The interviewer showed no indication that he had read the book. The questioning had more to do with politics and pejoratives than with the content.

The depressing title of the book should be followed by a question mark because it's not a prediction; it's a wake-up call to Americans to look at what is happening to our nation so we can take remedial action — that is, if we have the will to do so. But the book warns we are running out of time.

The most dramatic (and hitherto unreported) change that has taken place since 1965 is that our nation has replaced our own babies with aliens who do not share our culture. The American birth rate is below replacement level while immigrants and illegal aliens from Third World countries are populating our land at a rate at least five times greater than before 1965.

When Richard Nixon became President in 1969, there were 9 million foreign-born in the United States. By the time George W. Bush took his oath of office last year, there were 30 million.

Some people think this is a positive development; Bill Clinton told a cheering student audience in 1998 that there will soon "be no majority race in the United States." No wonder he likes this trend: in 1996, he carried six of the seven states with the largest numbers of immigrants, and in 2000 Al Gore carried five of them and Florida was a dead heat.

Don't count on immigrants coming from European countries any more because their women, too, have stopped having enough babies, and by 2050 a third of Europe's people will be over age 60. By 2050, Germany's population will have shrunk from 82 million to 59 million, Italy's from 57 million to 41 million, and Russia's from 147 million to 114 million (a loss greater than the 30 million killed by Stalin).

The millions who came to America from Europe are now fully assimilated. They learned our language and today they are sporting American flags on their cars and houses.

Those who cross our border today are not becoming full participants in American society and do not learn our language. Millions of Mexicans broke our laws to get here and do not intend to renounce their loyalty to their native country.

We've come full circle from the original civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King. Liberal chic is now segregation dressed up as multiculturalism, diversity, and identity-group politics.

Reminding us of George Orwell's warning that "who controls the past controls the future," Buchanan describes the all-out war that has been waged against our past, eliminating heroes and holidays, abolishing mottoes and symbols, defacing flags and statues, silencing songs and banning books, and falsely teaching schoolchildren that America's history is shameful.

A chapter on how America has been de-Christianized shows that it wasn't only the Pilgrim fathers who spoke openly of the United States as a Christian nation. Buchanan reminds us that similar statements supporting our religious and Christian foundations used to be made by such liberal idols as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice William Douglas, and even Supreme Court decisions.

But no more. The god of the new tolerance demands that even our tax dollars support disgusting blasphemies against the sacred icons of Christianity.

The public schools, whipped into line by the imperial judiciary, indoctrinate our youth with the new orthodoxy. They enforce the new commandments: all lifestyles and cultures are equal, and thou shalt not be judgmental.

Out went Adam and Eve, in came Heather Has Two Mommies; out went pictures of Christ, in came drawings of apes pretending to walk like humans; out went Easter, in came Earth Day; out went teachings against homosexuality, in came teachings against homophobia; out went the Ten Commandments, in came condoms.

Words are weapons and Buchanan shows how the liberals hurl ugly epithets as weapons to intimidate and lay a guilt trip on traditional Americans. It's not Ronald Reagan's America any more.

"The Death of the West" is an executive summary of the history of the last half century, and Buchanan's immense knowledge and inimitable writing style make that dreary report a must-read. His points are graced with word pictures and metaphors, delicious examples of liberal hypocrisies and double standards, and an extraordinary collection of quotations.

The facts in Buchanan's book are sensational, and the Today Show didn't dispute a single one. We need a national debate on this politically incorrect book because it challenges us to ask the questions: Is demography destiny? Can the West have a new renaissance?

America has many examples of a single book igniting a movement, some positive, some negative: "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Silent Spring", "Unsafe at Any Speed," and "The Population Bomb." Buchanan's book can do likewise if it is discussed and debated in the media, in Congress, and in universities.