To Cleveland, Ohio, where middle America’s middle class begins its great Midwest sprawl. I’ve always wanted to visit Cleveland because the so-called sophisticates poke fun at it. And the place did not disappoint. Beautiful municipal buildings of fascist Roman style line the shores of Lake Erie — public libraries, city halls, opera house, large public spaces, you get my drift. The people are friendly, unlike the aggressive slobs that pass for Noo Yawkers nowadays. The purpose of the visit was to moderate a debate, visit Chronicles magazine staff and rub elbows with Chronicles readers, who showed up in force. Among the numerous speakers was the great Pat Buchanan, three-time presidential candidate and a true blue conservative writer who has kept the faith throughout.

His speech, delivered in a mild tone with no theatrics, left me depressed. The de-Christianisation of America has taken place without any protest by the people. Churches are closing and priests are mostly senior citizens. What is worse, if that’s possible, is the plot to do away with the American past. Columbus Day is now called Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and there’s a move to take Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill because he owned slaves.

Washington, Jefferson and Madison were also slave-owners — out of the first five American presidents only the two Adamses did not own slaves — and they will be next. The one that makes me laugh is the Cinco de Mayo celebration, about which I don’t have a clue. What I do know, however, is that on 17 September 1862, the bloodiest battle in American history took place in Antietam, and that’s the day on which we should be celebrating the heroic dead on both sides. What the hell is Cinco de Mayo anyway? A dance step, a rumba band?

It is very simple. The counterculture has won the war. Ninety-seven per cent of Americans spoke English at home during the 1950s. At present more than 50 per cent in Los Angeles speak a language other than English at home. During Eisenhower’s years, 87 per cent of Americans were of European descent. That number is down to 63 per cent and falling rapidly. What is there to say or do? Not much, because political correctness has put paid to protest. The migration policies of Angela Merkel and the gangsters in Brussels are one of the great crimes of any century, yet those who protest this great crime are called racists.

Sixty per cent of white Americans vote Republican. Ninety per cent of black and 70 per cent of Latino Americans vote Democrat. The electoral vote is shrinking for whites and once the country looks like California, where whites are in the minority, it will be impossible to elect a Republican. The great silent majority, as Richard Nixon called it, is no more. Europe is undergoing a similar fate, the difference being I always thought Americans knew better.

When I was at Virginia, I proudly flew the Confederate flag in my fraternity bedroom — crossed with the Greek one. Today I’d be singled out by some horror-haired TV reporter as a bigot and most likely be accused of rape by some female journalist eager to make the cover of a magazine. Which brings me to the stealth campaign to empty the prisons of black criminals. There is a delegitimisation of law enforcement by political activists and media types that is selling the myth of a bias on the part of the courts against blacks. It began with the anti-police movement after the killing of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, who had moved towards a white police officer and who had minutes before robbed a nearby store.

A phoney like Newt Gingrich has joined the campaign that sells the myth of casual drug offenders filling up prison cells. They make up less than 1 per cent of federal inmates, and the rates are falling. Black activists have decided that strong law enforcement should be done away with, and there is a hate campaign against cops. Needless to say, the demonisation of the police and the criminal justice system will end very, very badly. In New York City, year in year out, about 90 per cent of homicide victims are non-white males, as are 90 per cent of their killers, yet criminally irresponsible black and Latino leaders are complaining about police officers doing their duty.

Writers and journalists keep recalling the turbulent New York of the 1970s, when budget cuts and crime and unemployment had brutalised the city. I lived through those days and the place was more fun than it is now. The cops wore their hair long and had droopy moustaches. The place was gritty and magnificent. It was like living in a war zone. One had allies — the cops and others like oneself, law-abiding souls. No one, but no one, took the side of the bad guys. Al Sharpton was in the future, as were all the ‘community activists’ that have sprung up. Media types did not dare take the side of the bad guys. They now climb the ladder of success by doing just that. Give me the Seventies any time. Down with Disneyland New York.