-white immigrants? Is he advocating that we sterilize every person of color to prevent him or her from having offspring? Does he mean to suggest that we ought to destroy every temple and mosque in America, erect churches in their stead and conduct a mass Christianization of the nation?

Crazy enough, I think if he ever did get elected president, that's exactly what he would do. And that's exactly why he's lost every election he's ever run in. In 1992, 1996, and in 2000, he lost because the American public is smart enough not to buy his hateful rhetoric.