On the November 27 edition of his CNN Headline News show, Glenn Beck teased his half-hour long interview with MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan by describing the United States as a “nation in peril,” later adding that “the inability to secure our borders, illegal immigration gone wild, and our economy. Something is not right. It's something that I labeled the perfect storm over a year ago. And now Pat Buchanan has a new book out that says the same thing.” Buchanan appeared on Beck's show to discuss his new book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, And Greed Are Tearing America Apart (Thomas Dunne Books, November 2007). During their discussion of border security and immigration, Buchanan asserted: "[T]here's no doubt that the American melting pot worked wonders with the folks that came from Europe from 1890 to 1920. But we had a 40-year time-out, and we had clashes in that period and it finally worked. So now we say, 'Well, that worked. Let's let everybody in from the whole world, legal and illegal, and the whole thing will work.' You are risking the United States of America doing this." Buchanan also asserted that Americans are “addicted to this myth” of the United States as a “melting pot,” and claimed that “we're going to end up with what [former President] Teddy Roosevelt warned against: a tangle of squabbling nationalities.”

Earlier in the interview, Buchanan stated:

BUCHANAN: You talk about -- I mean, this -- the former president of Mexico [Vicente Fox] came up here and he has made statements. He clearly wants a merger -- economic merger of the United States and Mexico, an erasure of the borders between us, free flow of Mexicans into the United States.

I understand his motivation doing that. What I don't understand is why there's -- the government of the United States and patriotic men and women don't understand this means the end of the United States as a sovereign, independent, unique, separate nation and people.

Buchanan's interview with Beck was not the first time that he has invoked Roosevelt to defend his position on immigration. In a 2006 appearance on CNN's The Situation Room, Buchanan claimed that illegal immigration threatens to reduce America to “a polyglot boarding house for the world, a tangle of squabbling minorities,” as noted by Media Matters. But while Buchanan has asserted that the United States must keep “Americans of European descent” from becoming a “minority,” the targets of Roosevelt's ire were European immigrants. From an October 12, 1915, speech by Roosevelt:

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country.

As Media Matters for America documented, Buchanan made similar assertions during a discussion of his book on the November 26 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes. Buchanan responded to a question by Sean Hannity by stating: “I think America may exist, but I'll tell you this: I do believe we're going to lose the American Southwest. I think it is almost inevitable.” He continued: “If we do not put a fence on that border ...you're going to have 100 million Hispanics in the country, most of them new immigrants from Mexico, which believes that belongs to them. What's going to happen to us, Sean, in my judgment, is what is happening right now: We are Balkanizing. We are dividing and separating from one another politically, morally -- on issues like abortion or Terri Schiavo -- racially and ethnically when you get Jena and then you get Don Imus, and all of these things ripping us apart. All the things that used to pull us together and hold us together no longer do.”

In his book, Buchanan addresses immigration and describes current U.S. immigration policy as “a path to national suicide,” as Media Matters has noted. From his book:

Truly, America faces an existential crisis. Are the racial, political, social, and cultural forces pulling us apart overwhelming the forces holding us together?

It is the belief of the author and premise of this book that America is indeed coming apart, decomposing, and that the likelihood of her survival as one nation through midcentury is improbable -- and impossible if America continues on her current course. For we are on a path to national suicide.

How is America committing suicide? Every way a nation can.

The American majority is not reproducing itself. Its birthrate has been below replacement level for decades. Forty-five million of its young have been destroyed in the womb since Roe v. Wade, as Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate the lost generation of American children never got to see."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, from 2005 to 2006, our minority population rose 2.4 million to exceed 100 million. Hispanics, 1 percent of the U.S. population in 1950, are now 14.4 percent. Since 2000, their numbers have soured 25 percent to 45 million. The U.S. Asian population grew by 24 percent since 2000, as the number of white kids of school age fell 4 percent. Half the children five and younger today are minority children. (Pages 7-8)

Additionally, as Media Matters has previously documented, on the June 25 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, Buchanan asserted that “every 20 months, we add a new Mexico in the Third World. You're going to add 30 new Mexicos by 2050, and they all know the door is open.” During the show, Buchanan went on to criticize the immigration bill being considered by Congress at the time and similarly warned of losing the “American Southwest”: “If you grant amnesty -- and there's nothing in this bill that stops the invasion -- I think you lose the American Southwest.” As Media Matters also noted, in his 2006 book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (Thomas Dunne Books), Buchanan also made reference to a “new Mexico”:

The crisis of the West is of a collapsing culture and vanishing peoples, as a Third World that grows by 100 million people -- the equivalent of a new Mexico -- every eighteen months mounts the greatest invasion in the history of the world. If we do not shake off our paralysis, the West comes to an end. (Page 245)

From the November 27 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck:

BECK: We're back with Pat Buchanan, author of The Day of Reckoning. I think, Pat, I'm happy to say I think you're making me look like a man full of sunshine and lollipops. And that's not -- that's not easily done. We were just talking about the people's pessimism. I sensed something when I went down to Texas. I lived in Texas for a while. You know it's a different place.

BUCHANAN: Sure.

BECK: And I went down there and I sensed real disconnect. I talked to a woman today in Bangor, Maine, who said she was out in the shopping mall this weekend and somebody said to her, “You tell me. When are we going to -- when are we going to lock and load?” People are beyond pessimists with their government. I believe there is a growing disconnect. How do we wake the government up to see people are not going to be treated like boobs for very long?

BUCHANAN: You know, I think what you're getting to is what they call a crisis of the regime itself, a crisis of the democratic government of the United States. When you see the president at 30 percent, Cheney at 20 percent and the Congress at 10 percent, and all manner of people saying we don't like the choices we're being offered, I do think the people are far ahead of the -- certainly of the government and the elites --

BECK: Oh, yeah.

BUCHANAN: -- when you see them trying to grant an amnesty to 12 to 20 million aliens in the face of this firestorm. And you see Republican conservative [Sen.] John McCain [R-AZ] and [Rep.] Mike Pence [R-IN] and others going right in the teeth of this storm. What is the matter with you fellas? Don't you see it coming? I think it's already arrived on the immigration issue. I think the trade and lost jobs and manufacturing issue is coming. I think the sovereignty issue is here.

You talk about -- I mean, this -- the former president of Mexico came up here and he's made statements. He clearly wants a merger -- economic merger of the United States and Mexico, an erasure of the borders between us, free flow of Mexicans into the United States. I understand his motivation doing that. What I don't understand is why there's -- the government of the United States and patriotic men and women don't understand this means the end of the United States as a sovereign, independent, unique, separate nation and people.

BECK: Is it that we are just -- is it that we've been watching circuses and eating cakes? Why -- I don't understand. I get so frustrated, Pat. It is so clear to some, and the rest are just not seeing it. Is it arrogance? What is it?

BUCHANAN: No. I think there's two things. One is ideology. And ideology is really substitute religion that's got this belief -- for example, one of the things I mentioned is free trade. But the other is the -- I mean, the belief in the great good myth that we are a nation of immigrants, the more people that come in the better, that all those who opposed it were entirely wrong.

And there's no doubt that the American melting pot worked wonders with the folks who came from Europe from 1890 to 1920. But we had a 40-year time-out, and we had clashes in that period, and it finally worked. So now we say, “Well, that worked. Let's let everybody in from the whole world, legal and illegal, and the whole thing will work.” You are risking the United States of America doing this.

And I'm asking, why are you taking this risk when the people don't want to take it, the country doesn't want to take it? And the only thing they can explain to me is they're addicted to this myth, and they think it's all going to follow through on that, and I don't think it is. I don't think it's working. And I think we're going to wind up with what Teddy Roosevelt warned against: a tangle of squabbling nationalities in a country, the Southwest of which is linguistically part of Mexico -- I mean, the Anglos, as we're called now, are moving out of California. Two million in the 1990s.

BECK: OK. Back with Pat Buchanan in just a second.