Buchanan vs. Landsburg

In the most recent issue of the American Conservative, Pat Buchanan responds to Steve Landsburg's wonderful Forbes column, "Xenophobia and Politics":

Declares Landsburg: “I hold this truth to be self-evident: It is just plain ugly to care more about total strangers in Detroit than about total strangers in Juarez. ... Even if Kerry-style (or Nader-style or Buchanan-style) protectionism could improve Americans’ well-being at the expense of foreigners, it would still be wrong.”

Now I do not know what parents pay to send their kids to the University of Rochester. But if the philosophical imbecility of Landsburg is representative of the faculty, it is too much.

To be more concerned about the well-being of one’s fellow Americans is not “xenophobia,” which means a fear or hatred or foreigners. It is patriotism, which entails a special love for one’s own country and countrymen, not a hatred of any other country or people. Preferring Americans no more means hating other peoples than preferring one’s family means hating all other families. An icy indifference as to whether one’s countrymen are winning—be it in a competition for jobs or Olympic medals—is moral treason and the mark of a dead soul.

As usual when waxing economic, Buchanan misses the mark. Admiring someone simply because they pay taxes in the same geographical area as you strikes me as odd. If your property abuts the Canadian boarder, why should you have a "special love" for your American neighbor, but not for your Canadian? Should I love my fellow Vermonters more than the inhabitants of another state? And did he really write that it's moral treason not to cheer for America in the Olympics?